Ya-Who? The Slow Decline Has Already Begun for Yahoo’s Local Listing Service
September 16th, 2015 by
Changes can surprise the SEO world (looking at you, phantom Google updates), and sometimes, changes can be seen a mile away. This is when everyone should look at Yahoo and their local listings. Their importance is diminishing every day, and eventually they will be a thing of the past, like Google Plus Authorship.
The Decline of Yahoo
Though Yahoo’s importance is not as cut and dry as Google Authorship, I’m going to throw out some information that has me making this prediction with as much certainty as predicting that New Orleans will get rain sometime in July.
- Yahoo search is powered by Microsoft and thusly Bing
- Yelp listings are now trumping organic Yahoo Local listings
- Popular listing monitoring service Moz Local dropped Yahoo from their algorithm
- Another popular listing service, Yext, can monitor and produce Yahoo listings
- Yahoo shut down its own Maps service
Is It Worth the Trouble?
Now, you can argue that since Yahoo was still the 3rd most common search engine as of July 2015 according to comScore, it is worth it to pay attention to Yahoo Local listings.
That is a good argument that we should still pay attention in the SEO world, but that is only one side of it.
Though a very high-ranking search engine and site in general, I’m arguing that their local listings are not worth the time and effort that comes from hassling with support over email, phone, or even Twitter. Since Marissa Mayer took the helm in 2012, Yahoo has been turning their focus away from their older products, such as their Maps and even directory service. Along with these seems to be native local listings.
From an SEO standpoint, Yelp is the real “Y” of the listing world, especially with the ever-rising importance of reviews. I see it becoming the only “Y” in a year or so. So with that in mind, “Y” even bother with Yahoo?
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