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Yahoo introduces the NOYDIR tag
A few days ago, Yahoo announced support
for a new meta tag called "NOYDIR". The new tag will complement
the "NOODP" meta tag that is already supported by all major
search engines.
What is the new NOYDIR tag?
Yahoo, Google and other search engines often use the title
and the abstracts that are used in Open
Directory Project (ODP) listings or in Yahoo
Directory listings for their search result lists.
Unfortunately, the titles and the descriptions that are
used in these directories are often not the titles and
descriptions that webmasters want to see in the search
results.
The reason for that is that the editors of the directory
assign the titles and the descriptions to the listed web
sites and not the webmasters of the sites. Editors often
see web sites differently than webmasters do.
In addition, these directory descriptions often become
outdated and it is very difficult to change the title and
the description of a web site in a big directory.
As many webmasters didn't like the ODP directory title
and description in the search results on Google and other
search engines, search engines invented the NOODP tag.
If the NOODP tag is used on a web page, search engines
won't use the title and the description of the Open Directory
Project entry for that web page. Yahoo now did the same
with the NOYDIR tag.
How can you add the new tag to your web pages?
Just add the following code to the <HEAD> section
of your web pages:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOYDIR">
If you insert that code snippet on your web pages then
Yahoo won't use its directory description for your web
site in the organic search results. If you also don't want
that the Open Directory Project description is used for
your web site, insert the following in the <HEAD> section
of your web pages:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP">
How will the new tag influence your rankings on
Yahoo?
If you use the new tag on your web pages than Yahoo will
use the title of your web pages in its search results.
The description will be created based on the content of
the displayed web page.
Yahoo might still use the Open Directory Description so
it is better to include both tags on your pages if you
don't like your directory descriptions:
<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP, NOYDIR ">
The NOYDIR tag does not mean that the link from the Yahoo
directory won't be considered in link popularity calculations.
A link from the Yahoo directory to your web site will still
have a positive effect on the link popularity of your web
site.
The new NOYDIR tag will be supported by the
next IBP version that is going to be released within
the next two weeks. The NOODP tag and many other tags are already
supported by the current IBP version.
If you haven't done it yet, you should optimize some of
your web pages for Yahoo's search engine algorithm. Although
Google delivers the majority of web traffic, it is not a
good idea to rely on a single source of traffic.
Use IBP's Top 10 Optimizer to optimize
your web pages for both Google and Yahoo so that your
web site gets as many targeted visitors as possible.
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