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What is Yahoo?
Yahoo! is a hierarchical subject-oriented guide for the
World Wide Web
and Internet. Yahoo! lists sites and categorizes them into appropriate
subject categories. A help file for using Yahoo! can be found
here.
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How does someone get their information listed in
Yahoo?
Yahoo! is a database of links to other sites.
Yahoo! does not provide any original content, so we can only reference sites that already exist.
To get listed, you must set up a page on the World Wide Web. If you don't
know what that means, please have a look at the
WWW FAQ, which
talks about how to write a home page in HTML, and find a WWW server to serve
your document (Section 5 of the FAQ).
Once you have a URL of something that you think we should add,
please check first to make sure that we do not already have it. The easiest
way to check is to
search
for the URL that you want to add. If we do not have it (or if we have it in an incorrect place), inform us using Yahoo!'s
add interface.
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What do the numbers in parenthesis stand for?
The numbers that appear in parenthesis next to Yahoo! categories
represent the number of entries categorized under that subject heading.
The number does not include entries in any linked directories.
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What does the "@" sign at the end of a category mean?
The "@" symbol that appears at the end of a category means that this heading
is listed in multiple places within the Yahoo! hierarchy. Clicking on the
heading will take you to the primary location in the hierarchy for that
heading.
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A site was in Yahoo! last week, but it's no longer there.
What happened??
Things in life come and go, and sites on the Web are no exception. It
probably means a number of things, most probably that we have removed
the site because it is no longer functional. But to make sure, you
should do a search to
make sure we haven't moved it elsewhere.
- How are links gathered for the Yahoo! database?
There are two ways in which Yahoo! gets its links. First, it's through
user submissions. This is done by clicking on the "Add URL" function in the
menubar. Currently submissions comprise almost all of our entries.
The second way Yahoo! get its links is through automated search robots
that look for new announcements at various places.
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I like the GIFs used in Yahoo!. Can I get the gifs? How do I get the gifs?
Feel free to get and use most GIFs used in Yahoo!. We ask
you not to use the menubar on its own, since it is becoming
synonymous with Yahoo!. However, feel free to break it up and
use the menu items individually.
If you're using Netscape, all you have to do is click the right mouse
button on the image, and choose "Save this image as" from the popup menu.
Otherwise, the easiest way to get an in-lined GIF is to take a look at
the source ("view source" option on most browsers), and find the location
in the HTML document that refers to the image. Select the "Download to
local disk" option on your browser. Then, "open url" on the
reference to the image. For example, our "new.gif" figure can be
obtained by first setting "download to local disk", and then clicking on
the following:
http://www.yahoo.com/images/new.gif
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What kinds of bugs should be reported to Yahoo?
Please report errors to us
if a link has been relocated, or disappeared, permission denied, or if we
have made errors in the title, comments, URL, or classification of the link.
Since we have no control of what other people put on their servers, do not
ask us to change contents on pages that do not reside on Yahoo!. Any URL
that does not contain yahoo.com in its path is not on Yahoo!.
For bugs involving contents on a non-Yahoo! page, please contact that page's author(s).
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What should I do if I click on a link and get
'Permission Denied', or 'File not found'?
When you follow a link and you get errors, there may be several reasons.
First, the site may be busy or temporarily down. This happens a lot especially
on overloaded sites such as ftp.netcom.com. It may be that the site
is denying people access. In which case, if you really want access, please
write email to the site authors (usually webmaster@sitename). Of
course it may be that the link no longer exists.
If you think that a link no longer exists, please inform us and we'll
remove it from our directory.
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Why can't I read news (i.e. Usenet newsgroups) in
Yahoo?
When you follow news links, such as news
- clari.news.top, in Yahoo!, you will need access to a local news
server (i.e. NNTP server). If you are getting error messages like
"cannot talk" or "cannot locate host" you most likely do not have your
news server set properly in your WWW browser configuration. Please
see your browser documentation on how to set this option. If you do
not know what news server you should be connecting to, you'll need to
ask your internet provider (e.g. your sys admin) for the machine name.
However, some providers will not give you access to a local news
server. In this case you have at least two options. First you can
look at a list of
publicly accessible news servers and try to find one near you that
will grant you access. In general these servers are rare due to
loading problems. A second option is available through some gopher sites
that allow you to read news through their gopher servers. However,
using this option will not allow you to click on the news links in
Yahoo! Instead you'll have to find the newsgroups yourself in the
news hierarchies on the gopher servers.
Once you have a server for reading news, you still might encounter
problems with some of the news links in Yahoo!. The most common
problem will be "no such group" messages. This will happen when your
local news server does not carry that particular news group. To
solve this you'll have to find some other server that does carry that
group (see above). This problem is very common with the ClariNews
newsgroups since most sites do not carry their news feed.
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How do I increase the number of search hits returned?
On the Yahoo! search page, there
is a pull-down menu that says "Limit number of matches to". Drag down the
options and select the desired number of returned matches. Default is 100.
(Note that your browser must support forms.)
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Can I search on URL only, title only? comments only?
On the Yahoo! search page, there
are three radio buttons that say "Find matches in" either Title, URL, or
comments. By Default, it searches all three fields. If you only want
one or two of those, deselect the field you don't want to search.
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Yahoo! defaults using substring searches.
Can I search on the whole word?
Yes.
On the Yahoo! search page, there
is an option to set "Consider keys to be ", and set that to "Complete
Words".
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Can I write my own code to point to your search form?
Certainly. Although be aware that we can change our search interface
without notice, so make sure the fields you use stay consistent over time.
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Whom do I contact for permission on including
screenshots and other Yahoo! copyrighted materials?
We generally have no problem if you need to take screenshots
of Yahoo!, as long as proper attribution back to Yahoo! is given.
If you are not sure and/or need written permission, please send
email to copyright@yahoo.com.
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What are the advertising opportunities
available on Yahoo?
Advertising on Yahoo! is new, and will be ongoing. Check this
page for info.
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What is the system set up for Yahoo?
The setup on Yahoo! is almost always changing.
Currently, the database is a custom-made database (not publicly
distributed) on the Unix platform.
Most functions, including the httpd server, are developed specifically
for Yahoo!.
For hardware, Yahoo! is being served on several SGI Indy's and Pentium-based PCs running Unix. The network is a
T3 (45Mb/sec) line. Hardware and networking support are being
provided by Netscape Communications.
http://www.yahoo.com/faq.html (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
