June 2, 2007
Yahoo Search Site Explorer                By: Melanie Prough

The Yahoo Search Site Explorer is a vastly unique and powerful tool. It doesn't have all the stats and figures that Google Webmaster Tools have, but it has some solid tools that Google lacks.

Do you know how to submit your Google/XML sitemap to Yahoo?

Just register for a Yahoo name and log in to the Site Explorer. Validate your site just like you did with Google. Now click on the "manage" button left hand side of your site link, this is where you submit your sitemap.xml. Submit your feeds here also, same as the sitemap. Everything you submit here must be in the parent domain, but Yahoo allows you to submit sub domains which you are able to verify.

A little known fact about Yahoo is that they still utilize the urllist.txt protocol also. This is a simple text document containing all of your complete URLs on the domain, excluding any blocked by robots.txt. A good rule of thumb is to use the exact URLs from your sitemap.xml. No descriptions, one per line and no grammar. Save this file as urllist.txt and upload it to your site's root. Now you can submit it in your Yahoo Site Explorer the same as the feeds. I always knew Yahoo still did this, but I only learned last night how to actually submit it. Here is the page laying it out for you.

In the "manage" screen of your domain you will notice a resubmit button. Use this to "ping" Yahoo when you have updated the document. I would strongly advise you do not abuse this feature. They do crawl, so it's not really necessary.... however if you were just recently crawled and do a serious content. or structure change then this tool is for you.

 By: Melanie Prough                    [SEOCog.com]   

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