Has Yahoo messed up?

[Arnie]

Well today no traffic from Yahoo at all. Dropped from my good rankings with all of my pages by now. The last three days no login to yahoo mail (today can login again)
What the heck is going on?
I see a lot of changes and new features in beta version. But nothing seems to work. I guess many are affected by this ...

[Redleg]

The number of indexed pages has jumped up and down today..

From 29k to 48k, and back down to 28k now.
And it's the same with link: and linkdomain:...

Lost my rankings for all of my tracked keywords on the DP tracker as well.

Something strange is going on today... :(

[Infiniterb]

Join the club. Noticed a lot of rankings dropped over the last few days. Today, however, they're all gone.

Don't want to sound like a stalker, but I've noticed a lot of Shawn's pages have also dropped out (the ones that are in the co-op). You can normally tell what pages are his based on the frequency they show up in the rotating links.

[Tuning]

Same thing happening to me. This phenomenon was started showing few days back, fluctuating up and down. Today I lost allmost 90% good rankings. :confused:

Regards,
Tuning

[iconrate]

Number of pages doubled, rankings dropped out of existence. 0 traffic from yahoo today... :x
In fact if you search for iconrate in yahoo I'm not even in the first 3 pages (probably not in top 100 but it's too sad to keep looking). Just awful.

[Homer]

Yup, I have been #1/ #2 for a year under a very competitive 2 word key phrase. I can't find my site in the top 100 :( .

[fryman]

One of my high-earning sites just got hit. Visitors down 65%.

Yahoo is doing some weird things. I mean, going down one or 2 spots is normal, going down 20 spots hurts, but is also normal, but going down from #2 to #758 is just ridiculous, and for every single keyword

[Arnie]

Lets hope that this is just temporary. I lost 50%+ of my traffic too. Got 2 visitors from yahoo today.

?Has the (search engine) war just begun?

[Perrow]

There just has to be someone who has gone up, there is no way everybody can go down. Or are there a lot of empty pages at the top of the SRPs? :D

Not having many pages to talk about, I can say that I'm seing just normal movements, up a little down a little.

[Arnie]

You're right, but how can so many sites drop out instantly? Wouldn't that be a more gradual process? I mean dropping out little by little or so, if it is not so, then it would be a cruel action.

I still belive that yahoo's having major problems caused by the new features and that everything back to normal soon.

Has anyone idea about that?

[Redleg]

A few of my keywords have returned to normal again now, including a highly competitive one.. :)

But I just discovered that the URL didn't contain the www. anymore, and the Yahoo directory description and link that I used to have there was missing (it's still in the directory, but with the www. in front)
So there's still something strange going on.

Edit:
I can also find a lot more spammy results now than I did before this "incident/glitch"...

Example:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=military+quotes+and+mottos&ei=UTF-8&fl=0&fr=FP-tab-web-t-254&b=1

I did search for the Yahoo directory title of my site here, and it's nowhere to be found, even if it's still in the directory..

If you look at all the results where the URL ends in .aspx on the first 2-3 pages, you'll see that it's the exact same script on every single one of those pages..
It has grabbed mine (and others) title and content, and autogenerated those pages, on different domains.
(look at the cache...)

A spam report has been sent by the way. Feel free to do it you want to as well.. :)
http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_reportsearchspam

[iconrate]

I'm noticing this exact same thing with the icons.aspx
Maybe we're onto something here? With a search for iconrate icons 3 or 4 of the top 10 results contain the icons.aspx and this is the same for many other similar searches. What's going on..

[lorien1973]

My listings have totally disappeared on yahoo. I still show 21,000 pages (but I only have about 3000) on my site, 49,000 backlinks, but I dont even rank for a query on my domain name.

[TopSpin]

No worries with my listings in Yahoo.. .I haven't seen any changes (yet)... but, I suppose, time will tell.

[Redleg]

I'm noticing this exact same thing with the icons.aspx
Maybe we're onto something here? With a search for iconrate icons 3 or 4 of the top 10 results contain the icons.aspx and this is the same for many other similar searches. What's going on..

Hmm. that's certainly strange.. :confused:

Anyone else seing spammy .aspx pages where your sites/page used to be??

None of the spammy .aspx sites I've found on Yahoo are listed in Google or MSN by the way..
Maybe Y! is having some problems with their spam/duplicate content filter? Upgrades??

[iconrate]

military quotes and mottos
romancehere.com/quotes-are-sorted.aspx
onpal.com/quotes-are-sorted.aspx
hairlosses.com/funny-quotes.aspx

iconrate buddy icons
bullsmarket.com/icons.aspx
toprepaid.com/icons.aspx


Registrant:
DNP Corporation
400 Stewart Ave
Las Vegas, Nevada 89101
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: BULLSMARKET.COM
Created on: 23-Oct-99
Expires on: 23-Oct-05
Last Updated on: 11-May-05

Administrative Contact:
Corporation, DNP Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by Whois Source
400 Stewart Ave
Las Vegas, Nevada 89101
United States
7023869100 Fax --
Technical Contact:
Corporation, DNP Whois Privacy and Spam Prevention by Whois Source
400 Stewart Ave
Las Vegas, Nevada 89101
United States
7023869100 Fax --

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.DNSSERVER9.COM
NS2.DNSSERVER9.COM

These are just 2 of our results that we should easily have yet are not listed anywhere in the top 100 results now...
There is deffinitely something going on here.
An interesting observation is that while the searches contain for instance "iconrate buddy icons" there is no mention of iconrate anywhere on these sites.
Same with your keywords..
<span id="lblHTMLOutput">


I'm not sure what it all means but I'll bet you will find similar domains for each of our sites that have lost its rankings. Can anyone confirm this?
edit: Why is it when one engine starts giving you a break one of the other 3 owns you?

[iconrate]

I'm now seeing serps return... no traffic yet but things seem to be returning to normal :)

[web-rover]

I have had problems loggin in to yahoo mail as well

[fryman]

I'm now seeing serps return... no traffic yet but things seem to be returning to normal

Yeah, that's just so weird, I am seing my keywords going back up again, but I still see very low traffic. Guess we will have to wait 'till tomorrow and see how things go. I really hope I get back to where I was, it was really depressing seeing my visitors and earnings drop 60%

[crazyhorse]

NO change yet...

[Arnie]

Nothing changed yet, still no traffic from Y.

Yesterday I tried to send a larger file to my yahoo mail (6mb) but only 4mb arrived.

Most search results on top showing non content sites.

[ferret77]

I am am seeing shit sub domains with like zero content all over the place

I know a lot of my sites probably arn't the best sites in the world, but what is some of this stuff

I got this redirect thats in one of my old spots, that rediects the visitor to hot bot results , its hosted on tripod or something

[lorien1973]

I see the same thing. Many sites that google wouldn't dare to rank are showing up top 10 in yahoo. Crazy.

[Redleg]

Looks like they are sorting things out now..

More of my "old" SERPs are returning to normal now, and many of the spammy pages are gone..

Looks like they had/have some problems with their spamfilter, or somthing like that..

[Arnie]

Looks like they are sorting things out now..

More of my "old" SERPs are returning to normal now, and many of the spammy pages are gone..

Looks like they had/have some problems with their spamfilter, or somthing like that..

Yes, I'm returning slowly with my keywords again. I think one or two days before back to normal.

Yesterday no traffic from Y. Today, the last hour 4 visitors - wow

[mahmood]

Yahoo's policy is to force websites to pay for inclusion. I guess this is in that line.

[lorien1973]

How do you say yahoo is fixing it? I still show the same spammy sites up on there. I still don't rank for a search for my domain name - a pharmacy site comes up as #2 though. Geesh.

[Mia]

I really did not notice anything good bad or otherwise. So far things look about the same to me.

[Homer]

Yahoo's policy is to force websites to pay for inclusion. I guess this is in that line. I'm not sure if it's policy or not, but it does help. Especially if you become 'Most Popular' in your catagory. :)

[Arnie]

Yahoo's policy is to force websites to pay for inclusion. I guess this is in that line.

Maybe, and as Homer said "I'm not sure if it's policy or not, but it does help. Especially if you become 'Most Popular' in your catagory."

I think they should come up with something more usful to share with the public, a kind of adsense program would still fit best for them and for everyone else.

What they are charging for their directory inclusion is to much. I guess only some folks with Yahoo shares are doing so. Look at the number of inclusions; that's nothing!

Do they want to keep everthing for themselves?

We're "Lucky" we have "Google."

[crazyhorse]

Still no change... its taking more time then normal. Did ayone see his rankings get back to normal or are they still going up and down like mine?
Down.......only

[SERPalert]

Still no change... its taking more time then normal. Did ayone see his rankings get back to normal or are they still going up and down like mine?
Down.......only

Down only here.

I'm surprised more people aren't talking about this to be honest.

[Perrow]

We're "Lucky" we have "Google."
Thats something you'll only ever see in a thread about Yahoo :eek:

[Homer]

It looks like I have been banned for some reason. I have always been a top 10 player under competitive, related key phrase. Any mention or variation of that keyphrase I cannot be found AT ALL in top 100. :mad:

[Infiniterb]

For not being ranked in Yahoo, Slurp seems to be spending a lot of time at my site (like always).

[jeff123]

I'm top of the SERP with 52M results but have dropped out completely from SERPs with 3M results. Actually while writing this when trying to determine the number results, I found out that I was back again on top for at least one of the 3M results pages. It wasn't there yesterday and it's back today.

[iconrate]

Results 1 - 10 of about 552,000 for site:
Results 1 - 10 of about 811,000 for link:
3 referrals from yahoo yesterday. This sucks, my site is nowhere.
I still say these .aspx sites (owned all by dnp) is probably the answer.

[classifieds]

I just checked Yahoo and I rank for one keyword out of the ~100 or so that I track. It showed back up at #94 (down from #3 before last Saturday).

Woohooo. . . I'm on a roll :p

[Redleg]

I still say these .aspx sites (owned all by dnp) is probably the answer.

I'm also seeing those darn*d .aspx sites on several other keywords I used to rank good on before, and they have copied my sites (and many others) content on them as well... :mad:

Sent several spam reports to Yahoo, and mailed them locally now..

[Homer]

I really wasn't aware of this but it appears Yahoo has a 'dance' as well. As of now I have reassumed my positions in top 5 :D.

One thing that I've noticed is Yahoo used to display my SERPS with the page title from my directory listing. They are now displaying it from my on-page <title> tags. I ilike this better as it contains more keywords. :cool:

[spdude]

Down only here.

I'm surprised more people aren't talking about this to be honest.

Down here also. Yahoo is showing 2.3M backlinks.... 10-15 visitors a day.

[iShopHQ]

I've got over 30 sites and ALL of them have dropped off the face of Yahoo. It started last month about the 22nd and now they are all gone. Almost all the sites were in top positions thanks to Shawns Coop.

2 of the sites had been around for years, had good position, and had no inbound coop links. I was using them to generate weight, but nothing pointing in. These sites have dropped too. Poof!

I went from about 1200 Yahoo referrals total a day to 10 - no joke.

Yesterday on one of my sites, the ONLY one still getting traffic from Yahoo, I got 183 referrals. Day before I got 207. Today.... 0. I searched for the terms that had been bringing all the traffic and they aren't in the top 100 - the same terms that YESTERDAY were top ten. Heck, two of them were #1!

I read Yahoo is manually degrading position for sites that don't meet their quality standards - affiliate sites in particular. Yet I still see plenty of affiliate sites in top spots - only problem is none of them are mine anymore!

Is it an AdSense thing? Anyone looked at that? Yahoo degrading sites running AdSense?

Well, at least Google traffic has pciked up a little. Not much, but some. The loss of Yahoo traffic is costing me about $55 a day from where I was in April and the first 2.5 weeks of May, when all my sites where pulling Yahoo traffic.

[maha]

Could Co-op cause this?

I am not running adsense and My site was dropped from it's original #1, #2 rankings, now they're no where to be found, but I am running Co-op..?

[iShopHQ]

Don't know if it means anything or not....

Over the last 6 weeks ALL my sites with inbound coop links have vanished from Yahoo! search results. Not all at once, but pretty much one at a time. Last one dropped yesterday evidently (see above).

I have one site, built around the same template as two of my other sites, that displays coop ads but has never had any links pointed to it from the coop. This site has never enjoyed top positioning, but has been steady in the top 20 - 30 for two years for its targeted terms.

This site is still there in its familiar positions, minus or plus one or two spots here and there.

inbound links for dvdmoviehq, the site that dropped yesterday: 24,600
inbound links for the dvd player site in my sig: 21,200
inbound for the discount shopping site in my sig: 24,100
inbound links for the unaffected site: 93

???

[SERPalert]

I'm top of the SERP with 52M results but have dropped out completely from SERPs with 3M results. Actually while writing this when trying to determine the number results, I found out that I was back again on top for at least one of the 3M results pages. It wasn't there yesterday and it's back today.

10 bob says you drop for the big one as well, very soon.

[SERPalert]

Could Co-op cause this?

I am not running adsense and My site was dropped from it's original #1, #2 rankings, now they're no where to be found, but I am running Co-op..?

I don't like to run screaming and shouting coop caused it. But looking at it every site I know of that uses the coop doesn't rank.

Take sites out your txt file, look for their anchor text...

The more people that post the more of a clarification we'll have.

Does anyone here using the coop rank in Yahoo?

//edit

Searching for my company name doesn't even reveal my site

and then

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=digital+point&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-pull-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt

only the forums....

