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| Frequently Asked Questions |
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| In this section, we've highlighted the questions that are most commonly asked about Yahoo!. If your question isn't addressed here, or if you simply want more information, be sure to check
the Yahoo! How-To, our complete web tutorial.
If you have a question regarding adding a site to Yahoo!, please see How to Suggest Your Site.
Yahoo! is an online navigational guide to the Web. For more on Yahoo! and what you can do with it, see the Yahoo! How-To.
How does someone get their information listed in Yahoo? Yahoo! is a database of links to other sites. Yahoo! does not provide any original content, so we can only reference sites that already exist. To suggest a site to Yahoo!, see How to Suggest Your Site.
What do the numbers in parenthesis stand for? The numbers that appear in parenthesis next to Yahoo! categories represent the number of entries categorized directly under that subject heading. The number does not include entries in any linked directories. Linked directories are those followed by the "@" sign.
What does the "@" sign at the end of a category mean? The "@" symbol that appears at the end of a category means that this heading is listed in multiple places within the Yahoo! hierarchy. Clicking on the heading will take you to the primary location in the hierarchy for that heading.
A site was in Yahoo! last week, but it's no longer there. What happened?? Things in life come and go, and sites on the Web are no exception. It probably means a number of things, most probably that we have removed the site because it is no longer functional. But to make sure, you should do a search to make sure we haven't moved it elsewhere.
How are links gathered for the Yahoo! database? Most sites in Yahoo! are suggested by users. Sites are placed in categories by Yahoo! Surfers, who visit and evaluate all suggestions and decide where they best belong. This is done to ensure that Yahoo! is organized in the best possible way, making the directory easy to use, intuitive, helpful, and fair to everyone. To suggest a site to Yahoo!, see How to Suggest Your Site.
Is the Yahoo! database really built by people? It is indeed. All suggested sites are visited and evaluated by Yahoo! Surfers who decide where the sites best belong. This ensures that Yahoo! is organized in the best possible way, making the directory easy to use, intuitive, helpful, and fair to everyone.
What kinds of bugs should be reported to Yahoo? Please report errors to us if a link has been relocated, or disappeared, permission denied, or if we have made errors in the title, comments, URL, or classification of the link. Since we have no control of what other people put on their servers, do not ask us to change contents on pages that do not reside on Yahoo!. Any URL that does not contain yahoo.com in its path is not on Yahoo!. For bugs involving contents on a non-Yahoo! page, please contact that page's author(s).
What should I do if I click on a link and get 'Permission Denied', or 'File not found'? When you follow a link and you get errors, there may be several reasons. First, the site may be busy or temporarily down. This happens a lot especially on overloaded sites such as ftp.netcom.com. It may be that the site is denying people access. In which case, if you really want access, please write email to the site authors (usually webmaster@sitename). Of course it may be that the link no longer exists. If you think that a link no longer exists, please inform us and we'll remove it from our directory.
Why can't I read news (i.e. Usenet newsgroups) in Yahoo? When you follow news links, such as news - clari.news.top, in Yahoo!, you will need access to a local news server (i.e. NNTP server). If you are getting error messages like "cannot talk" or "cannot locate host" you most likely do not have your news server set properly in your WWW browser configuration. Please see your browser documentation on how to set this option. If you do not know what news server you should be connecting to, you'll need to ask your internet provider (e.g. your sys admin) for the machine name. However, some providers will not give you access to a local news server. In this case you have at least two options. First you can look at a list of publicly accessible news servers and try to find one near you that will grant you access. In general these servers are rare due to loading problems. A second option is available through some gopher sites that allow you to read news through their gopher servers. However, using this option will not allow you to click on the news links in Yahoo! Instead you'll have to find the newsgroups yourself in the news hierarchies on the gopher servers. Once you have a server for reading news, you still might encounter problems with some of the news links in Yahoo!. The most common problem will be "no such group" messages. This will happen when your local news server does not carry that particular news group. To solve this you'll have to find some other server that does carry that group (see above). This problem is very common with the ClariNews newsgroups since most sites do not carry their news feed.
How are search results ordered? Yahoo! search scans three main areas: Yahoo! categories, web sites listed in Yahoo!, and web pages indexed by Google. For the first two of these, Yahoo! searches for matches in its database and then ranks the results in order of most relevant to leastrelevant. Some of the factors that affect relevancy are: the number of search words matched (the more words matched, the higher the rank); exact word matches (these are ranked higher than approximate matches); and where in an entry the search words were found (a match in the title of a site is ranked higher than a match in the comments or the URL). For more information, see the How-To chapter, Searching the Web With Yahoo!.
How do I narrow a search? Searches can be narrowed or broadened depending on the search options and syntax you choose. Basic search options can be found on the search options page. More advanced searches, using techniques suchas phrase matching or required words, are possible through Advanced Search Syntax.
Why do some of my searches end up with Google results? If Yahoo! doesn't find any matches for your search in its own database, it will provide you with results from Google, a Yahoo! partner. Google specializes in indexing every single web page it can find. This gives it a lot of raw data so, like other search engines, it can provide good results with very specific requests, and often poor results with general requests. Chances are, however, that if your search terms didn't match anything in Yahoo!, you are doing a very specific search, and Google's result may be right on the money.
Can I write my own code to point to your search form? Certainly. Although be aware that we can change our search interface without notice, so make sure the fields you use stay consistent over time. For more information on linking to our search and other features, see Yahoo! to Go.
Whom do I contact for permission on including screenshots and other Yahoo! copyrighted materials? We generally have no problem if you need to take screenshots of Yahoo!, as long as proper attribution back to Yahoo! is given. If you are not sure and/or need written permission, please send email to copyright@yahoo-inc.com.
What are the advertising opportunities available on Yahoo? Yahoo! now offers a wide range of flexible advertising opportunities. Check this page for info. |
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