Does anyone know what Yahoo's policy is on titles of sites on their directory? Does the title have to be the name of the site itself? As titles which start with numbers are placed above letters, it is obvious the higher up on the list the more hits you can get. Please look at these examples:

Example 1
actual company name: Ziggy's Auto Parts
domain: ziggys.com
title: 1 Stop for Auto Parts

Example 2
actual company name: Ziggy's Auto Parts
domain: 1stop4autoparts.com
title: 1 Stop for Auto Parts

How do you think Yahoo would react to the above examples. To throw in one more monkey wrench (no pun intended), how do you suppose the logo would effect it? If the title was 1 Stop for Auto Parts and the logo throughout the site was Ziggy's Auto Parts, do you think they would place in under the Z's instead of the 1's?

As always, thanks to all!!!!

Originally posted by Ron
Does anyone know what Yahoo's policy is on titles of sites on their directory? Does the title have to be the name of the site itself?
The policy is clear; the page title has to match the name of the site or the business.

Using numbers or "AAA" or such tricks at Yahoo is not a good idea. If you're lucky, an editor will just change your title to the name of your site. If you're not, you'll get bounced.

actual company name: Ziggy's Auto Parts
domain: ziggys.com
title: 1 Stop for Auto PartsBad idea, and it won't work.

actual company name: Ziggy's Auto Parts
domain: 1stop4autoparts.com
title: 1 Stop for Auto PartsIf that were the case, I'd recommend naming the site 1 Stop for Auto Parts. Make a new logo. Put "a division Ziggy's Auto Parts" somewhere on the site. And of course, don't expect it to work if you already have a site for Ziggy's Auto Parts listed on Yahoo, or intend to.

It's a tradeoff, really: is your position in the directory important enough to sacrifice your branding? Of course, alphabetical position in the directory is only relevant in those cases when a user actually chooses to look at a directory listing; if they instead do a search for "rebuilt alternators" they'll only find you as a web site match if that term brings up your site. How relevant that is depends on your industry, your business, and your site.

JayC, thanks for the information. It was very well put. I might not fool with the title as it does degrade the brand image.

Please allow me to ask another import question about submitting to Yahoo - the description!

It has been my experience with sites I have previously listed with Yahoo that the words you use in the title and description are what gets indexed and searched on. Is this correct?

Whenever I have found my sites on Yahoo with a search on words other than those in the title and description, it has always been through google.yahoo. Is my thinking on this correct?

I am now looking at the descriptions of other sites in my category for ideas on keywords for a new site I plan to submit. However, I would really like to hear comments as to how I may get the most out of the description. As you know, it is rather short so we need to make the most of it.

Does the title in the head of the html (not the title for the directory) have any effect on Yahoo searches?

Other than the title and description, does Yahoo even index any of the content of the site? Do they reindex?