Search for your company name....do you come up?

[fryman]

Quit the coop BS. I have 20 sites using the coop, only ONE got hit by this update.

Why is it that every time a search engine does an update people start whining that it is the coop's fault?

[Svato]

Same here... most of my sites using coop droped out of the face of earth.

Been saying this for a while here - coop should have implemented permanent links and themed sites long time ago. If we just sit and wait, sh*t happens.

Time to move remaining sites to link-vault.

[Juls]

my main site that i point all of my coop weight to drop out of the yahoo rankings. I have not seen any improvements. :-(

Weird as all of my competitors have remained and bumped up in rankings.

I have been #1 for years and now no where to be found but msn & google still #1 ranking remains.

weird as hell. loosing a few sales a day.

[Mia]

Quit the coop BS. I have 20 sites using the coop, only ONE got hit by this update.

Why is it that every time a search engine does an update people start whining that it is the coop's fault?

Because the conspiracy theory is cool :)

[iShopHQ]

how long you had your inbound links from the coop Fryman? I enjoyed about 4 months of top placement before they started dropping, and it took about 2 months for the effects of the coop to be felt after I added the links. ANd it wasn't this update - it started about six weeks ago with my sites slowly dropping one by one.

If Yahoo is devaluing sites based on inbound links, they are heading for a world of trouble. That would mean people can NEGATIVELY influence the rankings of competitor sites but putting link to them in the coop or other link-building programs and building up a relatively massive amount of inbound links in a short period of time.

[Dreamshop]

Well I don't think it's Coop, cause I'm definitely seeing a trend in Yahoo results dropping for my sites, and NONE of them use Coop. I haven't had huge drops, but enough to see a pattern for sure. Lots of dancing back and forth too.

To be honest I don't obsess over serps anymore. It's too time consuming.

Just keep pluggin away at gaining exposure and you will see results. I very rarely do reciproca links...my strategy is to network on message boards, do press releases, submit articles, etc. All of my sites do very well and I do less than 10 recip exchanges per month probably. I don't run Coop either.

[jamjv]

Most of the sites I target with the coop have been dropped from Yahoo also. All these sites ranked top 3 for each targeted term for the past 3 months now nothing in the top 9999.

Seemed fine on the weekend and then today poof.

I'm going to give it a week before I start messing around just incase it's a minor glitch. (Yeah I know I'm dreaming but crazier stuff has happened.)

[Homer]

I have been following this thread and at the same time watching serps in Yahoo. I am convinced something's up here. Up am not trying to highjack this thread Arnie but feel this may help us all put together peices to a puzzle.

I have posted a thread over here (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=18646) and am curious what your opinions are regarding yahoo's recent execution of some websites.


Thanks

[spdude]

If you make a search on yahoo for "Digitalpoint co-op".... nothing from digitalpoint.com is in the first few pages of results. That co-op login page has MASSIVE weight pointed to it.

So even dp itself has been hit by this latest yahoo update.

[classifieds]

I don't know if it's a coop only event. Something else is going on. http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum35/3396.htm

Not sure what it is but I have one non-coop site and two coop sites that are now completely out of the Yahoo index.

It's interesting that we're not hearing more chatter around the net? Are we living on an island?

[spdude]

Most people just keep quite I guess.. This yahoo thing is costing me over $100 a day.. the previous Google one cost me $200/day which is pretty significant... but I haven't posted much about either drop. The Yahoo one I'm just mentioning now. So, it's possible ppl are just keeping quite.

[classifieds]

Fortunately Yahoo is a small percentage of my traffic. My hobby site is mostly for local pub bragging rights -I had the #1/2&3 spots in G/Y/M for 20+ kws related to my local community.

[maha]

The Co-Op "Charity" experiment site has also dropped out of Yahoo. It supposedly has around 10,000 Co-op weight pointing to it.

[classifieds]

Could they possibly be counting and cross referencing the 1 pixel image link with the ads in its proximity and applying penalities to the sites that the ads point to?

(It's late so I apologize if that sentence is gibberjabber)

[kdobson99]

I have been tracking many of the large coop sites in yahoo and they are gradually getting the boot. Last night I was doubtful coop had much to do with it when I saw the charity site was still alive. Today, with the charity site gone and many, many of the sites with large amounts of coop pointiing at them gone as well, I am reaching the same conclusion. I still love the coop, just starting to think that yahoo doesn't.

Or, maybe Yahoo just dumped 1/2 of the sites out of the serps for no apparent reason. I am seeing sites with just 20 backlinks from pure link farms ranking well for one popular search term and a site that I know had over 100k of coop weight pointing at it disappear from the same results. This same site ranks over really quality sites with 10k legitimate good backlinks and good traditional on page seo.

How does a site with 20 backlinks and the keyword phrase on the page 2 times rank in the top 5 of 10 million results, when all 20 links are from link farms? Solve this one and getting to the top will be easy.

[Arnie]

I had top rankings long before I started with coop around 4 months ago. I don't think that this has anything to do with coop. I'm pretty sure that Y messed up with something.

[Arnie]

I found this
Search results without descriptions? Do you see the same?
http://search.yahoo.com/search/msie?p=bartters%20syndrome&ei=UTF-8&fl=0

[Arnie]

Or, maybe Yahoo just dumped 1/2 of the sites out of the serps for no apparent reason.

Perhaps they put low content sites on the top of the search results, so that people would click more on their sponsored links. :D

[Arnie]

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 14, 2005 The two heavyweight fighters of the online world, Google and Yahoo, remain locked in a titanic battle for supremacy, with each dominant in their key areas, according to a new survey from ChangeWave Research.

A very interesting article and stats...
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conewsstory&refer=conews&tkr=YHOO:US&sid=akeD_BoQBFlY

[crazyhorse]

Im starting to get a bit worried.... Its almost a week later now and still no changes. Makes me wonder ???

[bentong]

same here...for the past few days, site is jumping from 2nd page to 1st page & vice versa and now, its nowhere to be found on the serps.. :confused:

[Arnie]

That all could mean that their flocks going astray soon too.

[Arnie]

Has anyone noticed when you have mouse over on a link it shows rds.yahoo.com............at the status bar
What is that?

[afactory]

redirects?

[Arnie]

Maybe...

That wasn't before like this, was it?

[afactory]

Yeap, I think it was there.

[kepa]

costing me thousands in sales since early yesterday, Tues. 6/13.

FWIW, my site has weight pointing TO IT, doesn't host the co-op, but is listed in the Y! Directory.

I did notice that a lot (not all yet?) of my competitors who were also listed in the directory and had serps in the top 10 also fell out, bringing the unpaid sites to the top.

Hope it all clears up soon. Perhaps it hasn't hit everyone which is why this thread isn't as active as you might expect.

edited:

While at the same time, another organic listing that DOES host the co-op network holds steady at #16 for the same search term and is NOT in the directory which leads me to think it's directory related, am I up for renewal already??? :(

Oh, and they both run adsense.

[SERPalert]

Quit the coop BS. I have 20 sites using the coop, only ONE got hit by this update.

Why is it that every time a search engine does an update people start whining that it is the coop's fault?
Give it time fryman

[Arnie]

To get second out of 2,850,000 sites you just just make a "our site is under construction" site and put some links on it - presto -

search term "plastic cosmetic surgery" search engine: Yahoo

I don't want to place a link here. Try it and you will understand what I mean. :confused:

[Juls]

i just made some sales from yahoo today so maybe it is our rankings are slowly climbing back. :-) 3 sales lol better than nothing thank god for msn & google... plus we get some sales from small SEs

[aspcoder]

Something is happening with yahoo. It dropped 50% of my pages and then again started picking up. And giving totally different results in India and US for top 10.

[michal]

One of my sites whoich has had quite a significant coop weight pointed to it and was runing coop ads dropped out of rankings in Yahoo.

A search for the company name or domain name (less .com) doesn't show my site in the first 500 results.

The site still is in the Yahoo index but the number of indexed pages has been dropping by a lot. 4 days ago site:mydomain.com was returning 278 000 pages and now it's down to 17 000 pages.

The way I see it is that Yahoo doesn't have a *coop filter* (yet again maybe it does :-|) but that they implemented a somekind of a link number filter. Once a site hits the threshold - goodbye.
I was ranked #1 for my main search terms in Yahoo for about 2 years (way before coop). The #2 site (currently #1) has 1253 links (excluding links from its own domain) pointing to it. My site still shows 175 000 links pointing to it, excluding my own domain.
I think that if there is a threshold it's not the same for all sites, it may be dependent on the category, competitors, whatever.

One more thing... Never had a Yahoo directory listing and am not about to have one.

[maha]

I think you may have something there. Too much co-op weight (rotating links?) pointing to a particular site is probably not a good thing for Yahoo right now. The "Charity" site is a good example. 10,000 weights pointing to it and it's now nowhere to be found in Yahoo. It was #17 just last week? I have small sites with little weight (<200) pointing to itself and has not been affected by this latest Yahoo update.

I'll wait and see next week. If my large sites don't come back in Yahoo, I'm moving my sites to LV or abandon Co-op altogether.

[spdude]

I think you may have something there. Too much co-op weight (rotating links?) pointing to a particular site is probably not a good thing for Yahoo right now. The "Charity" site is a good example. 10,000 weights pointing to it and it's now nowhere to be found in Yahoo. It was #17 just last week? I have small sites with little weight (<200) pointing to itself and has not been affected by this latest Yahoo update.

I'll wait and see next week. If my large sites don't come back in Yahoo, I'm moving my sites to LV or abandon Co-op altogether.

Maha,

How much weight were you pointing, targetting how many pages?

[Cyber-SEO]

It's weird, I'm not saying that it has anything to do with co-op but two of my sites which were doing wonders in Yahoo before and after I placed co-op on them have totally dropped.

One site which I was using for weight is gone, and another site which I was sending all of my weight to is gone.

Is anyone else seeing this? people who are not on co-op?? :)

[maha]

I have about 6000 weight pointing to the same site (10 different pages).

Maha,

How much weight were you pointing, targetting how many pages?

[maha]

If this is any indication, there is no "site dropping out of Yahoo" discussion at the LV forum.. or other SEO forums?

It's weird, I'm not saying that it has anything to do with co-op but two of my sites which were doing wonders in Yahoo before and after I placed co-op on them have totally dropped.

One site which I was using for weight is gone, and another site which I was sending all of my weight to is gone.

Is anyone else seeing this? people who are not on co-op?? :)

[jamjv]

I wonder if this could have something to do with the ad network weight caps getting removed. Maybe this caused a large jump in links which tripped a filter? I don't know but I'm going to turn down the weight I'm pointing to one of my sites that got removed and see if that helps.

When I first joined the ad network I put a whole bunch of weight to one site, this site got removed from yahoos results. I then lessened the weight and a month later the site came back.

Now I don't know for sure that the problem was that but I didn't change anything else on the site other then the amount of weight.

[noppid]

Yahoo! is doing this for the publicity. They probably created the perception of a problem to get people taking about them to build demand.

Before it was, my Y is good, end of story. Then it was followed by pages about G.

They want to create a BUZZ I bet. ;)

[ferret77]

If this is any indication, there is no "site dropping out of Yahoo" discussion at the LV forum.. or other SEO forums?

This same discussion appears on every seo forum I visit

Do people actually post on the LV forum?

[maha]

This same discussion appears on every seo forum I visit

Do people actually post on the LV forum?

Which SEO forums? I'm not a SEO, so I don't get around to many other SEO forums.

[Infiniterb]

The yahoo issue is not an issue of the co-op. A lot of webmasters are seeing this happen who are not in the co-op. We simply need to wait it out.

[michal]

The yahoo issue is not an issue of the co-op. A lot of webmasters are seeing this happen who are not in the co-op. We simply need to wait it out.
It may not be an issue of coop, but it has surely a lot to do with significant amount of links pointing to a site.
The only sites I see dropped are ones which had link building campaigns. The lamer sites are still there and looks as if they are there to stay for good.

[yo-yo]

Do a Yahoo search for your kw's from a seperate location.

It appears after you search a term several times on a single computer, Yahoo starts feeding you different results than a computer searching for the first time.

[Homer]

One site which I was using for weight is gone, and another site which I was sending all of my weight to is gone.

Is anyone else seeing this? people who are not on co-op?? :)

Exactly the same with me. I have a few more sites that I am applying the same concept to, same result. Every once in a while I'll surface in the top ten only to disappear again. :confused:

[Arnie]

Must be the "Yahooligans intruders" causing this troubles :D

Seriously, there are thousands of sites affected which dropped into nowhere and mostly junk appears on top instead. If Yahoo doesn't act on this matter they will face a drop of their good image they once had.

[Arnie]

What about Yahoo? Did they come up with any explainations? I haven't found or heard about that yet.

Besides all the rumours, I'm not talking on my behalf, there are many web businesses thrown out of the rankings like thrash and left alone, losing remarkable amounts of business revenue, only to be exchanged for real thrash up now. I'm not saying its all bad on the top, but as a matter of fact too many sites are bad and this will searchers make run away in no time.

Even web site owners paying a hefty price in hard currencies for yahoo directory listings disappeared.

For Yahoo to stay silent to this matter is not a good choice to take, and this will give people impressions of Y's guilt for this mess created. Perhaps some will consider lawsuits about that too.

When I lost my rankings in Google, I checked the guidelines, found out that a linkpartner has changed its content to pornography that has triggered filters due to the fact that I'm using safe search on my site among other little problems. After clearing the problems on my site it's back on top again.

