codename "Charlie" Yahoo ranking shift (Yahoo Sandbox)

[SEOGuru]

To those of you who have had problems with Yahoo rankings in the past few days, listen up.

Though you will see some more shifting in the next week or so, you need to be aware that this is NOT a co-op problem, nor is it a temporary glitch or PR stunt by Yahoo.

Yahoo has been working on a algorithmic tests for some time and we are on the front end of a MAJOR RANKING SHIFT, codenamed "CHARLIE".

What Yahoo has been doing is testing many new factors that until now, only Google was implementing. This is also why in most keyword searches, the rankings are tending to resemble Google's. There tests have been running for about a month through certain datacenters usually in the early morning hours.

1) They are implementing a dampening effect for links based on a time element.
2) Likewise they are providing a dampening effect on time elements for indexed pages.

This is similar to the Google Sandbox where older sites with older content and older links are starting to be valued more.

By the way, this is not a guess. I don't post here often but with the wild theories that have been circulating around, I thought I might set it straight for some people. My partners and I have built multimillion dollar search analytic engines and have contacts throughout the seach community.

Though this may be unfortunate news for those who have had a "free ride" for some time now, it was also expected. It was inevitable that Yahoo (and eventually MSN) would move in this direction. It is the natural progression of search technology to try to weed out sites that are artifically effecting the rankings.

This is not to say that other factors are not also present, and therefore some sites will be less effected or even see positive results from the shift. So before people start saying that your site has been up for years yet you are gone from the rankings too, think about how long your links have been up or how long those sites have been up that link to you, including how long the links themselves have been active and how long each page has been indexed.

So many people just want a nice and simple answer. They want someone to say "well this is your problem right here" so you can then go and fix it. It doesn't work like that. There are hundreds of factors. The fact that these new ones have had a major impact just shows you how manipulated their rankings really were.

Some other common statements:
1) I'm being "pentalized" by the search engines.
No you aren't. You are being placed back to where (yahoo feels) you should have been to begin with.
2) All of these links from non-relevant sites are hurting me.
No they aren't. You can NEVER be penalized for something you can't control like another site linking to you. If you are now getting less "value" for those links, then maybe you would fall in the rankings and it would APPEAR that you are being penalized.
3) It's the co-op, I got too many links too fast.
Again, you can not be penalized for something you can't control. If you could get penalized for links to your site, then you could set up hundreds of link farms and link them all to your competitor. On the flip side, this is the same reason why people can manipulate a ranking formula.

For the right price, you can set up 10,000 websites on 200 different C-blocks, each with unique IPs, under 5-year contracts with proxy registration, each with different layouts and dynamically created directory structures, each using mod or isapi rewrite to make pages appear static, and linked in a non-reciprical linking methods, each pulling countless feeds to generate tens of thousands of unique pages for each site, then automatically blogging and pinging the pages or using RSS pinging to get them all indexed.

Then you sit back and wait and they get more and more valuable as time goes on. Everything is about money. The second it becomes economically viable to do such a thing in your specific industry, is the second no one else will ever be able to compete. (unless every one else is doing it too, which is highly unlikely with the investment and technological expertise required) At that point, no ranking shift will be able to stop it.

If you haven't been making preparations, I suggest you do so now. Though the search engines are reaching a point were the technology can not stop artificial rankings without also hurting the freshness and relevancy of the results, time factors are a bandaid approach to fixing something that can not really be fixed. As long as there are formulas that decide rankings and not humans, there will always be a way to "bend" the formulas in your favor.

Many other "experts" claim to have figured out the secrets long ago so you can ask them how to do it. Personally, I'd be skeptical of anyone who has an SEO company or offers SEO consulting. If their methods were so good, why tell anyone? This industry is made up of people who want fame and glory and may know a few little tricks to get by and be perceived as an athority.

Ultimately, they have a bunch of car parts on the ground and wouldn't be able to build the actual car if you asked them.

~seoguru~

[mjewel]

Since coop links are not static, and will not become aged, is it your opinion that they will not offer any benefit... i.e. I assume you mean google or yahoo isn't going by the total number of backlinks, or percentage increase, but rather specific backlinks?

Would buying a few high PR links still get the "dampening effect" or does a unknown amount of links trigger this filter or effect?

