Have you noticed any changes in your Yahoo! rankings recently?

The forums are a blaze with murmurs of discontent as it appears Yahoo! is currently updating their index. A relatively unexpected update, their search results started turning upside down circa the 19th September 2005.

Website owners are in a frenzy tracking the movements of their Yahoo! listings as top ranking sites are plummeting and poorer listings are suddenly climbing the ranks. So the hot question on everyone’s lips is “What is the new update favouring?”

Though it’s pure speculation at this stage, rumours have it, that the update is favouring pages with strong on page and inbound links. Mind you, the update seems to be generating inconsistent results - with some pages’ rankings fluctuating significantly in only a matter of hours.

Some are suggesting that Yahoo! might be using an older database in the interim while the update occurs - which would explain the irregularity of the search results. This should hopefully be very short term, but for those trying to monitor their search engine optimization efforts at the moment, bear this factor in mind when drawing any conclusions and analysing results.

While tracking of page ranking is a guessing game at the moment, most are happy that the update is underway, as regular Yahoo! users have seen a decline in the quality of results generated of late. This update should hopefully see their results return to the quality of old.

Stay tuned to find out what the permanent impact of this update will be…at this stage it’s anybody’s guess.