How Can You Profit From The Changes At Yahoo?

The obvious answer is that you must take steps to improve your own position in Google's search results. Google's rankings are made up of many factors, but dominant factor is "PageRank," which is based on number and quality of incoming links from other websites.

Therefore, first step in improving your position on Google search engine (and now Yahoo) is to improve your site's link popularity. This takes time, and trying to take shortcuts can get you into real trouble - Google doesn't like "link farms," or any program designed to artificially boost your link popularity.

Finding Quality Link Partners Through Google

Since only links from quality sites will count for much with Google, let's take a quick look at how you can find these sites. Start by targeting sites that link to existing top-ranked sites. You can do a backward links search for any site by typing "link:http://www.domain.com" in Google search engine.

An even faster method is to use Google toolbar (http:/ oolbar.google.com/), which requires Internet Explorer 5 or greater, running on Windows. With toolbar's advanced features enabled, you can conduct a "backward links" search from "Page Info" menu for any site you visit.

Since Google lists these results in descending order by "PageRank," you can quickly determine best places to get links by doing backward links searches on top 10-20 sites for your desired search terms, and seeking links from top 10-20 places that link to them.

Links Are Not Enough: Optimizing For Google

While "PageRank" is dominant factor in Google's algorithm, it's not only factor, and you still need to optimize your web pages. This can be a complicated topic, but most important factors are: - Keywords in title of page - Keywords in headings on page (H1 or H2 tags), especially first heading. - Keywords in body text of page, particularly first paragraph.

Don't Complain, Act!

By some estimates, Google now controls 2/3rds of searches conducted on Internet in a given day. Not only is Google.com extremely popular in its own right, but Google also controls search results on popular portals like AOL and Iwon.com - not to mention Yahoo.

A lot of website owners are complaining bitterly about this change. All more reason for you to take action now, while so many of your competitors are busy licking their wounds. With a little planning and effort, you could be in a dominant position on Google before they even get started.

I wish you success...

AltaVista (search engine), provides its own results using a crawler to index information for its database. Paid results/listings come from Overture, while secondary results come from Open Directory.

AOL Search (search engine), primary and paid results both come from Google. Secondary search results are pulled ftom Open Directory.

Ask Jeeves (search engine), paid results come from Overture with secondary results coming from Teoma. Directory results are from Open Directory by way of Teoma.

Google (search engine), crawler based providing its own primary and paid results. Directory results come from Open Directory.

LookSmart (directory), paid results are their own, secondary search results are from Inktomi.

Lycos (search engine) primary results come from Open Diectory, secondary results from Fast and paid results from Overture and their own fee-based submission program.

MSN Search (directory), with results coming from LookSmart. Paid results provided by Overture with secondary results from Inktomi.

Netscape Search (search engine) primary results from Open Directory, secondary results from Google, and paid results from Overture.

Overture (pay-per-click database service) Not actually a search engine, Overture provodes paid search results for many of major search engines. Such as;

All Web AltaVista AskJeeves Excite iWon MSN HotBot Netscape Lycos Teoma

Open Directory (DMOZ) (directory) All content in this human-edited directory is from direct submission.

Yahoo! (directory) paid submissions from its own fee-based program and Overture. Secondary search results from Google.

For more in-depth detail on this interwoven web of search results see following pages.

Search Engine Providers Chart http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/alliances.html

Search Engine Results Chart http://www.searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/results.html

Search Engine Relationship Chart PDF file format, need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed. http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginechart.pdf

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Larry(Momp) owns Momp's Web Design and MWD News newsletter. In addition to web design service, site includes a web design reference library for webmasters.

Momp's Web Design: http://www.mompswebdesign.com/ MWD Newsletter: http://www.mompswebdesign.com/mwdnews.html Contact Momp: mailto:momp@mompswebdesign.com

Larry(Momp) owns Momp's Web Design and MWD News newsletter. In addition to the web design service, the site includes a web design reference library for webmasters.