Are there guidelines from Yahoo? Useful ones? - Remains to be seen.

As for now
Yahoo, you'd better explain and give useful guidelines if you want to continue as major player in this business -

Websitse listed are not "guinea-pigs" for testing, to much money is already involved and invested by businesses which dropped without warnings.

[Arnie]

To get second out of 2,850,000 sites you just just make a "our site is under construction" site and put some links on it - presto -

search term "plastic cosmetic surgery" search engine: Yahoo

I don't want to place a link here. Try it and you will understand what I mean. :confused:
Looks like they acted on this case. It's no more there at least.
Others see improvements in other cases too?

[classifieds]

I saw some improvements yesterday afternoon on one of my sites - most of the SERPs returned to pre-saturday positions. I checked this morning and about half of the kws are gone again.

The other sites are still completely awol.

[ferret77]

on another site someone has said that paying for site match got them re listed almost immediatly

http://forums.seochat.com/t33751/s.html

[Arnie]

on another site someone has said that paying for site match got them re listed almost immediatly

http://forums.seochat.com/t33751/s.html

Thanks for this ferret77, they make some good points up there. Just finished reading it.

[Arnie]

Looks like they acted on this case. It's no more there at least.
Others see improvements in other cases too?

No, - was to early, it's back again.

Just checked the first 30 sites under these keywords. None with adsense only one with adlinks on it. It's not like yesterday, when I saw quite a few with adsense on it.

[Arnie]

Seems like everthing with Yahoo is Beta but not Better

Yahoo! Search Launches Search Subscriptions Beta, Providing
Select Deep Web Content to Users; Yahoo! Becomes First Major Search Engine to Enable Users to Search Their Personal Subscription Content

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conewsstory&refer=conews&tkr=YHOO:US&sid=a6FDzy4rWvKs

full article

[ronnyb]

Used to rank nr3, 7 and 19 with keywords from one of my pages, and that was not in the coop, however i have resently done a linkbuilding to that page, and has rapidly encreased links to that page.

Now i am totaly out of Yahoo.

[crazyhorse]

Does anyone notice that your keywords regain their position?

[Arnie]

Not here so far.

[maha]

A few of my Keywords cam back for a day, now it's gone again?!

[nddb]

Yea, what the hell happened, I went from #1 for a good keyword I wanted to keep, to #307. =( Booo, is pretty much everyone seeing massive drops? I know yahoo bounces around a lot, so I hope it comes back.

[fryman]

Don't count on it... none of my dropped keywords have moved at all.

[Arnie]

Don't count on it... none of my dropped keywords have moved at all.

The same here

[nddb]

The keyword I was concerned about has jumped back up this morning to #6. I remember now that #307 was the position it was stuck at for weeks, a while ago. Is it possible yahoo reverted to old results somehow? And is now coming back?

Maybe not, but at least there is some hope your kw's will come back up!

[ronnyb]

Not for me, still N/A for my top keywords

[ferret77]

I doubt any of the sites are coming back.

[Homer]

I have completed been dropped for any of my keywords (not in top 500) but still remain indexed:confused:.

[Arnie]

Well, I wouldn't give up on that.

It's impossible that all sites which were good enough for a long period of time are now soooo bad. Obviously Y's trying to manipulate the web search towards their only own interest.

[token20]

Started about 5-7 days ago. Lost all my top 10 rankings in Yahoo and was replaced by a bunch of spammy sites.

Is Yahoo now deciding to reward spam sites and punish people like myself who have done everything correctly?

Seems quite rediculous to me.

[rjhere]

Is anyone here still doing good in yahoo? From what I see it looks like some type of link threshold filter has put in place and possibly an aging filter.. The keywords I monitor used to contain sites with 50K links.. now they are in the 1K range... with the exception of older sites..

The sites that are doing good with me are sites with links under the 1k range... One is a newer site and the others are older sites (2 years plus). the newer site has adsense and older sites do not.

The sites doing poorly for me are the ones with links in the 30k on up range. One is with a monster sitewide (pr8 and high pr7 pages).

I am trying to find a pattern here. Scrapers and doorway pages still do well when their link count is in the 1k range.. It also looks like they see deep linking a plus and may penalize sites with all the links going to main page. This is my observations so far. Anyone else see a pattern on why sites are ranking well now?

[ferret77]

some of my sites are now totally de indexed

[Homer]

Really interesting observations
The sites that are doing good with me are sites with links under the 1k range This seems silly on Yahoo's part if there is any weight to the 'casting vote' theory that Google seems to rely on. For the most part all I am seeing is crap spam sites in the top 10 now. How the hell does this help a surfer looking for specifics:confused:. So now we can search Yahoo for the best spam online:rolleyes:.

I have to agree with almost everything you say rjhere, as it seems to be exactly what I am finding. A big blunder as I see it. Not because my sites have been dropped from serps but because I am getting mostly crap returns from Yahoo when I search for almost anything. I have concluded that their is a link threshold in place as well....again seems moronic. Some websites actually earn links (votes). How can they decide who's scheming and who's honestly obtaining votes.:confused:

[Homer]

Hmmm...who knows, maybe there is some hope (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=19136) :cool: .

[seo-ireland]

Ooohh I really hope so. I do so love Yahoo's weather reports.

[Arnie]

Ooohh I really hope so. I do so love Yahoo's weather reports.

You meant to say we need more "nitty gritty", or was that sarcastic?; guess the latter one's right.:rolleyes:

[Homer]

Well Arnie, I give up on Yahoo. Time to move on. Assuming you are aware of last nights updates. I am still history at Yahoo:mad: and I am still seeing alot of CRAP in the top ten.

ATTENTION ALL YAHOO USERS...SERPS ARE CRAP, USE GOOGLE.

[crazyhorse]

Well Arnie, I give up on Yahoo. Time to move on. Assuming you are aware of last nights updates. I am still history at Yahoo:mad: and I am still seeing alot of CRAP in the top ten.

ATTENTION ALL YAHOO USERS...SERPS ARE CRAP, USE GOOGLE.
Lol maybe we should give them a bit more time. What about one more day? This devauling of webpages didnt hit just a couple of website owners , thousands of webmasters where hit. Yahoo is aware about there crappy serps searches at the moment, and have stated on there weblog that a new update will be last/this night. Shouldnt we be a bit more patience.:rolleyes:

[Homer]

Lol maybe we should give them a bit more time. What about one more day? This devauling of webpages didnt hit just a couple of website owners , thousands of webmasters where hit. Yahoo is aware about there crappy serps searches at the moment, and have stated on there weblog that a new update will be last/this night. Shouldnt we be a bit more patience.:rolleyes:
Ya, yur probably right. I just like to vent sometimes. That way I don't have to beat my dog ;) .

[wrkalot]

Site 1 shows 39800 BL's and got dropped.

Site 2 shows 6950 BL's and still holds #1's.

[shane]

Seeing the same thing here. Sites with tens of thousands of BL's that used to be Top 5 for lots of phrases have fallen out of the Top 100. Found one site with 1,500 that still ranks.

[ferret77]

I have found many with > 20,000 that still rank

type in any competitve terms like "mortgage"

there are some sites with a lot less backlinks ranking though

[SEOGuru]

I had a site that ranked #1 in Yahoo on over 200 keywords; in search queries with over 20 million results returned. Site up for 3 years. Thousands of pages indexed AND 1.4 MILLION BACKLINKS.

Completely gone. I mean disappeared. I don't rank in a search for my domain.

Here is the kicker. I am still being indexed daily and my page count and link count keep going up! lol Plus I'm still top 3 in hundreds of keywords in Google and MSN. Go figure.

I finally just broke down and paid the $300 to be included in their directory. That was 2 days ago and I haven't heard back from them yet.

I did have GoogleAS on the site, not that it means anything but some people have made some references that many sites that have AdSense are being booted. I have since taken every ad off the site (at least until they manually review it). Yahoo accounted for nearly 50% of my traffic at the time. We'll see what happens.

There seems to be no reason to this maddness. It has effected big and small sites.

[Infiniterb]

And for what it's worth, www.digitalpoint.com doesn't rank for the term Digital Point.

[rjhere]

It doesn't even rank for digitalpoint (no space)...

[Homer]

I finally just broke down and paid the $300 to be included in their directory. That was 2 days ago and I haven't heard back from them yet. I have done this for years. However I will NOT renew again with them. Their SERPs are the biggest mess I've ever seen. I am sure, in time this will all be corrected.

It really seems like overkill to axe an entire group of domains that appear to have a rather robust quantity of Bl's. In my case I was running both AS and COOP on several sites. I think they ARE certainly punishing ANY type of what appears to be link scheming...unlike Google's devaluing.

Can anyone in this thread confirm that they were NOT blasted by Yahoo, with a link scheme in place. The reason I ask is, out of my 40+ domains the only ones that remain visible in Yahoo are the ones that were NOT involved with any link schemes:confused:. When I say schemes I am NOT referring to purchasing links as I do not agree with this. My link campaigns include DP COOP, LV COOP and reciprical link building software.

EDIT And for what it's worth, www.digitalpoint.com doesn't rank for the term Digital Point. Seems like a pretty clear mesage from Y :mad:

[shane]

Yeah, evidence definitely seems to be pointing to a specific type of links that are causing the problem. Sites like Monster.com have 491,000 BL's, yet still rank #1 for high-traffic general terms like "jobs."

[maha]

Yes, I can confirm... I have 8 domains. 7 domains was dropped by Yahoo, the only one that still ranked (#1, #2 KW) is the only site I don't care about and has no links from Co-op or Link Vault. :rolleyes:

I have done this for years. However I will NOT renew again with them. Their SERPs are the biggest mess I've ever seen. I am sure, in time this will all be corrected.

It really seems like overkill to axe an entire group of domains that appear to have a rather robust quantity of Bl's. In my case I was running both AS and COOP on several sites. I think they ARE certainly punishing ANY type of what appears to be link scheming...unlike Google's devaluing.

Can anyone in this thread confirm that they were NOT blasted by Yahoo, with a link scheme in place. The reason I ask is, out of my 40+ domains the only ones that remain visible in Yahoo are the ones that were NOT involved with any link schemes:confused:. When I say schemes I am NOT referring to purchasing links as I do not agree with this. My link campaigns include DP COOP, LV COOP and reciprical link building software.

EDIT Seems like a pretty clear mesage from Y :mad:

[wrkalot]

Both of my sites are in the CoOp but as you can see, one has much more weight pointing to it.

[shane]

Just had a thought: might not be the co-op, per se, but rather a Yahoo penalty simply for sites who got too many links too quickly, regardless of how they got them.

[SEOGuru]

I actually have many sites that have handfulls of links that went UP in the rankings. Many are newer and though they don't have AS, they DO have the coop on them and only have a couple hundred pages indexed.

Even my main site that has 1.4 million BLs didn't all come from the coop. I have links from thousands of sites in my industry. Legitimate ones. And almost all of my links are non-reciprocal links.

I understand that a site growing too fast could throw red flags, but isn't that also assuming that a site can't LEGITIMATELY grow quickly? What if a company poured thousands of dollars into an ad campain or was the only site about a hot new topic. How many "movie" sites instantly get thousands of links overnight when they promoting the site? How about a sweepstakes that is offered by Coke or Pepsi with a link to a brand new domain? Or a professional sporting event like a PGA tour event. How about the official Olympic site that suddenly gets millions of links weeks after launching? Or a natural dissaster that is suddenly the #1 topic on the planet, like the tsunami? How about the Pope dying?

There are thousands of legit ways a site can explode overnight. So, to penalize sites that just simply have a lot of links or even that they got a lot of links quickly seems quite irrational to me.

[ferret77]

I hate say it but a lot of my older sites without coop or LV, just lots of reciprical links seem to be doing okay. Some fo them got kicked too but if I compare sites with coop to sites without, I would say copp seems to increase the possibiblity.

Of course I just enrolled 2 more sites in the coop so screw it.

I asked earlier about yahoo checking whois, does anyone know if they do?

Also is it possible it has to do with run of site links?

If you look at the backlinks the coop creates, you tend to get a bunch of links from each big site.

I still see sites with run of site links rankings but maybe they only have a handful.

Also over the last couple months yahoo has cracked down on blog spammers, perhaps whatever they use to identify them, lots of links fast, is what is hurting coop sites with lots of weight.

[fryman]

Blog spamming died when the no follow tag was created

[ferret77]

half the blog spams come from dead blogs that I am sure have not been updated with the no follow.

You sort of watch the life span of blog as it goes from a real site to just total spam o' rama

see the progression

http://justworldnews.org/MT/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=966

[nddb]

I could be wrong, but I think it would be pretty damn hard for SE's to separate co-op links from other types of links. Is it possible they penalize for what I've heard referred to as "link churn" ?

[nddb]

Blog spamming died when the no follow tag was created

Heh, do you run an older movabletype blog? Or even a newer one... I don't think a lot of spammers know about nofollow, or care about it, because we got hit a tons by spammers until we started generating a random image of #'s.

[seo-ireland]

Wow extremely poor results at Yahoo when using a variety of shopping related search phrases. An abundance of spammy, keyword stuffed results. Would turn anyone away from Yahoo.

It seems that when searching for common phrases the results are not too bad but anything obscure returns less than favourable results.

[Arnie]

Is here someone in this forum who has now good rankings and has not a paid service from yahoo like paid directory inclusion, webhosting, overture, paid mail storage etc.

