by Lorelei Cohen

Created on: September 20, 2009

I typed Raynaud's Phenomenon in the Google search bar just to see if an article that I had written on the subject would come up. Instead what I saw was an answer pulled from The Yahoo Questions and Answers site. This was the first time that I had heard of Yahoo Questions and Answers so I went to investigate the article a little further. My first thought was that I could have answered the question much better than the person who had. I was hooked.

I spent approximately the next four hours perusing the many categories and questions on the site looking for questions that I felt that I had enough knowledge to answer. There were plenty, and I found myself busily answering them as completely, and honestly as I could. Many of the questions were based on topics that I had previously researched, and written articles on, so on those I also included a link to my article. I was very surprised and almost horrified to realize how many young people were looking for quick methods of losing weight. They didn't seem to realize the health hazards involved with this type of dieting so I put a little of the mother hen in me out there on my replies to their questions.

Over the next few days I was surprised to see the number of visitors who went to my articles through the links that I had created on Yahoo Questions and Answers. I had unknowingly created additional linkage, and traffic, for my articles. As a writer who is always searching for additional means of increasing exposure to my articles, I was thrilled. Not only had I hopefully helped a few people out with their questions, but I also helped myself out a bit too. A bit of a win - win situation for everyone.

Since that day I have gone back to Yahoo Answers many times, when I have spare time I do so to provide answers, but I have also visited the site to ask questions that I couldn't find answers for elsewhere. Only once did I not receive any answers to my question. The site is well layed out, easy to navigate, interesting, addictive and I recommend that everyone who plays online give it a try. All the questions are laid out under main category headings, and further refined under numerous subcategories within the main, so that the questions can be very specific to for those searching for questions or answers. I would definitely not recommend that a person go to Yahoo Anwers strictly as a means of creating linkage to a website, but I do believe that a lot of people who work online, also have valuable insights to share with others who could benefit from their expertise.

I try now to not spend too many hours at any one site during my work day but I do try to get back to Yahoo Questions and Answers at least once a week to answer a couple of questions. Who knows, you might be the one answering my question, or I might be the one answering yours.

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