I came across an interesting way Yahoo pulls results that doesn’t seem to be accurate. The company I’m currently working with, Sona MedSpa, which offers laser hair removal, botox treatments and body contouring had some necessary cleanup issues I was faced with. Before I begin, notice the services Sona offers.

After doing a few searches, I found the below description shows up for the brand, sona medspa.

Ok, does that seem to match Sona’s services? They do have a center in Dallas but sure don’t offer Hair Cuts!!. I did some investigation and read up on how yahoo pulls search results. There was an area in their FAQ’s that stated many of the results are pulled from The Open Directory and the Yahoo Directory . I did searches and they didn’t show up which continued the confusion.

Yahoo suggested adding these two tags to prevent pulling from those sources.

<META NAME="Slurp" CONTENT="NOODP">
<META NAME="Slurp" CONTENT="NOYDIR">

After a few days, nothing again.  Now I know it takes weeks for a page to be spidered but I was ancy so I contacted Yahoo to see if this was a potential fix. I got a response back from a guy/girl named “Sky”, (yes, I laughed too!) that stated the info was being pulled from Idearc.com which is the parent company of YellowPages.com. Sky suggested I contact YellowPages to updated the listing.I then did a search there and nothing came up again.

Frustration insued and I contacted “Sky” again to inquire why Yahoo pulls results rather than spider and index the page directly. I got an email back this morning stating that an engineer researched the case further and determined the below response:

Hello Dan,

Thanks for writing to the Yahoo! Search and Directory Support.

I apologize for the delay. Our engineers have investigated this matter and we’re getting this information from a company called PositionTech which works together with Idearc. According to our engineers, Idearc needs to contact PositionTech to have this information corrected. The feed in question is called “Idearc_Local_Aggregate__Feed”. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Thank you again for writing to the Yahoo! Search and Directory Support.

Regards,

Sky

Search & Directory Support

Yahoo! Inc

Ok, so I found that PositionTech.com is a search marketing firm that works with YellowPages. Again I thought about it and realized why would Yahoo be doing this. I emailed sky back to have it corrected and again asked why Yahoo woukld be doing this rather than going to the site directly. I’m stil waiting on a response but this situation reconfirms my distaste for Yahoo and their practices. I plan on following up as soon as “Sky” looks int the matter.

(Search Engine Land) –  At various times it’s been called AMP or APEX, but today Yahoo introduced its new “unified digital advertising platform,” which the company is now calling APT. With the platform it gained through the Right Media acquisition at its core, Yahoo is positioning APT as a dynamic, open marketplace (dispensing with the term “exchange”).

The central idea is very simple: simplification of buying and selling advertising across the internet. The first customers — indeed the apparent drivers of the initiative — are Yahoo’s newspaper partners.

Search is not a part of APT at this point. But previously Yahoo President Sue Decker said that it would encompass all ad types and formats across Yahoo and its partner network:

We are building a cutting edge ad platform that runs across all formats, whether it is search, display, video. It is capable of harnessing the power of Yahoo and the power off Yahoo. But it will also take advantage of emerging formats like mobile, all in an easy to use system.

APT was formally unveiled in New York today, with an appearance by Jon Hamm, the actor who plays advertising executive Don Draper on the popular AMC show Mad Men. Lots of sweeping and dramatic claims are being made for APT and how it will affect online advertising.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang blogged about the launch:

Our confidence in APT’s ability to transform the marketplace isn’t based on theory or conjecture. It’s because of the feedback we’ve been hearing from partners who have been working with us side-by-side as we developed and then began testing the platform. In fact, William Dean Singleton, CEO of Media News Group (parent company of the San Jose Mercury News), also joined us on stage today, using words like “extraordinary and “sea-change” to describe how APT will take MNG into the future.

Yang characterized it as a “platform that would be to 2009 what radio was to 1924, TV to 1947, color TV to 1965, and the Internet to 1993.”

Google, AOL and Microsoft all have their own “next generation” ad platforms in the works or various stages of development. For example, just yesterday AOL announced its own: BidPlace.

Clearly APT is consistent with what advertisers, agencies and publishers want: reach, targeting and simplification. But we’ll get to see in the coming months whether it can deliver for them — and for Yahoo.