What is the NOODP tag anyway? It is a meta tag that allows a web site owner to opt out from having the search engines display the Open Directory information in the organic SERPs. The tag was first adopted by MSN and then by Google earlier this year.
Many of us have been waiting for Yahoo to follow suit because many times the Open Directory information will be displayed for a site as opposed to the site’s title tag and either a snippet of text from site or meta description tag for the actual description.
Now Yahoo will finally support the tag, at least according to Tim Mayer who announced this after being questioned about it by Barry Schwartz on The Pulse last night. Tim first pointed out that they have attempted to sort out how a listing is displayed algorithmically but seeing that the tag now exists, they will add support for it in the next couple of weeks.
What is the big deal anyway?
Well for starters, Open Directory descriptions for sites are usually written as a third party review of what the site itself offers as opposed to a more informative description describing the company, product and/or service.
Also a Open Directory listing may be out of date or just plain incorrect and trying to get ODP editors to change an old listing is next to impossible. Therefore, many webmasters want more control over how their pages are displayed in the organic search results of search engines. Support for the NOODP tag gives them just that.
How about the same for Yahoo Directory information being displayed in the SERPs? Not now according to Tim but maybe in the future. For now, they will simply rely on how the algorithm decides to form a listing.
