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Yahoo Content Test Conclusions
October 31st, 2007
Question
Does the location of the content in the page code provide any priority in search engine placement?
The Test
Three identical pages were developed with the only differences being the page title, file name and most importantly the location of the search term in the page’s code. Testpage1 has an h1 tag with the test term placed at the bottom of the code/content (inside the body tag), Testpagem (aka testpage3) has the h1 in the center of the code/content and testpage2′s h1 is at the top. As you can see from the picture the links are from the same page and in bottom-up order. From here on testpage will be referred as TP.
Yahoo’s Result
Yahoo indexed and cached the pages about 3 days apart. First page to be cached was TPm, the link in the center (go figure) followed by TP2 then TP1. When a search is completed for the term the SERP demonstrates TP2, the top placed h1 is first followed by TPm and TP1 as you can see in the image below.
Conclusions
Yahoo places emphasis on the location of a term within the code itself. I suggest when writing your pages you produce a template that the first content this particular search engine sees is the terms you are optimizing for. I think based on the result “top navigation” should become a thing of the past.
Google and MSN results will be reported when complete.
Happy Halloween!
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