yahoo

i still say yahoo is the best

you can say it all you like, it doesn't make it true

I would certainly admit that Yahoo has really improved the quality of their SERPs and also worked hard on increasing their index size but still they need to improve a lot. So it won't be correct to term it the best

I am curious to know is there any strong reason for this misbelief

Right now, Yahoo is still not the best and it will be awhile for it to be. Especially with the PPC and PFI. Google brings very relevant results and its FREE.

Any ideas on how Yahoo is assigning ranks to the sites? What criteria are they using? Are they using something similar to links like google?

I don't think so, because I'm turning up a lot higher (like a LOT higher, 1st page on Yahoo, 20-50th page on Google) in some searches for some of my sites...

But I'm sure they must have some similarities between how the two calculate it - internal linkage, external inbound linkage, quality & quantity of appropriate concent, etc.

Well one thing I am noticing for a few clients is that I am getting #1 positioning for a few very competitve terms, and its my yahoo directory listing.

And like MSN, I see that yahoo looks into your Description tag alot. Like Axe, I see many better positions in Yahoo than Google for many keywords.

I've noticed that yahoo takes a closer look at key words in the page url. It appears the results that are returned consistently have pages with urls using some or all of the search terms.