In my last post, I outlined a 12 step guide to help Yahoo! Store owners with setting up a Google Sitemap for their websites. Today, I would like continue my efforts of assisting fellow Yahoo! Store designers and owners and outline the necessary steps for setting up Yahoo! SiteExplorer, Yahoo's version of a Sitemaps program, with your Yahoo! Store.

Yahoo! Site Explorer is a tool that lets you access the information that Yahoo! has about a site's online presence. You can see which sites and sub-pages are indexed by Yahoo! Search, track sites that link to your pages, and view the most popular pages from any site. As was the case with Google Sitemaps, there is a lot of information to be harvested from setting up Yahoo! SiteExplorer, and it's certainly in the best interest of webmasters and site owners to do so.

Thanks to the Yahoo! Store development team and all their efforts in making their platform easy-to-use and easy-to-integrate with other online platforms, setting up Yahoo! SiteExplorer with a Yahoo! Store is a very easy 2-step process (essentially, there are 10 steps, but only 2 tasks that need to be completed).

Here are those 10 steps for setting up Yahoo! SiteExplorer with a Yahoo! Store:

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Step 1
First things first, open up two browser windows. One window should be logged into your Yahoo! SiteExplorer account (if you don't have one, create one), and the other should be logged into the "Store Control Panel" of your Yahoo! Store account. Throughout this process, we'll be switching back and forth from one screen to the other so it's best to keep both readily available.

Step 2
On the Yahoo! SiteExplorer screen, add your website. To do so, enter your website's URL in the specified section at the top of the screen, and click "Add My Site".

Step 3
After clicking "Add My Site" in the previous step, you'll find that your website has been added to Yahoo! SiteExplorer and that it now appears in a table below. The next and final step in this process is to "Authenticate" your website. Authenticating a website will allow Yahoo! SiteExplorer the ability to share additional information about your website that otherwise wouldn't be shared. To begin the authenticate process, click on the "Authenticate" tab under the "Status" column.

Step 4
Now on the "Authentication" page, you'll find that there are 2 different ways one can authenticate a website... via an HTML upload or by adding a special meta-tag to the homepage. In this guide, we'll be using the HTML upload option, as it is very easy for Yahoo! Store owners to do.

You should see 3 steps highlighted on the page. In step 1, ignore downloading the "authentication key" as stated. Instead locate the two bolded file names (just below the "download" tab). Using your mouse, highlight the first file name (it should end in ".html"), and copy it (to copy hit "CTRL + C" on your keyboard). DO NOT CLICK "Ready to Authenticate". Instead, leave this page exactly as it is.

Step 5
Switch over to your Yahoo! Store window. You should already be logged in and within the "Store Control Panel". Click on the "Search Engines" link under the "Promote" section near the bottom-left-corner of your screen.

Step 6
Now on the "Promote your Site on Search Engines" page, scroll down and locate the "Authenticate with Yahoo! Site Explorer" section. Within this section there are two tasks which must be completed. First, click inside the "filename" box and paste the file name that you had copied in step 4 (to paste hit "CTRL + V" on your keyboard). When doing so, make sure there are no extra spaces before or after the file.

Step 7
Leave this page as it is and switch back over to the Yahoo! SiteExplorer page. Copy the second of the two file names. Again, DO NOT CLICK "Ready to Authenticate". Instead, leave this page exactly as it is.

Step 8
Return back to the Yahoo Store window. Click inside the "file contents" box and paste the file that you had just copied in step 7. When doing so, make sure there are no extra spaces before or after the file.

When finished, click "Done".

Step 9
Enter your Yahoo! Store editor and publish / republish your website. Doing so will automatically create and host the authentication file that is needed. (Note: It's very important that you publish your Yahoo! Store now. If your Yahoo! Store states that it is already "published", you'll need to force it to publish by updating something on your website and then clicking the "publish" button.)

Step 10
Return to your Yahoo! SiteExplorer window where you should still be on the "Authentication" page. Click the "Ready to Authenticate" tab to complete the website authentication process. If all was done properly, you should now read "Your site is pending authentication" near the top-left of the page.

Congratulations! Yahoo! SiteExplorer is now set-up. Give it a day or so to verify the authentication, and to retrieve data on your website. Soon you'll have all the information you need to understand how the Yahoo! search engine finds, crawls, reads, and indexes the pages on your website.