It's not really any sad news, here if you do not (right now) have a natural page one presence on Yahoo.com.

Prudential still has the leads on Yahoo for a while longer. So if you're not a Prudential REALTOR, there's really nothing you can or should be doing with Yahoo as 70% of the leads generated (or more) on Yahoo are still going to Prudential's call centers.

If they have a qualifying buyer for one of your listings, trust me. They'll call you and you'll be asked to cough up 25 or 30% of your commission for the qualified buyer.

Which is why I continue to tell all REALTORS there's just no reason to focus on any Yahoo natural search engine results for SEO purposes unless you're a Prudential broker or REALTOR. 

Steve Balmer might give Prudential the boot now that Microsoft owns Yahoo! so it's kinda hard to tell what's going to happen with the Yahoo-MSN Bing Menage-a-twa. time will tell. I do know that next week Windows 7 comes out and Apple is announcing a new line up of iMacs and I will be getting iMac #72. Brand new processors and a sportier new thinner chassis. I can't wait. 

Sorry for getting into weeds there for a minute -- back to SEO and Yahoo. 

In the off chance you are launching a brand new website anytime now and the end of the year, you might want to get $299 ready to shell out to Yahoo for PAID inclusion into the directory because as of 1 January 2010, it's gone. Or, hire your local SEO guru to get yourself listed into DMOZ as Yahoo still reads incoming from them. 

Yahoo removed (already) it's standard Web submit forms and the new one they are redirecting everyone to is here.

Suffice it to say, Search Submit is on life support and this program dies on 31 December 2009.

You heard it from the Bartman here first.  Goodbye Yahoo. Hello Google. 

-- bart