Yahoo vs. Google

If you are ranking well in Google, how much should you edit your site to do well in Yahoo without jeopardizing Google?

 

Good question. I think the answer is don't do anything. Nobody really knows how to rank well in Yahoo. The only thing we think we know is that Yahoo will use meta tags -- keyword and description -- so if you don't have these on your pages add them. Google doesn't use them but it won't affect Google if you add them.

The other thing that used to be claimed for Yahoo is that Yahoo likes more on page content than Google. I'm not sure that is correct, but write another paragraph or two of keyword rich content for your page and see what happens. Again I don't think that will change the Google ranking.

Report back if any of this made any difference for you. Good luck.

 

Google DOES read description.

Go look for a website that is made in Flash, or has not much text on a page to find out what its about. Google will show the Description metatag there as description in the SERPs.

 

I've noticed that to be true, but does the content of the description meta tag have any bearing on your ranking in google? I'm not so sure about that.

 

You are correct. I was wrong to say Google doesn't read them. What I should have said is that Google doesn't use meta tags in determining the relevance of the web site. Therefore meta tags make no contribution to your SERP placement in Google.

 

Yahoo pays more attention to onsite as Compar said. It seems to also consider word proximilty quite alot. Fresh Backlinks also seem to help more.