A Seed is awarded to players allowing them to gain automatic entry into the finals or the next round of a yo-yo contest without having to compete in the compulsory/preliminary/previous rounds.
For officially sanctioned US State Contests, the winners will receive a seed into their respective US Regional Contest. In addition winners of the US Regional Contests gain a seed and automatic entry into the freestyle finals of the US National Yo-Yo Contest. For Japan the North, South, East and West regional contest winners will seed into their National Contest.
Qualifiers: There have been years where US Nationals was not able to handle the contestant demand entry in the allotted scheduled event time and so they would create a qualifier saying that only those that placed top 5 amongst residents in their regional event, or in the top 5 overall placings if in a regional contest outside their viable jurisdiction, they would be qualified to even enter to compete in the National Yo-Yo Contest. The specifics of the rules would change depending on the situations at the time. Some years allowing people that placed at Nationals high enough the year before or allowing established veteran players to submit into a petitioning system for a spot to enter the contest where Organizers would then approve to allow more players to enter. On competition years where the anticipated entry numbers are smaller, the qualification rules would be announced as rescinded for that year or contest.
Typically seeds are awarded to the winners of recognized National Contests to gain entry into the freestyle finals of the World Yo-Yo Contest. Soon too many National Contests were recognized as seeding into the World Yo-Yo Contest leaving too few spots for the remaining competitors to qualify. This paralled a second problem with overall number of competitors increasing over the years and soon the instead of a single tier qualifying round, contests would soon make 2 tier and 3 tier round structures of contests to support the contest. The World Yo-Yo Contest would address both problems with the solution eventually going with a 4 round structure. Starting with only allowing the previous years World Champion a single spot in the Final Round. Followed by seeded National Champions gaining entry straight into the Semi-Final round, then top placing National Finalists and Regional Champions would get seeded in the Preliminary round, anyone else that wishes to enter would then end up in the Wildcard round.