Any guess as to how long it takes to have an "aged" link counted?

Thanks.

Additionally, while a lot of what you say makes sense, how do you explain a lot of newer scrapper sites jumping to the top of the rankings? I have sites which I have owned for over 6 years being replaced by brand new sites. I have never seen so many junk sites ranking high for competitive terms in my sector and these sites certainly do not have aged links.

[lorien1973]

I don't get this. If sites don't rank for a query on their domain name, how is this "where yahoo thinks you should be?"

[Canadianbacon]

well that made for some interesting reading

thanks

[fryman]

I must agree with you that this pattern does tend to resemble the way Google behaves. I would ask everyone here to post any links to news sources talking about this. Not that I don't believe you, but if what you are saying is true there will be a big buzz about this and sure be posted at many places.

And I hope that this will end all those stupid comments and polls about the coop beeing the cause for this.

[yo-yo]

Doesn't google have a patent on "link aging" and sandbox related algorithms?

Not to mention, I highly doubt any of that is true. Where's your source?

[spdude]

I'm sorry I have to disagree completely with all three points:

Some other common statements:
1) I'm being "pentalized" by the search engines.
No you aren't. You are being placed back to where (yahoo feels) you should have been to begin with.

Not true at all. From several thousand visitors a day when the number is reduced to 2 and 3, it can't be explained as yahoo placing you where they think you should be.

2) All of these links from non-relevant sites are hurting me.
No they aren't. You can NEVER be penalized for something you can't control like another site linking to you. If you are now getting less "value" for those links, then maybe you would fall in the rankings and it would APPEAR that you are being penalized.

This is not a fall. It's about disappearing entirely from the top five hundred results for every friggen keyword.

3) It's the co-op, I got too many links too fast.
Again, you can not be penalized for something you can't control. If you could get penalized for links to your site, then you could set up hundreds of link farms and link them all to your competitor. On the flip side, this is the same reason why people can manipulate a ranking formula.

I have 400,000 co-op weight. I can get a site banned in three days from Yahoo guaranteed with this weight, if I ever wanted to do this, and yes, Yahoo would drop that site out of the index. This is very clear for me.

Despite all of this, I still believe things will return back to normal, and the majority of ppl will have their rankings restored shortly.

[fryman]

spdude, this happens all the time with Google... florida, bourbon, etc.

Yahoo does a similar thing and everyone goes crazy.

I just can't see whay this would mean a penalization. It is just some kind of algo tweaking, but since 99% of the posts at seo forums are related to Google, finding decent information about this has been an almost impossible task for me.

[LinkBliss]

Is this similar to the sea urchin community? Except that the experts are not scientists but multi-millionaires, hehe.

He has a point, I never considered myself or aspired to be an expert in the SEO business, but starting to notice that links could have a fast and immediate effect. Sold many link advertisements over the years and eventually I started LinkBliss.com. Many third-parties are also selling links off this site.

Anyway, these days I always encourage parties to commit to multi-month deals, even 6 or 12 months right off the bat before expecting results in rankings (it can have a much faster effect in the bots/crawlers interest in a target site), this is the way the link ad business has gone..

Anyway, just thought I'd share my 2 cents.

Eric

[EventRez]

I disagree with this thread, I think that Y! has been attacking those with Affiliate content, not coop and not an aging filter. My Coop sites have not been affected and I confirmed this with Y! staff email.

[mjewel]

I disagree with this thread, I think that Y! has been attacking those with Affiliate content, not coop and not an aging filter. My Coop sites have not been affected and I confirmed this with Y! staff email.


In my case, it has absolutely nothing to do with affiliate content- because there never has been any. The sites were built from scratch, and over 5 years old, and have a product we invented and isn't available anywhere else - so it's not a duplicate content problem.

[spdude]

spdude, this happens all the time with Google... florida, bourbon, etc.

Yahoo does a similar thing and everyone goes crazy.

I just can't see whay this would mean a penalization. It is just some kind of algo tweaking, but since 99% of the posts at seo forums are related to Google, finding decent information about this has been an almost impossible task for me.

