I have been dealing with a Yahoo indexing issue for one of my companys major websites recently. Figuring out what was happening forced me to dig deeper into Yahoos site indexing process and what I uncovered is worth passing on. If youre a SEO guru this is probably not new to you but I imagine that a majority of businesses probably dont have the time nor the knowledge to discover it on their own.

But first an aside - I highly recommend that all businesses setup a Yahoo Site Explorer account (as well as a Google Webmaster tools account and maybe a MSN Live Webmaster Tools account too.) This provides some important features including (1) assessing the number of pages and in-links (incoming links) indexed by Yahoo, (2) access to the feedback section where people post their concerns and Yahoo staff responds fairly promptly with suggestions and (3) the opportunity to upload a sitemap.xml feed to ensure Yahoo indexes up to 50 primary urls.

Beyond this suggestion though - what I discovered through posting a problem in the feedback section and having Yahoo follow-up with aq request to perform a site re-review, is that Yahoo does not perform the re-review process for evaluating websites. Nor do they have any influence or control over it. If your site gets banned or demoted for any reason in Yahoos index (and based on what I have read from others posting in the feedback section; it may happen without you doing anything wrong or deceptive) you have to contact McAfee.

It was announced back in 2007 that Yahoo was partnering with McAfees SiteAdvisor program to reevaluate sites for credibility and to remove sites with malicious activity completely from Yahoos search index. Although I recall the announcement I just really noticed the partnerships significance over the past few weeks.

Its worth while for you to visit: http://www.siteadvisor.com/analysis/ to analyse your website.

People using SiteAdvisor which is available via a FireFox or IE plug-in can also comment about your site which shows up on your SiteAdvisor profile page. The plug-in enables you to see SiteAdvisor data (credibility check) next to every search result listing within Yahoo. The depth of the analysis is certainly worth the time to check into the tool to figure out if you are safe or trending in dirty water. Just another factor to be concerned with on your path towards achieving more leads or more sales.

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