I doubt it but we''ll find out the truth.

[ferret77]

I still have sites that rank well in yahoo and I have never paid them anything

[afactory]

Yeap, me too, one site without coop rank well, another with coop - dropped.

[Web Gazelle]

The answer to the original question, has Yahoo messed up, is YES! I think it wont be long before Yahoo traffic falls to next to none and MSN takes over as the big number 2 search engine.

[sji2671]

From one of my sites for yesterday;

Google with 8364 referrals
MSN with 1409 referrals
AOL with 528 referrals
Yahoo with 102 referrals
Ask Jeeves with 20 referrals
All the web with 2 referrals
Lycos with 1 referrals

Ya-Who?

[seo-ireland]

I think it wont be long before Yahoo traffic falls to next to none and MSN takes over as the big number 2 search engine.

Judging by MSN's results Google should throw a big party if that happens.

[Web Gazelle]

I think Bill has the money and the desire to do it.

[SEOGuru]

Google thinks they are untouchable. It is a scary proposition when virtually 100% of your business is built around search and PPC revenue. Microsoft certainly doesn't have to backbone their company on search. Even with all of the money Google raised in the IPO they still can't even match Microsoft $0.50 per dollar. And they have no where near the connections that Microsoft has. Don't get me wrong, Google is a better search engine by far right now. But it is only because they had nearly a decade head start. MSN version 1.0 is a LOT better than Google 1.0 was.

MSN isn't trying to rule the search world in a year. They know they can outlast, outspend and out innovate everyone else in 5-10 years. The only thing that will be able to save Google long term is if Balmer and Gates decide they don't want the search industry and I just don't see that happening. Most of their R&D is now in search and they've moved most of their best guys to the Search division. They are gunnning for the top and I think it is foolish and naive for anyone to bet against them being that they own the desktop, now have the largest ISP on the planet (surpassing AOL), have the second biggest portal MSN.com, and have more money than anyone else.

I think Larry and Page should cash out. It was a good ride. They'll have their place in history. But now it is time to step aside because they don't have what it takes to play with the big boys. You got to give them credit though, they've tried. Gmail all but flopped with the GB free email. Froogle was a disaster. Their desktop search is 8 years behind Yahoo's technology.

Google still DOES have better results, Adsense, and Adwords. To Microsoft, that seems like an easy thing to solve given time and money.

[ferret77]

Has gmail flopped?

[SEOGuru]

You didn't hear? Gmail was suppose to take up to 30-50% of Yahoo's and Hotmail's email subscribers by offering more space for free. It took all of 72 hours before Yahoo and everyone else upped their storage space. So, yes, for the money invested into the system it was a complete failure. Must we also forget that Yahoo and MSN have MILLIONS using their instant messengers? Those two companies are embedded into online culture and it has nothing to do with search. They would have a customer base even if they stopped offering search altogether. That is a luxery Google does not have.

It is actually funny when people still see Google as being this ever powerful company. Wasn't it just 2 years ago that they had 80+% marketshare? Now they are down to 45%. That is still more than MSN and Yahoo but Google is already declining. They are certainly not GAINING marketshare. If AOL dropped them, the only thing Google would have left would be Google. I'm not preaching the demise of the company. I guess I am just amazed at how many very intelligent people in the search community are drinking the Google Koolaid right now. Kinda reminds me of the diehard Apple (Machintosh) users that can't let go of the nostalgia they had 15 years ago. Now the only thing keeping Apple alive is Microsoft (being a major owner) and the IPod which is now starting to get their ass kicked by Creative Labs.

Google is the big fish right now, and for that reason we should keep optimizing for them, but if I am creating a long term strategy for the next 5 years, I am going to feel a lot more comfortable placing my money on MSN to win.

The best thing Google could do would be to burry their differences with Yahoo, merge the two companies and give MSN a run for their money. I'd say the'd have a darn good chance to come out on top. Certainly it would make Yahoo and Google WAY more powerful. Think of Google integrating with Yahoo's customer base and applications. Think of Yahoo now having a jump start on search technology. Imagine the combined resources of both datacenters?

Anyway, just my thoughts.

[jlawrence]

Give MSN a run for their money :D now that makes me laugh.
MS might own the desktop in the western world - bit f'in wow. Bill G isn't a stupid person, far far from it. He knows that computers and the internet are still very much in their infancy. The hardware isn't mature, the software isn't mature. He knows full well that by the time the internet and computers are all over the globe that the market is going to be many many times larger than it is today. Most of Asia is yet to come on line - but it will do. What money/power he has now will be nought compared to what he could have. But hey guess what - he doesn't own the desktop in the Asian countries. Where are the future internet majority, not in the West that's for sure.

MSN might take a big share of the pie, but they've got a hell of a lot of catching up to do first.

[rjhere]

If they are actually penalizing sites basked in inbounds then this will add a new weapon to a black hat's arsenal. With every step forward they take to combat serp spam, they take 3 giant steps back by opening other holes that are potentially easier to manipulate.

Blog spamming died when the no follow tag was created

As far as blog spamming dying, this can not be further than the truth. There are literally 100's of thousands dead message boards and blogs that have pretty much turned into ffa pages. Many of them untouched by spammers which makes them a nice target. Having the no follow tag out there only works if the webmasters actually update their blog software to put this tag in place. My sectors are still dominated by blog spammers.. But what I'm seeing its the small time spammers with links in the 1k range that are ranking.. I noticed that the major spammers have dropped like a rock..

[Infiniterb]

And Gmail isn't even available for the general public considering it's still beta, nor has it even been promoted all that heavily.

Also, MS has been around for years where as Google has been around the fraction of the time.

Google's stock continue to climb. They continue to innovate on products that have been around for awhile (Google maps?) and will continue to do so.

They're expanding left and right. They've had been public for almost a year now. Give them some time before you start thinking MS will take over the search market.

[mjewel]

And for what it's worth, www.digitalpoint.com doesn't rank for the term Digital Point.


That pretty much confirms what I have been suspecting. I had a coop site that was ranking in the top ten for many keywords completely dropped from Yahoo in the last couple of weeks. I have other sites which have a lower weight coop weight pointing to them that still rank high in yahoo, but they do not run coop ads.

This site ranks well in google and msn, but with digitalpoint being dropped, and I think the charity site experiment, it seems to indicate that yahoo has decided to penalize sites under certain circumstances. It might not be the coop per se, but some formula based on number of certain types of links. I was thinking about experimenting with not running coop sites on this site, but since the charity site wasn't running the coop, it would seem that the penalty is based on incoming links (and I had a hard time believing that could happen, but the more I read.....) and yes, I know there are sites that haven't been affected.

Yahoo wasn't a major source of traffic for me, but it sure would be nice if Yahoo figures out they made a big mistake with all the spammy sites that seem to be ranking well.

[SEOGuru]

MSN might take a big share of the pie, but they've got a hell of a lot of catching up to do first.

Catching up? Please, I beg you to tell me what company on the Earth (not just the US) that Microsoft has to "catch up" to. And yes, they are HEAVILY invested overseas ALREADY including the asian markets. In fact their first operating system ever 15+ years ago first debuted on NEC machines overseas.

As far as Google expanding and innovating. I'm not saying they're not TRYING. If you want to get down to brass balls, the FACT is that they aren't a portal. They are a search engine. That's it. Google Maps is a nice attempt. I can't blame them for wanting to move in that direction. But they aren't developing nor have develped the technology of supplying search results to wireless users. They are merely shifting more towards geo-targeted results whether it is wireless or not. That is the point of Google Maps by the way. Not just to give you a map of your area using GPS but to actually provide you localized results from companies IN your area. You don't think MSN is doing the same thing? MSN is already working on building the biggest advertising network on the planet (and I'm not talking about just AdCenter). For nearly a decade they have invested close to 1 Billion in IPTV, they are going to be the bridge between the Telco/Cable/Satelite companies and hundreds of millions of online users. It is an unlimited delivery outlet. Do you actually think they can't piggy back search and content on that network?

If you look at it objectively, Google has 3 clear advantages.
1) AdWords. Though Overture at Yahoo and AdCenter at MSN will fill out the competition in the PPC market.
2) AdSense. No doubt, Google is leading the way. But mostly because there isn't a quality alternative. With MSN and Yahoo offering their contextual ad network in the near future, Google will have to do something pretty special not to lose marketshare. I know it wont happen overnight, nothing does. But a competitor's entry into any market has an effect on profits. And when your competitor is as big as Yahoo and MSN, it doesn't exact HELP you sleep at night.
3) Search Technology. Google had a headstart on everyone in next generation search technology. But as with most things in this world, it is only a matter of time and money to match them.

People who laugh at MSN are looking 1 foot in front of their face. I know the search results aren't as good but they haven't even been up a year. I remember Google in their first year. They were MUCH worse.

Listen to Balmer's keynote address at the MSN Strategic Account Summit in March.

http://advertising.msn.com/docs/SteveB_YusufM_Keynote_300k.wmv

It clearly solidifies the notion that MSN is going to do whatever it takes to take over this industry, period. I find it hard to look at the facts and see anyone that can stop them over the next 5-10 years.

I actually like Google, but I'm also a realist. It isn't hard to see where technology is headed, how search will fit into it, and which companies are better positioned to lead.

[jlawrence]

ehh, you ask who MS have to catch up to, then further on say that their search results aren't as good - you answered your own Q. We are talking MSN here - not MS in general.
MS in general tend to play catch up with most companies - if they can't catch up on their own, they buy the company. Pehaps not the most ethical strategy, but it works.

As you keep pointing out, MSN search has been live for not very long. But how ling have they been developing it -- that's not something we know. For all we know it could have been 5 years in development to get to the stage it's at now.
5->10 years ago people made exactly the same comments about IBM - no one will catch them. 5->10 years is an absolute eon in the internet, G's not even been around much longer than 5 years so far and it's only been public for 12 months or so.
As to what's said in a keynote speech - couldn't really careless (personal opinion), a keynote speech is nothing more than a marketting exercise. MS might well be investing heavily overseas, so what. They donot have the luxury of 99.99% desktop monopoly (or whatever it actually is) outsite of the western world and they know it. They don't have the monopoly they wanted in the server markets - they are growing but much slower than they're happy with. I could list many many companies that MS are playing catchup with, they've spread into so many areas that they actually have a hell of a lot of competitors.
I don't laugh at MSN I welcome more competition in the SE market. As for Yahoo's adsense competitor, I've been hearing talk about this for over 12 month now and have yet to see a product and looking at their current search results, I don't care to guess what the advertising product would produce.
MS have their fingers in so many pies, I would even like to guess at which areas they'll actually end up being successful in - 1Billion in a decade in TV terms is not a large amount of money (just as it's not that much money to MS). They are doing what we all talk about, diversify. If one area starts taking off then you put more money and people into it and see if you can make money at it. OK, MS play that game on a way larger scale than we do, but in essence it's still the same game.
Watch all the speeches made by the various executives over the years, and you'd start believing that they've got enough money to dominate everything. They haven't. They're just positioning themselves where they can best take advantage of things.
MS may well be the biggest around at the moment, but they aren't big enough to dominate everything that want to. So they're positioning themselves so that when they spot the next explosion they can take full advantage of it from the start.
For years MS have been playing catch up on the web. Why, because they wrongly decided it wasn't going to be a big thing. Give 'em their dues, the do adjust damn quick when they decide to. But as they get bigger and bigger, that adjustment is going to take longer and longer - hence why they spread themselves into so many areas, they know they have to spot the next explosion early.

If you think MS is a big powerful company now, you could well be rethinking in 5 or 10 years time. The 'net is the biggest thing ever to happen to business, and we've only seen the first wave. When the 2nd and 3rd hit they will produce opportunities way in excess of anything seen so far - I think I took this pretty much directly from a speech given by Bill G although he'll have used better words :). If MS aren't positioned correctly for the next wave, then there will be another company just as big as MS.

[SEOGuru]

Rather then keep going back and forth with you, it may be better to leave it. It seems we are both saying the same thing, just arriving at our opinions in two different ways. I know Google is the biggest now and that MSN is best "positioned" to make a major move in the future. You seem to also be acknowledging that MSN certainly has more resources to grow in the search industry but we have yet to see how those resources are utilized.

I think Google has reached a level that we can safely say they wont completely disappear. I don't think they are necessarily the next Looksmart, Lycos, Excite, or Altavista (all of which trying to become a major search engine at some point). I guess I'm just hoping that Google can make the necessary moves to really compete with MSN in the future. I don't think it is the other way around.

Again, a Yahoo/Google merger would be MASSIVE. It would compeltely change the landscape of the Internet as we know it. Not sure how they would integrate but it would seem to make more sense to shift Google's technology to Yahoo rather than try to create google.com into a portal to compete with Yahoo.com.

Google will need to find a way to keep growing their alliances because with Longhorn integrating MSN search right into the desktop, many people will use it out of sheer convienence. The average internet user is not very savvy. Most can't even keep spyware from being installed on their browser. Heck, my mom doesn't even know you can type a URL into the address bar go right to the site. You know how many searches there are for "www.amazon.com" or "www.ebay.com". I think it is a major step that MS is taking with desktop search in the OS. Sure Yahoo and Google have or will have Desktop search, but it requires a user to make the effort to go and get it then know how to install it. I just can't see that competing with the MSN desktop search when it is already built in.

