Yahoo! Fixes “Undocumented Feature”

As a software tester, I would get frustrated with the developers when I would show them an obvious bug in the product and they would respond, “Oh, well that is an undocumented feature.” In other words, they screwed up, they know it, but they don’t feel like fixing it.

Lately, I have felt that Yahoo! Search is full of “undocumented features” especially in the Titles that are displayed.

Down at Webmaster World in Vegas this past November a good webmaster was labeled a “spammer” and a “cloaker” by the site review panel when it was a bug in the Yahoo! SERPs.

The issue is that Yahoo! was displaying the Title in all lowercase letters instead of how it appears in the Title. Since the Title was different in the SERPs than on the page, the panel labeled her a Spammer. I spoke to her afterwards and she was really upset over the label. I don’t blame her.

Tim Mayer (VP of Marketing at Yahoo!) said that the problem was that Yahoo! was pulling anchor text and that if the anchor text was in lowercase, it would show that way. I like Tim and have great respect for him and I am sure this looked like the case on many of the results that would show. However, in the tests that I did, it wasn’t the anchor text at all, it was just a display bug - plain and simple.

Regardless, what is Yahoo! doing using anchor text for the Title in the first place? That is a question that was never answered.

I guess it is business as usual and one more “undocumented feature” that suddenly works correctly. Just please don’t use the “working as designed” line when I get the “blue screen of death.”