Google spiders Yahoo directory

[Brian Turner]

I found some Yahoo directory pages were showing as backlinks in Google for some of the sites.

Yet the Yahoo directly uses modified URLs.

Here's an example of the Yahoo directory link being counted as a backlink in Google:

http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...Ebrowse%2Ehtml

That shows the backlinks for the site - look out for the Yahoo directory page around site number 17.

Check the actual page in the Yahoo directory:

http://dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Cul...Online_Bibles/

and every URL is modified.

So how the hell does Google class that as a backlink?

Surely this means the possibility that Google has now find a way to spider at least some modified URLs??

Or is there a really mundane explanation?

I suspect we could be looking at a very major change in how Google indexes links.