Malav Shukla

Submitting to Yahoo

Do a search on Yahoo, and the main results that come back are “powered” by Yahoo’s crawler. Despite this, Yahoo maintains its own independent “directory” of web sites, which are compiled by its human editors.

Yahoo has two submission options: “Standard” which is free, and “Yahoo Express” which involves a submission fee.

Anyone can use Standard submission to submit for free to a non-commercial category. You’ll know the category is non-commercial because if you try to submit to a non-commercial category, the Standard submission option will be offered in addition to the Yahoo Express paid option, discussed further below.

Why might you choose to pay when the free search engine submission option is available? Simply for a fast turnaround time you use the free submit choice, there’s no guarantee that your submission will be reviewed quickly or at all.

Your submission to a non-commercial category is more likely to be accepted if your content is not overtly commercial. For example, submitting the home page of a site that sells running shoes is likely to be seen a commercial and not accepted. However, if you have a page within that web site that discusses in depth how to select the right type of shoes for different running races, then that page might be deemed helpful, non-commercial information and accepted.

As for commercial categories, Yahoo requires that sites pay a Yahoo Express submission fee of $300 per year. This fee doesn’t guarantee that you will be listed, only that you’ll get a yes or no answer about being accepted within seven business days. However, the vast majority of most decent sites are accepted.

If accepted, you’ll be reevaluated after a year and charged the submission fee again, if you want to stay in Yahoo’s commercial area. You should review the traffic you received from Yahoo over the past year, to decide if it is worth paying the fee again. If not, you can decline to be listed, and you will not be charged.

How do you submit? If you are submitting for free to a non-commercial category, click on the “Suggest a Site” link that appears at the top right-hand corner of category page. That will bring up a submission form. Fill it out, and you’re done.

If you are paying to submit, you needn’t pick a category. Instead, just use the Yahoo Express Submission Form. From there, Yahoo editors will choose a category for you. All you need to do is fill out the form that’s presented.

The above tips are the bare essentials to getting listed with Yahoo. If you are in a hurry, you can follow them, and you’ll probably get listed and receive some traffic from the service. However, you may want to do even more preparation before submitting to this important service