I blogged back on Sept 30 in and article entitled Yahoo Takes RSS Mainstream at my RSS Powered Report blog about how Yahoo had been beta testing RSS search in their search results. I urged you then to take advantage of getting your RSS feed into Yahoo! asap.
All you need to do is open a free New My Yahoo! account and add your feed as part of your personalized content. The New My Yahoo is heavily driven by RSS content for which Yahoo! was testing RSS search.
Yahoo Continues Development of RSS Feed Search Technology
Two months ago Yahoo unveiled the New My Yahoo! with RSS search but it was still in beta. As of this pas Friday, the New My Yahoo! is now generally available and My Yahoo! users will be asked to upgrade to the New My Yahoo! over the next few weeks. They've upgraded the main page to reflect the update from beta to general availability. You can visit them here: New My Yahoo!
Those who upgraded to the New My Yahoo! since September have automatically recieved the updates that are a part of the transition from beta to general availability.
This is significant for marketers because Yahoo! is a heavy hitter and they are putting time and money into promoting a service designed in large part to take advantage of RSS syndicated content. The New My Yahoo! has the Yahoo! marketing machine behind it in showing users how to easily configure personalized RSS content all the while removing the technical complexity usually associated with subscribing and consuming RSS content.
This brings RSS feeds and RSS syndication one step closer to mainstream ease of use which leads to mass adoption. I urge you to get your RSS feed into the New My Yahoo! as soon as you can.
I am currently ranking number one for 2 seperate keyword phrases in the New My Yahoo! that I targeted specifically.
When people log into their New My Yahoo! all roads lead to "Add Content" search which is all about RSS feeds. Again, by adding your RSS feed now, you are getting your blog into the Yahoo! for free. Just add your own feed to your personalized page by first adding your RSS feed URL via the "Add Content" link.
Understand that the standard Yahoo! organic search results do not mirror the RSS search results. Competition for keywords and phrases is still low for My Yahoo! RSS search results.
Here is an example of what I mean. Let me run a few keywords we know are highly competitive and as such are keyword phrases you would never use when trying to rank high in organic search results since the competition is so very stiff for the top 10 positions.
Without citing search results from standard searches here because of the obvious, here are results from New My Yahoo! RSS search results:
Affiliate Marketing = 22 results!
Internet Marketing = 143 results and growing fast!
PDA = 82 results
Pocket PC = 39!
The above keywords are very, very competitive terms to rank for in standard search. Think of Yahoo RSS search as Yahoo! in their early days when getting in their directory was free and competition was very low.
If you run a search on a very broad but probably one of the most competitive and highly used terms on the planet...computers...you get only 181 search results! Suppose you want to get more targeted in a niche? I ran the term "cheap computers"...only 1 result!
So What's In It For Me?
Okay so what does this really mean? This means you still have the opportunity to position yourself for top RSS rankings in Yahoo for popular terms and you are positioning yourself for the coming RSS traffic explosion. When it does happen you will have already been indexed and maintaining a top ranking. You may not see a lot a referral traffic at the moment from Yahoo! RSS search but this is an investment for your future.
If you act now, you competition will be the only one playing catch up when RSS explodes in the New My Yahoo! search results.
My Yahoo! Updates Tightens Use of RSS Syndication for Personalized Content
Consider that in the two months since Yahoo! lauched the beta, they doubled their number of searchable feeds to 300,000. Yahoo has tightened their embrace of RSS syndication with their New My Yahoo! updates as the promote the use of RSS and XML syndication to centrally store content from weblogs and other websites within users' personalized New My Yahoo! pages. The service supports both the RSS and ATOM XML syndication standards.
Yahoo claims 20 million users and while declining to cite specific numbers, Yahoo has said that millions chose to switch to the upgraded beta service when it was released back in September.
Reference:
Yahoo RSS Upgrade Goes Live
Yahoo Takes RSS Mainstream
Yahoo! RSS Search
