The history of this site with Yahoo

On the 3rd of October, 2000, this site was finally accepted by Yahoo and added into the /Computers and Internet/Internet/World Wide Web/Site Announcement and Promotion category. This was achieved after months of tweaking, submitting, pleading and E-mailing. Since you're reading this article, you are probably interested in everything that might help you in your quest to get into Yahoo. That is why I decided to include the history of my site with Yahoo, from how I started the process to how many visitors I got when I was finally listed. When reading, please keep in mind that this is just a story of what happened to me. Getting listed depends on many things you cannot influence, like which Yahoo editor happens to process your application. Thus, what you're about to read does not describe a sure method of getting listed. On the other hand, since I'm in, I didn't probably do anything horribly wrong either..

I initially submitted my site on the 27th of April. I believed I had done everything by the book, but I never heard back from Yahoo. Determined not to give up, I resubmitted my site on the 11th of June. Unfortunately, the same thing happened with the resubmission as with the original submission - I didn't receive any E-mails from Yahoo, and my sites log files did not report any editors from Yahoo paying me a visit.

As I felt I wasn't getting anywhere by submitting, I decided to try the E-mail address listed above. On the 20th of July, I sent them this note via E-mail. After waiting three weeks for a human to reply - I now think I should have given them at least a week more - without getting anything except the standard automated response, I resubmitted my site again via the normal route on the 14th of August. By the 10th of September, having seen no signs of life, I was nearly hopeless. Nevertheless I decided to try E-mailing them once more and sent them this letter.

Finally, on the 3rd of October, I received this E-mail which I believe was in response to my September 10th E-mail. Checking the directory, I quickly noticed that my site was added. Naturally I was happy as hell and even decided to celebrate a little on that evening - the frustrating task was finally brought to a successful end.

If I would have never received a reply from Yahoo and not had my site listed on the 3rd of October, what would I have done? At that time, I was planning to write a polite letter to the Yahoo editors and send it via regular mail to the address listed above. I still believe it might have gotten some attention, because I bet they get tons of submissions and resubmissions, plenty of E-mails and a lot of calls, but I think that the amount of letters they receive is quite small when compared to the mass of other messages. Provided that even the letter would have proved to be useless, I would have just kept on submitting and resubmitting until someone finally paid some attention to me. If I lived in the US, I would have probably also tried to phone them.

If I were to begin this process again now, I think I'd do some things a bit differently. I would probably attempt to get listed as 'Promotion Guide, A' in the first place, since I believe the letter A just made some people at Yahoo suspicious. Like you must know, Yahoo arranges sites alphabetically from A to Z and is well aware that people attempt to manipulate their system all the time. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to start the name of your site with a A, B or a C - you just have to make sure it isn't obvious your title is designed just to get to the top. The funny thing is that the name 'A Promotion Guide' didn't originate from the desire to get to the top, but came from the simple fact that the domain promotionguide.com was already snatched by somebody.

I'd also focus more on adding new content and improving my existing content. It's a well-known fact that most Yahoo editors are very critical when it comes to content - if they can't find enough of it in high quality, they will not add the site in a million years. I believe that the expansions and revisions I did to a couple of articles between my submissions did finally pay off in the eyes of the editor.

Enough with the past, let's see how much traffic was gained by getting into Yahoo. I have calculated that I get around 500 visitors from Yahoo each month. About 175 of them find me from the category I'm in, the rest use the search feature and see my site coming up. There are various keywords and phrases that make my site turn up at Yahoo, but perhaps the most common one is 'website promotion', which sends me around 90 visitors each month. I'm pretty happy with these figures, and after all is said and done, I'm satisfied that I decided to get myself listed at Yahoo, even while it required some effort.