Yahoo! is king of the mountain. It directs the lion's share of all web traffic. Both Media Metrix and Net Ratings rate Yahoo! as the most popular "search engine" on the web. No surprises there. But guess what? Yahoo! is not a search engine. Yahoo! is a directory.

Web site directories are very different from search engines

A directory is a handpicked list of web sites. A Yahoo! employee has to personally visit your web site and decide whether or not it should be listed in Yahoo!, and where.

But at a true search engine, like Alta Vista or Excite, nothing is handpicked. As a matter of fact, most of the web sites that appear in true search engines have never been seen by anyone that works for the search engines. True search engines have computers review your web site -- not people.

Why is this important?

It might sound picky when I say that Yahoo! is not a search engine. "What's the big deal?" I can almost hear you say. But if you want your web site placed in directories like Yahoo!, this distinction becomes important. You can't submit to directories in the same manner as true search engines.

With a search engine, you fill out a simple submission form, typically with just the address of your web site. You'll get put on a big list, and eventually their computers will visit your web site. There's no human intervention whatsoever. It's just some really fast and powerful computers, mindlessly thumbing through your and everybody else's web pages, gathering information.

Submitting to Yahoo is altogether different. They don't just ask for your web site address. They ask for a whole assortment of information. Then a real person who works for Yahoo reviews the information you submitted, and your web site, and makes the final decision.

What is Yahoo! looking for?

So what exactly are the people at Yahoo! looking for in a web site? Good question. Yahoo! publishes some vague guidelines that you can read online, but they don't tell you why your site was accepted, or rejected. They don't even tell you if they reviewed your site. The only thing you can do is check Yahoo! over and over, looking to see if your web site made it.

As a company, we have learned some things about what Yahoo! likes and dislikes, through research and experience:

We know the people at Yahoo! like it when you play it totally straight with your submission. No hype. No phony marketing slogans. No requests to be in sections that really don't pertain to you.

For example, if you have a web site about Harrisburg, PA real estate:

Don't ask that the title of the site be "Best web site in Harrisburg!"

Don't enter a description such as "I am the best agent in Pennsylvania. You'll profit from working with me - guaranteed!"

Don't request that they list your web site under Harrisburg, and also Lancaster, Allentown, and Philadelphia, too. (While you're at it, why not ask for every state on the East Coast?) Stuff like this gets you nowhere. Follow the rules and guidelines on their submission forms to the letter. They get so many submissions that they'll look for reasons to skip your submission and go on to the next. Don't give them any reasons.

We also know they certainly don't like any of the typical deceptions or tricks that some webmasters use, in hopes of getting high placement in search engines. (More on these deceptions in a future Top 10 Search Engine Myths article.) Don't even bother trying if your web site makes obvious use of this stuff.

Yahoo! isn't the only directory

While Yahoo! is king, there are other directories out there that you shouldn't forget. LookSmart, for example, recently claimed to have a greater "reach" than Yahoo!. And then there's DMOZ. This is a Yahoo!-like directory, but it is created solely by volunteers.

Here's something to really confuse you: True search engines are adding their own directories. Not only do they have computers piling up information about web sites for searches, they also have a Yahoo-like directory of web sites that was put together by their employees. You end up having to submit twice to these places: once for their search engine, and once for their directory.

How to pay Yahoo! to reject you!

Yahoo! is hip to how frustrating it can be to get your site listed with them. Here's one answer they came up with: Pay them $200 and they guarantee they'll review your web site. If they reject it, they'll tell you why. But if they reject you, you're still out $200. It seems pretty one-sided to me, but there is only one Yahoo!, so they can do things like this.

By the way, LookSmart now has a similar service. It's also $200, but if they reject you, they refund your money.

Don't be taken by people making promises about Yahoo!

Don't let anyone feed you a line that they have some special way or technique of getting web sites into Yahoo!. It's not true. One of the biggest and busiest sites on the web publicly complained to the national media about not getting listed in Yahoo!. There are no guarantees, period. People who say they have a silver bullet for getting you into Yahoo! are selling snake oil.

In all fairness to Yahoo!, they have a monumental task: Index the web, not with computers, but with people. I can't imagine how they could keep up with all the submissions they get.

But if you're frustrated with Yahoo!, you're not alone. You should also keep trying, because Yahoo! truly is king of the mountain. It's worth it.