[jlawrence]

The daftest thing I ever saw was someone actually search for google. I think they were using askjeeves at the time. But yes, there are many people who don't know that you can type a url directly. Also many that didn't know you could just hit 'return' in the address bar - that's why MS actually put the 'GO' button there in the first place, cos users are stupid.

[SEOGuru]

By the way, we kinda got off topic. Has anyone seen any update on Yahoo yet? I'm in California and haven't seen any changes yet.

[ferret77]

yahoo is making moves on my key words,

[Arnie]

No changes here though I got a few visitors from Y

[Arnie]

Well, as things in the internet community are progressing, isn't it time to discuss about a "global internet community constitution" so that the big players can be restricted with activities like we've seen with Y recently???

We need international guidelines of good conduct which are legally binding and - No Monkey Freedom -;)

I'm aware that this is going to take a long time, but I'm sure that sooner or later we'll need it for the sake of being taken more serious as online entrepreneurs and for consumer protection.

[iconrate]

I don't think it'll be necessary. People use engines to search for content, not really scraper sites...
With top 25 out of 30 results all being scraper for iconrate buddy icons see:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=iconrate+buddy+icons&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8
It wouldn't be so bad if these .aspx sites actually had a link to what people were searching for but of course that's cloaked.
I doubt anyone will use a search engine like yahoo where these kind of sites rank better than the sites they supposedly link to.

[Arnie]

Has anything changed yet?

Here it has, - I calmed down a bit - thats the only change so far.

Oh yes, I avoid Yahoo search completely now, which was about 40% of my search activities before. Now I feel, when I even think about Y search, to dive into muddy water.
I prefer the colorful corals in the clear sea of Google and some small directories.

Cheers

[classifieds]

Well I finally heard back from yahoo and I guess I'm just a low life SE spammer.

Any way I can get a few of you to take a minute and look at the site www.wakulla.com and tell me if you think I'm doing something inappropriate? Maybe I'm too close to it and can't recognize my on writing as poor-quality crap content or the photos I've taken as duplicates.

Unlike some of you, I've never gotten much traffic from these arrogant SOBs but its irritating on principal :mad:

I do have the coop and the Freebie bookstores (below the footer) but if that's the cause of the filter then they can kiss my ass.

-jay



Hello,

Thank you for taking the time to write us.

Yahoo!'s Site Guidelines are designed to ensure that poor-quality pages
do not degrade the user experience in any way. Unfortunately, not all
web pages contain information that is valuable to a user. Some pages are
created deliberately to trick the search engine into offering
inappropriate, redundant, or poor-quality search results; this is often
called "spam". Yahoo! does not want these pages in the index.
Our guidelines help us insure the quality of our index.

Below are some answers to common questions regarding this issue:

Q: What are some of the common reasons that a site may be in found in
violation of Yahoo!'s Content Policy Guidelines?

A: Yahoo!'s Content Policy Guidelines
(http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/deletions-05.html)
outline what we are and are not looking for in pages that we index.
Listed below are some of the more common reasons that a site may violate
these guidelines:
-Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page.
-Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
- Cloaking (showing crawlers deceptive content about a site)
- Massive domain interlinking
- Use of affiliate programs without the addition of substantial unique
content
- Use of reciprocal link programs (aka "link farms")
- Hidden text
- Excessive keyword repetition

Q: If my site is found to be in violation of Yahoo!'s Content Policy
Guidelines, can I use the Yahoo! Search Submit inclusion program?

A: All pages submitted to Yahoo! Search Submit are editorially reviewed.
If a site does not comply with Yahoo!'s Content Policy Guidelines, it is
likely to be rejected by the Search Submit program.

For answers to other questions you may have regarding Yahoo! Search,
please see:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/

For answers to other questions you may have regarding the Yahoo!
Directory, please see:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/

Search & Directory Support
Yahoo! Inc.

[Mia]

Well I finally heard back from yahoo and I guess I'm just a low life SE spammer.

Any way I can get a few of you to take a minute and look at the site www.wakulla.com (http://www.wakulla.com) and tell me if you think I'm doing something inappropriate? Maybe I'm too close to it and can't recognize my on writing as poor-quality crap content or the photos I've taken as duplicates.

Unlike some of you, I've never gotten much traffic from these arrogant SOBs but its irritating on principal :mad:

I do have the coop and the Freebie bookstores (below the footer) but if that's the cause of the filter then they can kiss my ass.

-jay

All I see is that you have Coop links.. Nothing spammy about the site. Looks good BTW.

Look, Yahoo is going to colapse soon when SBC does. I'm not too worried about it. There are nothing but shit results in Yahoo as it is. Who goes their to search anyway? I use their little messenger program and throw away luzer freebie email account for some personal things. Outside of that I do not "Yahoo" for anything. I usually Google for it. I'd be willing to be most people do the same.

Yahoo is just gearing up for their PPC Adsense type program. So they are cleaning things up a bit. Whoopie... There are a million ways to get back in the game.

So, that said, instead of everyone whining about how the coop got them kicked out of Yahoo (owned by http://SameBadCompany.com) SBC pukes.... Why not find an inventive way back in. Their filter is no bullet proof by any means.

[classifieds]

If they are gearing up for Yadsense then this has got to be the one of dumbest moves I've ever seen.

"Let's piss off as many webmasters as possible and then offer to allow those sites to earn Yahoo more money." Yea right. . .

This little tiny site doesn't make squat (its my hobby) but the other ones I own generate hefty adsense checks and being called a spammer or having "poor quality content" just pisses me off.

Not to be repetitive but they can kiss my @!#% (SBC too) and I hope I get contacted by someone for Yadsense participation - it would be an interesting stress relieving conversation (at least for me).

-jay

[Mia]

If they are gearing up for Yadsense then this has got to be the one of dumbest moves I've ever seen.



Perhaps, but then again, WHO USES YAHOO TO SEARCH?



"Let's piss off as many webmasters as possible and then offer to allow those sites to earn Yahoo more money." Yea right. . .

This little tiny site doesn't make squat (its my hobby) but the other ones I own generate hefty adsense checks and being called a spammer or having "poor quality content" just pisses me off.



Why? This is Yahoo.Com we are talking about right? Who uses it?



Not to be repetitive but they can kiss my ass (SBC too) and I hope I get contacted by someone for Yadsense participation - it would be an interesting stress relieving conversation (at least for me).

-jay

They can pull sites good or bad all day, it really does not matter. How much of an impact has this had on my revenue generation? NONE! If anything I am up considerably over last month due to the fact that MSN and Google seem to be bringing in the brundt of the search traffic.

Wait, I do use Yahoo Maps.. Habit I guess. Again, who uses Yahoo for an SE? Their results are horrible. They used to be great about 4-5 years ago. Now however, they are worthless.

Anyway, I guess my point is, it is not the end of the world. It's just Yahoo.

[Infiniterb]

Perhaps, but then again, WHO USES YAHOO TO SEARCH?



Why? This is Yahoo.Com we are talking about right? Who uses it?



They can pull sites good or bad all day, it really does not matter. How much of an impact has this had on my revenue generation? NONE! If anything I am up considerably over last month due to the fact that MSN and Google seem to be bringing in the brundt of the search traffic.

Wait, I do use Yahoo Maps.. Habit I guess. Again, who uses Yahoo for an SE? Their results are horrible. They used to be great about 4-5 years ago. Now however, they are worthless.

Anyway, I guess my point is, it is not the end of the world. It's just Yahoo.

This may not be so bad to you. However there are some people who used to get quite a bit of traffic from Yahoo and did generate quite a bit in revenue. I myself lost on average of about 1,000 uniques a day.

[melaniejk]

Hi.
Well, I am not seeing the same thing.
None of my rankings dropped in Yahoo.
They are the same or +/- 1 since I started watching Yahoo months ago.

FYI: I am not of the DP co-op.

[Homer]

Very interesting classifieds, thanks. I wonder what exactly this means? Massive domain interlinking. I am little pissed and offended as well. My site is a quality on page site as is yours www.wakulla.com I see no onpage problems with yours and am trying to figure out the same thing.

I agree the traffic loss is not worth the anguish but it's a pet peave of mine to figure it out :confused:. My feelings are hurt :(

[Arnie]

They prefer "this site's under construction" on top of approx. 3 million sites. Clear message for them, great content, why worry?

Example?
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=plastic+cosmetic+surgery&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8 and look at the 2. site after the sponsored links. Doesn't that tell it all?

[Arnie]

-Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page - one of their guidelines. That's a joke.

Why don't they delist themselves then first?

They(Yahoo) are insane and need to heed for psychological counseling.

[Mia]

They prefer "this site's under construction" on top of approx. 3 million sites. Clear message for them, great content, why worry?

Example?
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=plastic+cosmetic+surgery&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8 and look at the 2. site after the sponsored links. Doesn't that tell it all?

Like I have said before, who uses Yahoo. Their results suck. They have for about 5 years now.

[Arnie]

Either its corruption, a lack of good leadership or even both that has taken place with Yahoo, they are preparing for their own funeral if they continue this way.

It's not just a few of us which are affected. The arrogance and ignorance they handle complaints are outragious.

No wonder that people leave Yahoo "en mass", top managers too.

We're talking about a multi billion company lacking a sense of responsibilty which can affect the whole industry.

Maybe that's a chance for young enterprises and/or geniuses to gain ground in this field.
We'll see.

[Mia]

Either its corruption, a lack of good leadership or even both that has taken place with Yahoo, they are preparing for their own funeral if they continue this way.

It's not just a few of us which are affected. The arrogance and ignorance they handle complaints are outragious.

No wonder that people leave Yahoo "en mass", top managers too.

We're talking about a multi billion company lacking a sense of responsibilty which can affect the whole industry.

Maybe that's a chance for young enterprises and/or geniuses to gain ground in this field.
We'll see.

That's just what happens when you let a phone company try to run an internet company. Everything SBC touches turns to S@#T!

[Infiniterb]

Like I have said before, who uses Yahoo. Their results suck. They have for about 5 years now.

And like I've said before, lots of people use Yahoo. Don't just think Yahoo doesn't bring anyone traffic because you never got much from them. There are LOTS of people who are hurt by this new index, despite what you may think

[Mia]

And like I've said before, lots of people use Yahoo. Don't just think Yahoo doesn't bring anyone traffic because you never got much from them. There are LOTS of people who are hurt by this new index, despite what you may think

I did not say I did not get much from them. I just said their results suck and who really uses them? When I compare the conversion rate on people who come from Yahoo vs. say MSN or Google, I find that both beat Yahoo out. The influx of visitors from Yahoo, which in our case is more than MSN, yields very little in income. Since Yahoo's results suck, I find that while there is high traffic and a lot of visitors, the visitors coming got to us because the search results are not accurate. What this means is I am not getting qualified leads/buyers from the get go.

I do better percentage wise with Jaydee than I do with Yahoo, and I see much less traffic from them than I do from Yahoo.

[Web Gazelle]

Yahoo does bring traffic and there are many who use it. Many who may be like myself. I use them as my homepage, check sports, I have a yahoo email and I check movies with them. It is a one stop place to find everything so I naturally would use them to search the web. Lately I have been using Google for my searches though.

[wizardofx]

My results haven't changed at all, but then
I never did get more that a few percent from
Yahoo.

My gripe is that with everybody else going down,
why didn't my site go up? Isn't it lame enough?

That plastic surgery site was a hoot. It even
says "for Canadian viewers only." :) :)

Best regards
mark

[Arnie]

When I type my domain into the search box it shows all of my pages
When I type in a single page then there are no results, most of the time it shows a complete different domain.

Does that mean banned, or is it a technical error, hijacked???

Anyone the same?

[Arnie]

a Yahoo search result ... someone seems to be angry with them ...

FxxK OFF YAHOO YOU PACK OF DOGS!
You list some shxt that's never been linked to on this page in the place of my main site - so i've deleted this entire site. Your search engine is a dog with fleas - fxxk you and the horse you rode in on... CUNTS!www.dbx3.com

[Mia]

a Yahoo search result ... someone seems to be angry with them ...

FxxK OFF YAHOO YOU PACK OF DOGS!
You list some shxt that's never been linked to on this page in the place of my main site - so i've deleted this entire site. Your search engine is a dog with fleas - fxxk you and the horse you rode in on... CUNTS!www.dbx3.com (http://www.dbx3.com)

What was the search word that brought that result?

[Arnie]

Fxxk off yahoo - replace the xx with the right letters

:p Yahoo checks every site manually??? How can that slip in???:D

[SEOGuru]

I did not say I did not get much from them. I just said their results suck and who really uses them?


I agree, Yahoo sucks. But that does not mean no one uses them. In fact, NO COMPANY has been able to unseat them as the #1 most visited site on the Internet for the last 6 years. For more than 2000 days, not for a single day has another site jumped ahead of them.

My sites (over 300 of them) recieved nearly 1 million unique visitors per day. Prior to the update 43% of the search traffic came from Yahoo, 45% from Google and 9% from MSN. And I was ranked better in MSN than anywhere else on thousands of terms.

I was making thousands of dollars per day from Yahoo. If you want to bash them, go right ahead, in fact I'll give you the iron pipe to do it, but don't for one second assume that Yahoo is not a HUGE piece of the search market and that this update didn't cost businesses MILLIONS.

[Mia]

It might be the most visited, but that does not make it the most used for search. On that point I would argue it is NOT.

While the update may have cost some a little bit of money, is there really anything illeagal about it? Not really. You are relying on an unknown and absolute chance to keep your site ranked in a posistion that brings in visitors to your site. If you were paying Yahoo for posisition that would be another story. SEO is a game of chance and at times relys on pure luck more than skill.

