Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.com/

Today, Yahoo is the number 2 most popular search engine after Google.

Launched in 1994. Yahoo was at the beginning a directory: a site where humans select web sites and rank them in categories.

But in 2002, Yahoo followed the path of Google and put forward a search engine. Nowadays, robots are in charge of indexing web sites at Yahoo.

Yahoo has developed its own search technology. Results are not given any more by Inktomi or Alta Vista or All The Web, other search engines that Yahoo owns.

With regular and casual keywords, actually there are little differences between Yahoo and Google. But with more complex keywords, results can be quite different.

The famous Yahoo directory is still there. If you click on one of the categories just above the search results, you will see the directory.

Yahoo web site submission

Webmasters can submit their sites both in the search engine and in the directory.

Search engine:

Yahoo robot indexes automatically new links it can find. If a web site is registered in a links directory for instance, Yahoo will find it. There is a submission form here.

Free for non-commercial sites. However submitter needs to have a Yahoo account such as mysite@yahoo.com

Paid for commercial sites. The service is called Site Match. Yahoo claims that sites are indexed swiftly and revisited regularly. Webmasters get performance reports. A nice tool to optimize a site. The price is $49 per year. However the ranking is not secure. The site is in competition with others. For a secure placement, the service is called Precision Match.

Such as Google with AdWords, Yahoo sells placement keywords under the name of Overture: it is the Precision Match program. Yahoo is currently rebranding its service under the umbrella of Yahoo itself. The webmaster gives a price he is willing to pay for each keywords selected. Every time someone clicks on the link, the click's fee is added to the webmaster's balance. An excellent way to control a budget and get at the same time a targeted audience. It seems that Yahoo is planning to launch a small and medium ad network such as Google Adsense.

Directory:

Pay attention, there is no exception, a human editor visits and selects the sites included in the directory.

The webmaster needs to choose one or two categories relevant to his site in the list suggested by Yahoo.

Free for non-commercial web sites. The program is called standard submission.
However a few categories are not opened to these sites, you need to pay. If a site is accepted, it can take between 1 to 3 months to get included in the directory.

Paid for commercial web sites. The program is called "Yahoo! Express". The price is $199. The service is fast, less than 7 days.

A good ranking on the Yahoo search engine depends on the visibility in the Yahoo directory. If the web site is not in the directory it will be difficult to reach the top of the search engine. However, very few sites are rejected.

Yahoo! offers also many services such as:

- Complete service
Email, messenger, classifieds, weather, people search, map, tv program, video and mp3, stocks, etc

- Worldwide news

- Profile and personalization of the interface and content
Create a profile and put your site in the links section!