While Yahoo! Search tries to include as many sites as possible
in its index, the Yahoo! Directory is more like an exclusive club, where sites
have to be approved by Yahoo! Editors. Because Yahoo! wants to maintain a highly
useful directory, the steps for inclusion are a bit more involved.
To see if your site is already listed in the Yahoo! Directory,
browse to http://dir.yahoo.com and search for the title of your site. If
you don't see your site among the results, you can suggest your site to the
Yahoo! Directory.
The first thing you need to determine about your site is
whether it's commercial or noncommercial, because you'll need to pay $299 to
submit a commercial site. According to Yahoo!, "If your site sells something,
promote[s] goods and services, or represents a company that sells products
and/or services," your site is commercial and should
be listed somewhere in the Business and Economy category within the directory.
If your site is purely personal, informational, or not-for-profit, your site is
noncommercial. A banner ad or text ad on your site doesn't necessarily make your
site commercial; if you have such an ad, it'll be up to the Yahoo! Editors to
decide whether your site is commercial.
Adding a noncommercial site.
The first step to adding a noncommercial site is to find the
appropriate category for your site. If you know of some sites that are similar
to yours, you might try searching for the titles of those sites within the
directory to see how they're categorized. Otherwise, start browsing through the
directory at http://dir.yahoo.com for the most appropriate place for your
site. If your site is a personal home page, browse to "Society and Culture" People
Personal Home Pages. If your site is a weblog, you'll want to browse to
"Computers and Internet" Internet World Wide Web Weblogs.
Once you've found the appropriate category, click the "Suggest
a Site" link at the top of the page. Choose Standard Consideration and follow
the instructions for adding a site. You'll have the option to include a site
title, URL, geographic location, and description. If you have suggestions about
other categories that your site might be appropriate for, you can include those
suggestions in notes to Yahoo! Editors.
Once you've made your submission, the waiting game begins.
Yahoo! doesn't guarantee that all sites submitted will be reviewed, and many
sites are not included in the directory. If your site doesn't show up in the
directory within two or three weeks, you can resubmit your site using the same
process. Multiple submissions in a short period of time could exclude your site
from consideration altogether. To be guaranteed a response about your site's
placement within the directory, you can submit your site as if it were a
commercial site, paying the commercial fee.
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