So long as your eggs were not all in one basket you should be fine. We all see ups and downs from all the SE's. But I would not blame Yahoo or any updating they do on the loss of "MILLIONS". That is utter popycock IMHO. I am sure there are many more that were not making anything that are now making "MILLIONS".

In the overall scheme of things it is quite nice to know there are many more options than just Yahoo. Relying on one is flirting with disaster if this is your livelyhood. Also, did everyone that is complaining about this think that things would always just stay the way they are?

Personally I'd rather see people sharing ideas on how to beat Yahoo at their own game rather than bitching about the lost posistion/rank, revenue and everything else. Instead of others plotting to point their weight at competitors to prove a theory that already has a forgone conclusion, why not brainstorm with ideas on how to get back in?

Anyway...

[Infiniterb]

It might be the most visited, but that does not make it the most used for search. On that point I would argue it is NOT.

While the update may have cost some a little bit of money, is there really anything illeagal about it? Not really. You are relying on an unknown and absolute chance to keep your site ranked in a posistion that brings in visitors to your site. If you were paying Yahoo for posisition that would be another story. SEO is a game of chance and at times relys on pure luck more than skill.

So long as your eggs were not all in one basket you should be fine. We all see ups and downs from all the SE's. But I would not blame Yahoo or any updating they do on the loss of "MILLIONS". That is utter popycock IMHO. I am sure there are many more that were not making anything that are now making "MILLIONS".

In the overall scheme of things it is quite nice to know there are many more options than just Yahoo. Relying on one is flirting with disaster if this is your livelyhood. Also, did everyone that is complaining about this think that things would always just stay the way they are?

Personally I'd rather see people sharing ideas on how to beat Yahoo at their own game rather than bitching about the lost posistion/rank, revenue and everything else. Instead of others plotting to point their weight at competitors to prove a theory that already has a forgone conclusion, why not brainstorm with ideas on how to get back in?

Anyway...

That's all fine and dandy. But there are still people who use yahoo. There are over 280 million people in the US, billions all over the world. Yahoo is still an SE that is used by millions of people. You may not like it, you may not even receive conversions in the business you're in. For me, Yahoo converted great on many levels, and it sounds like others as well.

We're all thinking of ways to get back in. But the best solution may be to wait it out. The update hasn't even lasted a full month yet. Making any drastic changes could harm more than help.

[maha]

Yahoo is still the #2 Search Engine whether we like it or not. These are the latest SE market share (stats from http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/software/article.php/3362591)

Google 56.4%
Yahoo 21.1%
MSN 9.2%

21% of all Search Engine traffic is not something to be taken lightly.

[SEOGuru]

It might be the most visited, but that does not make it the most used for search. On that point I would argue it is NOT......

Mia, you are missing my point completely. I WAS NOT arguing that it is Yahoo's fault. I also WAS NOT arguing that you should rely on Yahoo as your only source of revenue. I didn't even say it was illegal nor did I say that single companies were making millions. I don't even remember saying that I didn't think things would change. Change in search technology is inevitable. Search engines will always want to try to make their results better and will be constantly tweaking their results.

I was arguing a single point. You said no one was using Yahoo. Hundreds of millions of searches per day are done on Yahoo. You also said that Yahoo didn't convert for you and I stated that I was making thousands of dollars per day on Yahoo so it converted for me.

Talking about diversifying revenue streams is just preaching to the choir. ANY smart business man would do that. So to bring that up is irrelevant. There is "some" luck involved in staying ranked, but there actually IS a method to this maddness. I didn't get in the top 3 on thousands of terms by being lucky. That is why the word "Optimization" is in the term SEO. You can optimize your chances of being ranked.

Now, the truest thing you said is about brainstorming a strategy to get BACK IN. But I don't know that there is one. I've applied for and have been approved for the Directory AFTER I was banned in the SERPs, not before. Which means they had to hand review it, and accept it. It didn't matter to them as they just wanted the $299. I've sent emails to the search team address and through their request form on their site. No response.

My "test" that you mentioned is to try to figure exactly what happened so I can at least prevent it from happening to my other websites. Sure, it seems like the theory is true but I wont know until I can test it. It is hardly a forgone conclusion until it has been proven. And if the theory holds up, that certainly gives more firepower against pressuring Yahoo to let companies back in. If these thousands of sites were kicked out because of massive links, and if they know that the strategy can be used maliciously, it certainly makes for a compelling argument to them and an interesting story to the media and their shareholders.

[Mia]

Mia, you are missing my point completely. I WAS NOT arguing that it is Yahoo's fault. I also WAS NOT arguing that you should rely on Yahoo as your only source of revenue. I didn't even say it was illegal nor did I say that single companies were making millions. I don't even remember saying that I didn't think things would change. Change in search technology is inevitable. Search engines will always want to try to make their results better and will be constantly tweaking their results.



Ah, not really. That is why I did not quote you directly last time around. I have directed my comments to this thread itself and some of those that feel jaded and cheated by Yahoo. It sucks, I understand, but it's all part of the game.



I was arguing a single point. You said no one was using Yahoo. Hundreds of millions of searches per day are done on Yahoo. You also said that Yahoo didn't convert for you and I stated that I was making thousands of dollars per day on Yahoo so it converted for me.



Fair enough. I am exagerating from my own experience. I know that people use Yahoo and I see about 20% or better of the referring sites are from Yahoo. However, we just do not convert in an equal proportion to the number of visitors/referrals as compared to say Google or MSN.

Did I make money with Yahoo? Sure. But where it left off, other things have picked up. It has all balanced out. I've not seen a significant drop however. And, I have only seen 50% of my sites disappear. The rest are still there. I am pretty sure I know why some are and some are not.



Talking about diversifying revenue streams is just preaching to the choir. ANY smart business man would do that. So to bring that up is irrelevant. There is "some" luck involved in staying ranked, but there actually IS a method to this maddness. I didn't get in the top 3 on thousands of terms by being lucky. That is why the word "Optimization" is in the term SEO. You can optimize your chances of being ranked.



Not necessarily. You would be surprised how many may use several different SE's, directories, and multiple forms of promotion, but then rely on one Ad Generation company/affiliate, etc. and visa versa.

There are some that do...

I would have to disagree on the "method to the maddness". There is an there isn't. Things can change, so to must the methods. I guess I should have said it takes constant tweaking, luck and ever changing methonds. Sure you can Optimize all you want, but in the end, I think with a little work anyone can rank anything.



Now, the truest thing you said is about brainstorming a strategy to get BACK IN. But I don't know that there is one. I've applied for and have been approved for the Directory AFTER I was banned in the SERPs, not before. Which means they had to hand review it, and accept it. It didn't matter to them as they just wanted the $299. I've sent emails to the search team address and through their request form on their site. No response.



There has to be. Look you just told me that you did not get top 3 on thousands of terms by being lucky. Well, let's brainstorm then. There has to be a way back in. There has to be a way around the filter too. Nothing is perfect or bullet proof. I am sure a few of us can come up with a way in.



My "test" that you mentioned is to try to figure exactly what happened so I can at least prevent it from happening to my other websites. Sure, it seems like the theory is true but I wont know until I can test it. It is hardly a forgone conclusion until it has been proven. And if the theory holds up, that certainly gives more firepower against pressuring Yahoo to let companies back in. If these thousands of sites were kicked out because of massive links, and if they know that the strategy can be used maliciously, it certainly makes for a compelling argument to them and an interesting story to the media and their shareholders.

I have an idea of how the filter works. And coop weight, the amount of links or how fast you got them does not have as much to do with it was you think. It's part of it, but it depends on the site as well. It's not the Coop or Massive links. It is a combination of those things, and a few other factors. IMHO.

[SEOGuru]

I guess the most important thing is to figure out how we were banned.

Was it an algorithm ban (filter) that we tripped and therefore can "untrip" by the next update if we make some changes? OR, was it a manual ban, that would indicate someone also needs to manually place us back into the index.

Because of the number of sites that were affected, I would lean to it being a new filter applied. But the next big question is: Can it be unfiltered or is it the case where once you are pegged, you're screwed forever?

When I said there was a method to this maddness, I meant that there are things you can do to get ranked and keep ranked. The biggest problem is shortcuts. In all honesty the co-op is one of those short cuts. If someone had the patience to set up bunches of sites and grow them slowly over 2-3 years with a diversity of quality links and a bunch of quality content, it would be very difficult to get banned or even lose ranking no matter what the tweak.

This is because there are certain truths that all search engines are built on. For instance, they assume that if one site about a topic links to another site about that topic, then that second site must be important. It is a hubs and authority system. The problem the search engines have is when you own both sites and they try to find ways to prove it and devalue the link or eliminate both sites completely from their results. But if you can find a way to keep many sites anonymous (different domains, registered on different dates, by different companies, hosted on different IPs, on different C-blocks who were also registered by different ISPs, each with different site templates, content, directory structures, and non-reciprocal linking, etc.)

In time, that strategy WILL work. In fact that is exactly what I'm doing. I have 290+ sites that WERE NOT banned in Yahoo and are still doing well. It is my main 3 sites that got banned and coincidentally had all of my co-op weight pointing to them.

I tried to take a short cut by using the co-op. And it was working great, until the last update.

I guess that is why I am so convinced about this massive linking issue. I've personally experienced both sides of the update and the only difference was the co-op. In fact the sites that were banned were actually older, more established, and well respected sites so if it wasn't links, then those 3 sites should have stayed in and the other 290+ should have been banned.

I don't have any answers. But I'm trying to find some and hopefully my test will show us something (good or bad).

But let's say you take that slow methodical approach... it can be frustrating when you are being outranked by companies who ARE taking the shortcuts. Often times search engines do not really provide much incentive to play by the rules.

[ferret77]

guys the sites are dead in yahoo, they arn't coming back

you guys got to starting moving thru the greiving cycle

* The first reaction was shock. The universal first reaction to hearing the news was, "Nooooo, noooot my site."
* The second stage that quickly followed was denial. "This can't be happening to me. I am not a spammer"
* The third stage was anger. This anger was usually directed at God, nature, or luck, but needed to be understood by the family because it usually became directed at them at some point. "I am going to start an organization ... and do ... something ..."
* The fourth stage was bargaining. The patient typically hoped that God would extend their life or cure them in exchange for promised behavior. "Ok I'll pay for sitematch maybe .... "
* The fifth stage was grieving. This is usually the longest lasting stage of the cycle and is marked by deep depression and mood changes. "I'm going to get a real job ...."
* The final stage was acceptance. Once this stage is reached, the patient usually used whatever time remaining to "put their house in order." There was a marked peace in the patient's mood. Death was not a feared event. "Screw it I'll just go get somemore domains and do it again"

[SEOGuru]

Who's greiving?

I'll find a way back in, I gaurentee you that. Though I'm not sure how long it will take. My 3 sites that were banned were not just some little domains with AdSense on them. My partners and I have 1.4 million dollars invested in development and marketing so we aren't just going to start over.

The marketing investment is actually a good thing because if we were banned in Google, Yahoo, and MSN we'd still get 15,000 uniques per day. But that isn't to say I don't want back into Yahoo. A lot of traffic was coming from there.

So if building a new domain from scratch is out of the question, I came up with two more solutions (working on both at the same time).

Solution 1 - getting back in
First, I'm going to try to prove the existence of the filter related only to link acquisition, then prove to them that it can be used against other sites. Second, I will keep sending these people letters every other day until they respond. Third, I'll send representatives to every shareholders meeting and bring up every question they don't want asked until they are forced to deal with it. Fourth, I'll send out press releases to media organizations and emails to thousands of bloggers on the subject. If all of that together doesn't work... fine, but I WILL do far more damage to them then they've done to me.

Solution 2 - alternate sites
Since changing my main site is out of the question. I'll set up countless lead-in sites and get them all ranked. I have many other sites already that weren't banned so I'm already starting to re-optimize those for the new algo. And if they ban those sites, I have more ready to go after them.

This whole thing is unfortunate. I'm not even saying I didn't deserve to be penalized. I used the co-op and got a lot of artifical links. So yeah, maybe I got what was coming to me. But that doesn't mean that the websites themselves were not respectable and offered quality services. Why not devalue all of those links and drop the site in the rankings? Why outright ban someone (then accept their $299 for the directory)? And if the results actually got better, then there isn't much I could complain about, but countless people have confirmed that the new update made the results worse. Not just because their own sites aren't ranked but in looking at the spammy sites that they were replaced by.

There is always a solution, but it is not one that I was planning on. We'll see what happens I guess but this isn't something that will simply fade away. Not for me.

[kepa]

Posted by Mia:
I have an idea of how the filter works. And coop weight, the amount of links or how fast you got them does not have as much to do with it was you think. It's part of it, but it depends on the site as well. It's not the Coop or Massive links. It is a combination of those things, and a few other factors. IMHO.

Oh please...so what you are telling us is that it had something to do with the quality of the site itself as opposed to the number of links obtained? Do you honestly now think that the results are better in Yahoo!? Stop backpedaling unless you actually do think that.

An afterthought about the comment about it being unethical. What if what happened was really that your competitor got you (and my competitor got me) BANNED!? :eek: :eek: :( How would we tell? :rolleyes:

[Arnie]

Yesterday I tried some random searches like "gardening", "monica", Bauer" they all were nearly exactly the same as Google.
Then I used a general term "marketing" Here it starts to be more different but still close to Google.