My SEO experience is only half a year... was never around at the time when the Florida thing happened, but I understand what you're saying. Nothing to really loose sleep over. I'm not extremely put down by this Yahoo thing. Was lucky to have my rankings restored in Google after I got hit by the Bourbon update.. so things are looking better than before actually. The Yahoo drops will recover also for most websites IMO.

[kepa]

how do you explain a site vanishing completely for EVERY key phrase only to be replaced by half-assed, under construction, rinky dink spam sites? AND while you're at it, add that my site is in the Directory for multiple categories listed at the top based on popularity? Is this where Yahoo really thinks my site should be? It resembles nothing of google or msn where I'm ranking 1 or 2 consistently.

[lorien1973]

I have to agree with the above. The "cream" that has floated to the top of yahoo smells pretty bad, for the most part.

Does being in the yahoo directory help listings? I cancelled mine last year, and would consider the reinstatement an investment of sorts, I guess.

Is there a way to contact yahoo to see what the issue with a site is?

Yahoo, being a brand new search engine, hardly has the weight to be pulling any "link aging" non-sense. Since its been recoded for like 2-3 months, I do not believe it has any way to measure the age of links that were acquired - say - 6 months ago.

[longcall911]

Doesn't google have a patent on "link aging" and sandbox related algorithms?
No. They have applied only.

If the patent is approved and link aging is included, anyone else can still implement the same thing. It would be up to G to file suit and then prove the infringement.

[GuyFromChicago]

I have 400,000 co-op weight. I can get a site banned in three days from Yahoo guaranteed with this weight, if I ever wanted to do this, and yes, Yahoo would drop that site out of the index. This is very clear for me.


Hey, care to throw that 400,000 weight at one of my sites as a test ;)

[ger]

Interesting what you are all saying here. Maybe this "charlie" thing is the cause of what happened to one of my sites. But it is the opposite of what everybody experienced. Until one-two weeks before, my site was almost not indexed by Y! (some hundred of indexed pages). Then it suddenly exploded to over 100,000. And each day it keeps adding about 10,000-20,000 new pages. Of course I cannot complain about this, but does anyone have an explanation?

[kalius]

Hey, care to throw that 400,000 weight at one of my sites as a test ;)

damm you beat me to it...

But you can try with a site of mine too, brand new btw

[GuyFromChicago]

damm you beat me to it...

But you can try with a site of mine too, brand new btw

I was serious. I'd really like to see someone knock a site out of the index (of any SE) by throwing links at it. I have a site that's over a year old, ranks #1 in Yahoo & MSN for a term and just moved to #6 in Google after being at 100+ for more than year.

I don't think it can be done.

[kalius]

The Search engine that gives somebody the power to knock a competitor out by just pointing a large # of links at a competitors site will die a qucik death.

Do you know how easy is this to do specially for people that do scrapers and autogenerated content? All the web extortions that can come with it?

[SEbasic]

I've been seeing two completly different sets of results for Yahoo! for a real long time now...

This has been a long time coming, although I couldn't tell you exactly what is happening.

Meh... :rolleyes:

[toddieg]

I've been seeing two completly different sets of results for Yahoo! for a real long time now...

This has been a long time coming, although I couldn't tell you exactly what is happening.

Meh... :rolleyes:
I have seen the same thing also... been going on for at least a couple months... 1 set of results on day, another the next... very odd.

[maha]

Seem like that's what's happening..

The Co-Op experimental "Charity" site was knocked out of Yahoo a few days ago. Shawn pointed about 10,000 weight to it. Would this site disappear from Yahoo otherwise?

The Search engine that gives somebody the power to knock a competitor out by just pointing a large # of links at a competitors site will die a qucik death.

Do you know how easy is this to do specially for people that do scrapers and autogenerated content? All the web extortions that can come with it?

[West_of_Willamette]

I've seen things in the Yahoo SERPS that tend to agree with the analysis presented. It would seem that the transfer of content to older, more established sites would be the best defense, correct? Or, would the new pages on the established sites be placed in a "page specific" sandbox?

[kalius]

This tread is smelling fishy.

Yahoo spider has hicupps, it drops sites sometimes for no reason ( have happened to me).

Why blame everything on the coop? Maybe the site was down when the Y! spider went to visit? Duplicate content penalty? Maybe yahoo increased the on page factors and links count less?

Any SE with half a brain will know if they ban they would have to ban or penalize the sites running the ads not the sites that the links point to.

