Yahoo Experiments With Non-Yahoo Links On Home Page
Michael Arrington
36 comments »
The major Internet portals like Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Google, etc. do not place links on their home page that go anywhere except deeper into the properties. Advertising is generally the only exception.
So it surprised us when Yahoo contacted us earlier this week to say that they are testing outside links from their home page. The goal, they say, is to make Yahoo.com as relevant as possible to their. By linking to outside websites, their hope is that the relevance (perceived or actual) of the Yahoo portal will increase.
An article from CrunchGear was included in the test and was on the Yahoo home page for an hour or so yesterday. Other sites were linked to as well. The links were placed prominently at top center in the “featured” section.
Yahoo says that they will analyze the data and feedback from the test to determine whether or not they’ll make this a permanent policy. My request is that they keep testing, and feel free to use our properties at any time.
Sounds good. Now yahoo need not run a detailed story for just about anything on their website. Just a small summary and a cute link to another site. This can increase the reach of blogs too.
I don’t know how much more relevant it will make it to users, but it will definitely make the site and Yahoo appear less corporate, and therefore more credible, so I welcome the move.
If it is added traffic to the linked sites, what’s in it for Yahoo? It sure must be beyond relevance to Y!’s users. Any guesses?
An interesting read, but i can’t help but feel there will be a catch.
If not then Yahoo need to Yodle me and post up an article from comnetslash.com
What does Yodle mean?
Yahoo with non-Yahoo links? Finally, they’ve decided to be non-snubby. Thank goodness they are going to de-commercialise a bit.
Stats! What were your uniques, etc. like in that hour?
This type of thinking is going to be more relevant as we move into more Universal Searches. If that comes to be then a lot of sites are going to have a hard time adjusting to be found, (not to mention timely and up to date SEO firms).
ok I’ve had enough of the guy who posts false bios of CEOs. I dont if anybody read his comment ( Michael Birch, #4), but I found it offensive. Can’t you just ban his IP adress?
Can’t something be done about the author of comment #4?
Posters like Michael Birch just want a rise out of people, as they got no love attention previously. I’d say just ignore it. I’m not so much offended by the comments as I am to be a part of a species that produces such a low quality brain.
Like #8 I’d be interested in knowing what impact being featured on the homepage had.
It would be interesting if instead of an editorial selection Yahoo! ceded control of the homepage, or at least a section of it, to their users who would vote a story up or down Digg-like.
Good move for Yahoo as well as users (and Techcrunch) ………. will widen appeal and make more relevant for the USER - The user wants the best content or links and this move helps the portal be more personal………..gotta be good
Simon
Portal defined as
por·tal1 /ˈpɔrtl, ˈpoʊr-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[pawr-tl, pohr-] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. a door, gate, or entrance, esp. one of imposing appearance, as to a palace.
…..
4. Computers. a Web site that functions as an entry point to the Internet, as by providing useful content and linking to various sites and features on the World Wide Web.
I too want the stats. How does it compare to a good digging?
So tell us Mike, how much traffic did it generate? Now that would be interesting to know.
This is HUGE - a few months ago my website was mentioned in an article that was on the front page of Yahoo for just 3 hours. Viewers had to pick that article (out of 6 others in that main section), read the article, see that the mention to JibberJobber was #4 of a 10-point list, click on JibberJobber, and choose to sign up if they wanted to.
There were about 300 people that went this far, and about 2,000 people that got to my page during this three hours (over 10% conversion).
It amazed me that Yahoo had this kind of traffic. I found the traffic to be totally different than Digg traffic, too. This was on a Yahoo Finance article, and related to careers, which I’m guessing is a totally different demographic than what Digg (or even TechCrunch) gets.
Based on my experience, I would love ANY ink on yahoo’s front page anytime! And this news, to me, is HUGE because it means that it is likely that a very smart, intriguing, contraversial (or whatever) blog post could end up there, whereas before it was only a dream.
Jason Alba
CEO - JibberJobber.com
Because we can all be fired!
I would love to see some stats to….I know they were probably in the hundred thousands range.
How to start a clothing line from scratch for everyday entrepreneurs~
http://www.dobizo.com
Arrington please tell Yahoo they are welcome…actually Yahoo if you are reading this please feel free to link to articles from my blog on your homepage as well.
I have absolutely no objection whatsoever.
Who am I, I’m nobody and that’s exactly the kind of content people want to read. Something from nobody who doesn’t have a popular opinion hence it is very natural and straightforward.
Interesting, does Yahoo! no longer want to make money? Seems like they’ll be driving people away from their network rather than bringing them in.
Perhaps they will drive eyes elsewhere, but where? To the publishers, and who uses Adsense? The publishers, so they drive traffic to their (YPN) publishers which use their add platform. This makes sense, can they drive revenue for the publishers as well as the competition? I defer to the experts.
The person at Yahoo who came up with this should be given a promotion (if they’re not at the top). The winners on the web will be the ones who are inclusive, not exclusive. As social tools and platforms like stumbleupon, digg etc. proliferate people will find valuable content one way or another, and if you don’t have it you become irrelevant.
Hrm, how can one become part of this “testing”?
An alexa comparison of TechCrunch.com vs Yahoo.com (and my own site)
That really puts things in perspective
Ya, can we see any numbers on how many referrals that generated?
Congrats Mike - just wondering if this is a payback for having Brad at the 20? I mean, did they provide any info on stats or why they selected crunchgear out of the 240824920942 billion web sites on the web? Can you share what other sites were picked? Might make a good alexa comparison chart. pre and post.
geezzzeeee….. This page need cache or page load speed.
This will be stupid if they put thir links to direct users to other pages, this is however a good move…
i dont think so!haw~~lol
The most obvious problem with this is that the Yahoo front page can probably deliver a crushing amount of traffic. It’s probably quite a bit like getting featured on Fark, the Drudge Report, and Digg all at the same time. How many sites can really handle it?
And how can Yahoo be sure that they aren’t sending traffic to a dead link?
But I agree with the previous poster who mentioned YPN. This would be a great tool to “treat” some of their larger and loyal publishers… and it helps the publishers grow their sites, enouraging increased YPN impressions, etc.
按中国的赞美词说：你真是太有才了。
Many Yahoo! sites cannot handle a front page promotion. While this is actually a very interesting move, I’m afraid very few web sites could handle the traffic this generates. The Yahoo! Home Page is far beyond getting slash dotted.
I wonder, how much traffic it sends. Does it beat Digg’s front page?
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