The sites recently hit are about particular subjects and the results are completely different.

So it seems that's not an algo they are using it must be manual and they are going through subject by subject, starting at the most lucrative businesses.

Otherwise why can sites be top ranked without content? Why can the robots not clear about the search term "fxxk you yahoo" - look at the contents, what's there? So many signs that are pretty obvious.

That's what screams INTRIGUE.

[SEOGuru]

Though I won't doubt that they have manually banned many sites, I do not think the new algo filter is a content filter. And therefore sites with horrible content or even "F**K You Yahoo" might not get banned.

I also don't believe they only have a single filter. They could have hundreds or thousands. Often the formulas are usually based on Neural Nets like the Gradient Decent model that Microsoft is currently using. So it is more like a score given to a certain page based on combinations of words found in various page segments combined with scores given to each link that page and that domain receives.

Anyway.... all 3 of the big three search engines are working on similar models but it is this NEW filter that I believe got so many sites banned and so far the mountain of data I've gathered points to link acquisition methods. (link type, link latency, link growth rate, etc.) They didn't target all users of the co-op. Nor did every user of the co-op get banned. But if you had a lot of weight in the co-op, chances are you were caught in the perfect storm of the new filter.

Though I am almost positive as to the "how" the sites got banned. I'm not sure as to the "where". It is entirely possible (though virtually impossible to prove) that the filter itself is a sliding scale based on topic/industry. So not every topic or industry was effected identically.

The equation could even work off of statistical averages. For instance. If under the topic "travel" the average (total links, link growth, and link latency) of the top 1000 SERPs could be different than the topic "baby gifts". There would be a standard deviation of error within this formula and as long as you fall within it, you would be ok. So 100,000 links in one industry might be way above normal and trip the filter while 200,000 links in another industry might be below average.

This is all conjecture of course, but just based on my own independant research over the last 6 years and several PHDs in Mathematics/Statistics that I've consulted with, most search ranking algorithms aren't set in stone but are actually dynamically changing based on indexed data. I simultaneous equation that is contantly having data added or changed as it is trying to solve itself.

Here you can take a look at the RankNet theory that microsoft had been working on:
http://research.microsoft.com/~cburges/papers/ICML_ranking.pdf

[Arnie]

Solution 1 - getting back in
First, I'm going to try to prove the existence of the filter related only to link acquisition, then prove to them that it can be used against other sites. Second, I will keep sending these people letters every other day until they respond. Third, I'll send representatives to every shareholders meeting and bring up every question they don't want asked until they are forced to deal with it. Fourth, I'll send out press releases to media organizations and emails to thousands of bloggers on the subject. If all of that together doesn't work... fine, but I WILL do far more damage to them then they've done to me.

Solution 2 - alternate sites
Since changing my main site is out of the question. I'll set up countless lead-in sites and get them all ranked. I have many other sites already that weren't banned so I'm already starting to re-optimize those for the new algo. And if they ban those sites, I have more ready to go after them.

That's a great move, congrats and all the Best and lots of support.

[Tuning]

I don't know what happened yesterday, but now i got back in index @ #6 for a competetive 2 term word. I have't changed my site, coop weight, nor acquired any new links.

Any idea ? :confused:

[SEOGuru]

Really? That could be a good sign. I'd love to look into your case more. Where you completely banned before and not being indexed or ranked under a search for the name of your site? Sorry for all of the questions but you are the first person I've heard of that got back in.

[wizardofx]

guys the sites are dead in yahoo, they arn't coming back

you guys got to starting moving thru the greiving cycle

Very cute, the first good chuckle in this whole, foul
thread!

[wizardofx]

Yesterday I tried some random searches like "gardening", "monica", Bauer" they all were nearly exactly the same as Google.
Then I used a general term "marketing" Here it starts to be more different but still close to Google.

The sites recently hit are about particular subjects and the results are completely different.

So it seems that's not an algo they are using it must be manual and they are going through subject by subject, starting at the most lucrative businesses.

Otherwise why can sites be top ranked without content? Why can the robots not clear about the search term "fxxk you yahoo" - look at the contents, what's there? So many signs that are pretty obvious.

That's what screams INTRIGUE.

Arnie, this might explain the new algorithm. When you type in a request, Yahoo immediately checks Google to see what they think, then messes about with that a bit and displays it.

I have more evidence. For years I have been whining that
I get great positions from Google, but Yahoo and MSN hate me. Well, within the last 7 days my reputation has shot up
on Yahoo, and bubbled up in MSN.

Best regards
wiz

[ferret77]

a cuuple of my replacement sites have been bouncing in and out of yahoo so they are probably using more then one index

[DarrenC]

For Yahoo! I'm ranking well - but I still get a small percentage of traffic from them. The problem with Yahoo is that it's not classed specifically as a search engine anymore because they offer so many different services and products now - yahoo chat, yahoo news, yahoo classifieds, yahoo directory, yahoo search, etc etc and less people are using Yahoo for its search engine.

This is my concern over Google in that they will get involved in so many different pots that people will eventually forget its a search engine.

[Tuning]

Really? That could be a good sign. I'd love to look into your case more. Where you completely banned before and not being indexed or ranked under a search for the name of your site? Sorry for all of the questions but you are the first person I've heard of that got back in.
:oGot kicked again. Now for those two competetive terms I again end up at infinity. [ Yesterday I was #6 and #19 ]

Now I can confirm Yahoo Sucks! :D :cool:

[Arnie]

The problem with Yahoo is that it's not classed specifically as a search engine anymore because they offer so many different services and products now - yahoo chat, yahoo news, yahoo classifieds, yahoo directory, yahoo search, etc etc and less people are using Yahoo for its search engine.

That's a good point indeed.

What they are blaming on webmasters they commit themselves and go off topics. Makes one wonder.
Or perhaps we're all a bit guilty?

Whatsoever, (good)websites are being victimized. They want to take it all. When they have collected all valid info then they get off and do it themselves. Greed Greed Greed and no creativity.

[jlawrence]

Personally, I've not been affected by this algo change (or whatever it was). But I know of quite a few quality sites that were. Dropping quality sites from the index simply doesn't make sense.

[PinoyIto]

I am experiencing the same.... index pages keep changing up and down and affect my site visitor... it's really sad because most of my traffic are from yahoo, because my site is still on sandbox in google.

[Arnie]

For all those who have not voted yet, please cast your vote on this poll,
every opinion counts. The poll will be up for another 5 months.

[Homer]

I agree with you coopguy. The biggest challenges in life are finding out what went wrong and not what went right. I will also get back in Yahoo. I may try to get a couple competitors banned first though. At which point I may decide to email the webmaster, after the ban has taken place, and advise him/ her what has happened.

[Arnie]

I agree with you coopguy. The biggest challenges in life are finding out what went wrong and not what went right. I will also get back in Yahoo. I may try to get a couple competitors banned first though. At which point I may decide to email the webmaster, after the ban has taken place, and advise him/ her what has happened.

...and then someone gets you out again?:eek:

[iconrate]

I'm getting really pissed off now. Not sure what I'll do but I guess if yahoo and the isps won't take down some of these scraper sites maybe its time for a little vigilante justice.
Top 39 of 40 results for my title + keywords are JUST directories or scraper sites.. the 1 that isn't just totally stole my meta tags. Thanks eric @ bored.com sigh http://www.imhangout.com/index.html Have a look :[ On the bottom of the page is an image that says Oh yeh... Steal my sh*t... You Die.. BIATCH. What a piece of trash.
These sites with no content just links can rank well why not the sites they link to lol..
yahooisgay.com is available but not for long.

[Arnie]

Oh yeh... Steal my sh*t... You Die.. BIATCH. What a piece of trash.
These sites with no content just links can rank well why not the sites they link to lol..
yahooisgay.com is available but not for long.

Very bad, but a least he knows that his site is sh*t.

[iconrate]

Aye he knows his site is sh*t, now why can't I realize mine is. After all he does rank way higher than me for my own site name. :j

[Arnie]

Aye he knows his site is sh*t, now why can't I realize mine is. After all he does rank way higher than me for my own site name. :j

Y is neglecting the search results as we all know. Obviously they are on something very tricky and that has caused some damage to the whole industry and given the Internet a bad name again.
We may see a fall of Y which is on a downward trend since weeks. Wether the fix this issue or not a bitter taste will remain.

On the other hand it's a lesson for us of what can happen when there are no regulations. For now they demonstrate what they can do and others are also able to do so.

You're not alone...

[Arnie]

That's how my question was answered recently

This is an AUTO-RESPONSE message from Yahoo!


Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Directory Support. Our goal is to help
you find solutions to inquiries not resolved by the documentation
offered in our online help area. Sometimes, this requires extra time
and effort, so we appreciate your patience.

While you are waiting for our email response, you may want to visit our
Frequently Asked Questions section to see if your question is addressed:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/

Also, please take a moment to ensure that you have sent your inquiry to
the correct support mailbox. If your inquiry was about Yahoo! Search or
Yahoo! Directory, you sent it to the right place.
If you realize that your inquiry applies to a different support
department at Yahoo!, please refer to the list of help links "by Feature
or Service" at:

http://help.yahoo.com/

--and resend to the correct department to ensure a prompt response.

NEW SUBMISSIONS:
You can find information on the ways to suggest your web site to Yahoo!
Search here:

http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

SEARCH RESULTS / SITE POSITION REQUESTS:

For information on how search results are compiled and ranked, please
refer to the Search help page:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/index.html

Please note that site positioning is determined by a complex ranking
algorithm used to assess relevance, and we can't change the order in
which sites appear. For more information on factors that influence
search results, please see our search help section:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-14.html


THE YAHOO! DIRECTORY
You can suggest your commercial web site to the Yahoo! Directory by
using the Yahoo! Express service:

https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/express/intro/

More information about the Yahoo! Express program:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/express/index.html

If you would like to suggest your non-commercial site to the Directory,
you can also use the Yahoo! Express program. We guarantee your site will
be reviewed within 7 business days.

You can also use the free submission program:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/suggest/index.html

DIRECTORY CHANGE REQUESTS:

To suggest a change to an existing Yahoo! Directory listing, please read
our change request guidelines:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/changes/index.html

After reading the guidelines, please fill out the online change form:

http://add.yahoo.com/fast/change

Yahoo! makes changes only if a listing is incorrect or the changes are
deemed necessary. We can't change a listing to increase its ranking in
search results. Due to the large volume of email we receive, we are not
always able to inform you of our decision about your change request.
Please be aware that all requests are reviewed by Yahoo! in the order
they are received. Therefore, the review process is not an immediate
one.

Thank you for taking the time to read this message. We look forward to
reading your inquiry.

- The Yahoo! Search & Directory Support Team


HELP PAGE RESOURCE LIST:

Yahoo! Help Central: - http://help.yahoo.com/

Search Help - http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/

Directory Help: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/

Yahoo! Express Help - http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/express/index.html

[Mia]

Posted by Mia:


Oh please...so what you are telling us is that it had something to do with the quality of the site itself as opposed to the number of links obtained? Do you honestly now think that the results are better in Yahoo!? Stop backpedaling unless you actually do think that.

An afterthought about the comment about it being unethical. What if what happened was really that your competitor got you (and my competitor got me) BANNED!? :eek: :eek: :( How would we tell? :rolleyes:

No, not the quality of the site per say. There is a lot of crap in Yahoo and other SE's. It has more to do with the longevity, frequency of updates, number of pages indexed, and length of time those pages have been indexed.

None I REPEAT! NONE of the sites I have that have been ranked in DMOZ, Yahoo, and elsewhere over the years have disappeared. None of them. Only those sites created in the last year or so, espeically lead in's, one pagers, etc.

Yes, I am using the Coop on the big/older sites. And yes, I am pointing weight at them. Of course they already had a lot of backlinks to begin with.

[SEOGuru]

Mia, some of those factors are true but they are true for different reasons than you think. If a site has been up longer, have had a lot of pages indexed and have had links longer, especially in relationship to the rest of your industry... it doesn't mean that those sites can not be kocked out, it just means they are less likely to be knocked out because it would take a huge amount of links within a very short time frame to trip the filter.

I had 3 sites that were banned and 290+ sites that were not banned.
The 3 sites were the oldest (one was 7 years old). They all had links and indexed pages. In fact they've had over 20,000 links each for years. That isn't a bad amount but everything is relative. I pointed my full coop weight to those three sites and they gained 1.5 million links each in 2 months.

Your sites may not have been knocked out but it has nothing to do with being in DMOZ or how old they are (directly). Indirectly, the age could help just because it allows for a slow "natural" growth of a site's links and pages.

Part of it could also be how MUCH weight in the coop you had and when you joined. Meaning, even if someone had 200,000 weight, it takes time to have Yahoo index all of those pages with your links on them. So someone might not have had the full impact of their weight before the last update.

Not everyone in the coop was banned, it just seems like those with a LOT of weighting power from at least May and before got hammered because of the mass number of links in a short time frame.

I guess it is like saying "this pancake is brown, so everything that is brown must be a pancake." lol Just because you had the coop on older sites that were not banned, doesn't mean that all old sites with the coop are safe.

My situation was unique in that I had controlled variables, unintentionally of course. I had old sites, new sites, both with co-op and without, all with other factors being equal. The ONLY difference was that the sites that got banned got a LOT of links very quickly via the coop.

