I discovered last night doing some testing on my funky new Mailchimp rss->email template that Yahoo! likes to use its own blue colour scheme for links. It does this by adding a span into your anchor tag. They also create links within your paragraph text which, on hovering gives you a list of links based on the linked text, in a snap style viewer.

I have a bit of an issue with this, because in my newsletter footer the background is dark green. I can't let it go out like this, people can't see where to unsubscribe.

Test #1 As I use Mailchimp, you can create a stylesheet which when you import your template, will bring the styles inline. Great! I thought, lets create a custom style for the link, that'll solve the problem. Send test. FAIL. Span is still overriding.

Test #2 I tried putting a <font> tag within my <a> tag. Send test. FAIL. Span is still overriding.

Test #3 The span has a class "yshortcuts". I added this into the stylesheet. When Mailchimp brings styles inline, it still leaves a stylesheet at the top. Luckily for us Yahoo! accepts stylesheets. Send test. PASS. Span colour is overridden.

Here's the solution

<style>
.yshortcuts  {
     color: #yourhexofchoice !important;
}

Tips: Keep in mind that other browsers will need the <font> tag and <a> styling to make the link the colour you want it, so make a class and stick in <font> tag for this.

The upshot of this is that also, no-one will be able to see where the annoying Yahoo! search links are inserted.