I don't mean to bash the coop. It actually isn't the fault of the coop at all. Kinda like going to work and breaking your arm, then suing the manufacturer of your car because that's how you got to work. The coop (with enough weight) happened to place me in the line of fire. It is really my fault for trying to grow too quickly. Damn shortcuts. lol Though, I still hate Yahoo because rationally it doesn't make sense to ban someone for massive links. We'll see if I can make it backfire on them via my BANNING experiment. I'll post the updates in the other thread.

[Homer]

Yesterday I made a comment on this thread (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=226992&postcount=208) and received some red stuff for it. Why get others banned?? You will never get anywhere if that is your strategy. Put your energy into your own site and stop trying to get others banned In all fairness to the person that I beleive gave me the red stuff...you really don't know me. I wouldn't waste my time and effort on such as act. My point was, it would appear to me that I actually could unleash a pile of weight on a competitor and get them banned at Yahoo:rolleyes:. Now that's a dangerious weapon, and I wonder if it is actionable in anyway:confused:.

Hypothetical scenerio: I, for example have paid for my $299/ year listing. I wake up one day to find I am completely banned from the Yahoo index on the count of some A%#hole that actually did this. I would think that I would, at the very least, be entitled to a refund?? AND is it fair to my online business?

I apologize if I offended anyone with this comment.

[Arnie]

I belive that the person who gave you the red stuff didn't understand your point.

By the way I'm for obligatory signatures for reputation comments on Users CP, I also got one red a while ago and that was also without signature.

[Web Gazelle]

Names should not be mandatory. The forum could turn into a war zone. :eek:

[chris45]

I will just stick to the thread. I think Yahoo has been messing up its service frequently. GOOGLE for me.

[Arnie]

:rolleyes: Wow, I got 14 visits from Yahoo so far for this month.

[Web Gazelle]

Keep it up, your on a roll.;)

[Homer]

:rolleyes: Wow, I got 14 visits from Yahoo so far for this month.
13 better than me :rolleyes:.

[classifieds]

I've been on vacation and then battling hurricane Dennis for the last two weeks. I just checked rankings and most of my keywords for wakulla.com showed up.

I'm just wondering if Yahoo has decided that I'm not a scum SE spammer after all or if this is a fluke.

Is anyone else seeing a change in Y rankings?

-jay

P.S. (Warning: shameless self promotion) Check out some of the hurricane photos from the storm at the SE spam site www.wakulla.com


Well I finally heard back from yahoo and I guess I'm just a low life SE spammer.

Any way I can get a few of you to take a minute and look at the site www.wakulla.com and tell me if you think I'm doing something inappropriate? Maybe I'm too close to it and can't recognize my on writing as poor-quality crap content or the photos I've taken as duplicates.

Unlike some of you, I've never gotten much traffic from these arrogant SOBs but its irritating on principal :mad:

I do have the coop and the Freebie bookstores (below the footer) but if that's the cause of the filter then they can kiss my ass.

-jay

[wrkalot]

I have 14 this month... all from my #1 listing in the directory :rolleyes:

[Arnie]

I've been on vacation and then battling hurricane Dennis for the last two weeks. I just checked rankings and most of my keywords for wakulla.com showed up.

I'm just wondering if Yahoo has decided that I'm not a scum SE spammer after all or if this is a fluke.

Is anyone else seeing a change in Y rankings?

Glad you made it in again. Keep your rankings and up:)

So I guess while you were on holiday you didn'y check anything like PR etc.

Could to much checking with programs like that one from DP trigger a filter or confuse their algo? - Slowly I start to believe that.
Anyone thoughts on that?

[Redleg]

Is anyone else seeing a change in Y rankings?


Seeing some (small) changes for the better here now..
I've been waaaaaay down the SERPS for all of my keywords for a couple of months now, but today I discovered that I'm #1 for my sites title (from the Yahoo directory), and #2 for my sites name..
It's a start, since I was nowhere to be found for those two searches a couple of days ago.. :)

[ChinaNick]

From my observations re SERPS placement, it seems Yahoo is testing something, or just trying to annoy me: On June 21st, my rankings all declined considerably, but still had some ranking KW - then, two weeks ago, I've been dropped across board with 5 sites on one day, two days later all pages re-appeared, then dropped completely again until yesterday, when all my rankings improved to a level where they've never been before. Visitors from Y have been 0 in the last weeks, today they're sending more visitors than Google and it seems we can't handle all sales this generates :confused:

It should perhaps be said that during the time when my sites were not ranked, Y showed for most search terms complete crap sites, most of them with scrapped, non-functional content and the rest partially totally unrelated (yes, I may be opinionated, but really, what do Ringtones and two gambling sites have to do in the top ten for MP3 Player-related search terms???). This seems to be happening for Yahoo Germany, UK and US at the same time.

[Arnie]

16 visitors so far this month and one low ranking keyword page appears on top again. Shall I laugh or cry now?

[afactory]

Hey folks,
Is YSlurp crawls your sites as regular? It's crawls mine. I think in case that we was banned it should not happened.

What you think about it?

[wkw]

I'm also bouncing to and from infinity at Y!. Two of my terms shot up pretty quickly, but have now gone back to infinity, another two newly targetted bounced from infinity to within the top 100, and I'll be watching to see if they also drop way back in next week or two.

[Arnie]

This is a link of a Yahoo company, represented in many countries. Could this be the answer of their mess? Or have I missed something for a long time?

It's here (http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/)

[classifieds]

Arnie, Could you explain you thoughts in more detail?This is a link of a Yahoo company, represented in many countries. Could this be the answer of their mess? Or have I missed something for a long time?

It's here (http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/)

[Arnie]

Arnie, Could you explain you thoughts in more detail?

Well, one thing is that Yahoo is on restructuring trip of their services, concentrating on other services and neglecting the search, though today many found their way back to the top.

Hopefully that this is not just temporary.

It's obvious for me that Y tries to hook visitors away from search and wants that people become more involved with their payed services (to bind everyone closer to their business). Might be a niche for them but if that will be appreciated by most common searchers is another question.

I still believe that they should stick with what they began and improve it, because that is what people are expecting.

I haven't noticed this service (http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/) before and that it is only for Europe, where Google has the main share of searchers. I personally don't think that people will change to this kind of Y services even they are good in itself.

[Web Gazelle]

I agree that Yahoo does seem to be more focused on making money.

[classifieds]

Well, one thing is that Yahoo is on restructuring trip <snip>

Thanks for the explaination. It makes sense.

BTW my community site just fell out of the SERPS last night. Looks like they are still working on the algorithm.

[Web Gazelle]

I check every day hoping that I have not fallen from the top and so far I have held out.

[Homer]

Just went to yahoo and ran a 2 word simple search (actually my keywords) Oops!


We ran into a temporary problem while performing your search. Please try your search again.:rolleyes:

Edit: I actually tried the search 6 times...same result
Edit again: I have now run several searches at Yahoo...when I request the second page and any subsequent page in SERPS I get the same error message

[Arnie]

I'm deindexed now (last night). Others are also facing the same problem for qite a while.

[antithesis_98]

dropped from 10 to mid-twenties for my top keyword. Can't really complain though, I always thought I was too high, too early.

[Homer]

After several emails to and from Y it has become apparent to me that they are not going to change a thing. I sent this to them:
Hello: I was hoping that you could help me figure out a puzzle? I have faithfully purchased a Yahoo listing every year...http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Printing/Business_Cards_and_Stationery. I am the most favorite according to your own validating methods, yet I have been banned from Yahoo's organic SERPS.

I have noticed this for over 1 month now, and am not sure why Yahoo would ban my site from organic SERPS?? What have I done to cause this?? I have been reading over the internet that Yahoo has invoked a 1 time ban on certain websites for certain reasons mainly to do with spam and suspicious
linking? But my site is clean and offers its users the finest in online design and print. It is disturbing to me that you have elected to deprive your users of such a fine online design system.
I have desperately tried over the last month to understand what I have done to cause this?? I can't see anything wrong? This is my site www.xxxxxxxx.com

I have read many of the canned letters that you send webmasters but have to say none of it applies to my quality site. I would really appreciate it if some can tell me why I have been banned from your organic index. They respond with:
Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Search.

It has been determined that your site may not comply with Yahoo!'s Content Policy Guidelines located at:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/deletions-05.html

Below are some answers to common questions regarding this issue:

Q: What are some of the common reasons that a site may violate Yahoo!'s Content Policy Guidelines?

A: Yahoo!'s Content Policy Guidelines (link above) outline what we are and are not looking for in pages that we index. Listed below are some of the more common reasons that a site may violate these guidelines:

- Cloaking (showing crawlers deceptive content about a site)
- Massive domain interlinking- Use of affiliate programs without the addition of substantial unique content
- Use of reciprocal link programs (aka "link farms")
- Hidden text
- Excessive keyword repetition

Q: If my site has a judgment against it, can I use the SiteMatch inclusion program?

A: All pages submitted to SiteMatch are editorially reviewed. If a site has a judgment against it, it is likely to be rejected by the SiteMatch program.

Q: If my site has a judgment against it, can I use the Yahoo! Express directory inclusion program?

A: Yes, the Yahoo! Directory and Yahoo! Search Index are different systems. Inclusion or exclusion from one does not affect the other.

Q: How can I have my site re-reviewed?

A: Please review our content policy guidelines to make sure that your site meets all of them. When you feel the site is ready, please complete the form located at:

http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_rereview

requesting a re-review of your site. You may wish to include an explanation of unique features on your site, or details of changes to your site's content that may assist our editors in their evaluation.

Please allow several weeks for the review process, YST indexing, and a complete refresh of the database before checking http://search.yahoo.com to see if your site is listed in the Yahoo!Search Index. We do not offer specifics detailing how an individual site is not in complience with our guidelines, but we will review your site individually. You will not be receiving further notification regarding your request for a second review, and we are not able to offer the option of another review.

Thank you for taking the time to make the Yahoo! Search Index better.


Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.


Regards,

XXX

Yahoo! Customer Care

For assistance with all Yahoo! services please visit:

http://help.yahoo.com/ Interesting note. At the bottom of Yahoo's email was this:
While Viewing: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum35/3185.htm
So I write back:
Hi XXX: Thanks for responding...I appreciate it. However I have looked through the domain in question and can't seem to find the problem:

- Cloaking (showing crawlers deceptive content about a site) No
- Massive domain interlinking- Use of affiliate programs without the addition of substantial unique content- No
- Use of reciprocal link programs (aka "link farms")- No
- Hidden text- No
- Excessive keyword repetition- No more than others that did not receive a ban

I would like to do what is necessary to be a part of the Yahoo organic search index because I believe my site offers more to your users than most websites offering similar products. This is reflected in your own directory listing here...

http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Printing
/Business_Cards_and_Stationery

My site is Yahoo's 'most popular'. So I would like to correct whatever it is that Yahoo sees that I don't. It just doesn't seem fair that you ban me but don't tell me why? In life when you are punished...you know why!

Please help! Final response was this:
Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Search.

We appreciate your inquiry. We do not offer specifics detailing how an individual site is not in compliance with our guidelines, but we will review your site individually.

Please review our content policy guidelines to make sure that your site meets all of them. When you feel the site is ready, please complete the form located at:

http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_rereview

requesting a re-review of your site. You may wish to include an explanation of unique features on your site, or details of changes to your site's content that may assist our editors in their evaluation.

Please allow several weeks for the review process, YST indexing, and a complete refresh of the database before checking http://search.yahoo.com to see if your site is listed in the Yahoo!Search Index.

You will not be receiving further notification regarding your request for a second review, and we are not able to offer the option of another review.

Yahoo!'s Content Policy Guidelines outline what we are and are not looking for in pages that we index. For more information about Yahoo!'s Content Policy Guidelines, please visit:

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/deletions-05.html

Thank you for taking the time to make the Yahoo! Search Index better.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.Regards,

XXX

Yahoo! Customer Care

For assistance with all Yahoo! services please visit:

http://help.yahoo.com/
Oh well...I am going to resubmit one final time :cool:. The answer to this lies in the thread I posted above. 1 person posted a brilliant response/ solution to all of this Yahoo BS. If my site is refused again, I shall follow advice offered.

[Infiniterb]

Mind copying what was at that WMW address? I'd rather not register there if I can help it :)

[classifieds]

Mind copying what was at that WMW address? I'd rather not register there if I can help it :)
You should be able to view it without registering. If you can't I'd be happy to copy it to you.

-jay

[AzAkers]

I couldn't get to it either :(

[Homer]

I get in no problem without registering (http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum35/3185.htm)

[Infiniterb]

I'm using a government issued IP, so that could be why (they say my ISP could be abusing their system so they require logins for certain IPs).

[Arnie]

Yesterday deindexed today reindexed again, but no rankings yet.

[PinoyIto]

my other site today drop index pages very past from 10K pages down to 3K and I am afraid it will continue droping.

Yahoo Slurp still visiting my site continuesly but I am wondering why and what is happening in yahoo.

almost of my site visitor are from yahoo so this really hurts... so does any one already figure out what really happening this past weeks?

[Web Gazelle]

Yahoo seems to be going the right way to lose it's marketshare to MSN. Yahoo recently dropped to being the number 3 referer for my aquarium site.

[Homer]

Unbeleivable...I'm back in. Yesterday they started reindexing my site, I am at 30,000 indexed pages and counting. When I enter my URL it now displays. Still no SERPS though, hopefully this will follow.
The reason for my previous post was to help anyone in the same boat! My advice is to persist with them. It seems that some are rewarded :) but most are not :(.


Good luck!