[West_of_Willamette]

My main affected site affected recently in Yahoo doesn't have the Coop, Adsense, or Affiliate content. It is an old domain, but has only built links within the past year. My oldest sites with the longest history of link-building are doing extremely well in Yahoo...most of my newest content isn't performing at all.

[maha]

I'm not sure if I agree. Can you explain why the "Charity" experimental site dropped out of Yahoo then? It obviously did not have any "ads" running on it. It was a perfectly "innocent" site before we pointed 10,000 co-op weight to it.

This tread is smelling fishy.

Any SE with half a brain will know if they ban they would have to ban or penalize the sites running the ads not the sites that the links point to.

[kalius]

Lack of content on page?

Yahoo is known to like text on page, as I said before maybe on page factors.

Keyword density maybe?

[maha]

I guess we're all guessing at this point. Nobody really knows for sure.

[lorien1973]

Traffic from yahoo is negligible, that's the problem. Yahoo isn't a search engine, its a portal. No high brain SEO is going to spend their time on working out yahoo, to the tune of 5% of clicks that the same word on google would generate. Its not a profitable investment.

[fryman]

You are absolutely wrong. Yahoo can send huge traffic to your site.

[ferret77]

I was making $200 - $500 a day of my yahoo visitors alone. The charity site, may have been nowwhere in yahoo when it started, so theorectially it may have just gone back to where it was.

I got some some extra wieght does anyone want to to pitch in and try to assasinate a site.

anncoulter.org seems availible, only one one way to be sure

[maha]

Yahoo is the #2 SE behind Google (MSN is #3). It use to be bring me 20% of my traffic, which is significant.

[fryman]

Well... seems that "SEOGuru" just posted all this BS and never came back to explain. The thing that I found interesting was the codename he invented. "charlie", give me a break, is that the name of your dog or something like that? :D

[spdude]

Hey, care to throw that 400,000 weight at one of my sites as a test ;)

Well, you'd drop from yahoo.. but you would be raking in hundreds from adsense when you hit the top for huge terms in Google :-) Co-op still rocks!

[kalius]

The thing that I found interesting was the codename he invented. "charlie", give me a break, is that the name of your dog or something like that? :D

I think its a case of spending too much time at WMW...

[yo-yo]

I think you're all silly to think this is

a) a co-op filter
b) an affiliate filter
c) an adsense filter

It's not. Just because some of those sites have dropped doesn't mean they ALL did. It Doesn't mean they're the ONLY ones that did.

I called it out a long time ago, after you search for a specific term multiple times in Yahoo, they start switching all the results around when you search again. You can easily see that by searching on one machine, and then trying a completely seperate one. The results are different.

I have both old , middle-aged and brand new sites all ranking well in Yahoo (for several million results) and haven't been affected at all or just a little by this update, and they all have affiliate content or adsense.

[GuyFromChicago]

Well, you'd drop from yahoo

That's what I would like to see tested - I don't think I would. It would be an interesting test if someone with a lot of weight picked a #1 Yahoo and tried and knock it out by throwing coop weight at it.

Try and knock CNET out of #1 for "computer". (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=computer&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&ei=UTF-8)

(although with Yahoo CNET may be #1 tomorrow for computer anyway :rolleyes: )

I dare you ;)

[fryman]

You do have a point, GuyFromChicago. Blaming this on the coop is just ridiculous. Spdude, why don't you open an auction site and point your weight to ebay and get it dropped? No, wait, better open book store and get Amazon dropped.

[spdude]

You do have a point, GuyFromChicago. Blaming this on the coop is just ridiculous. Spdude, why don't you open an auction site and point your weight to ebay and get it dropped? No, wait, better open book store and get Amazon dropped.

Examples of Amazon and Ebay aside... if it was done to a site with say 20-80,000 (natural) backlinks in Yahoo, they would probably benefit more from the weight in Google, than would be harmed by loosing rankings in Yahoo (which I still believe would happen in 3 days flat). This is why GuyfromChicago or most everybody would love to be experimented on. Being kicked out of Yahoo is very negligible with top five rankings in Google bringing in tens of thousands daily.

It's not the co-op (so no blame on the co-op)... it's 2,000,000 instant links which will bring a site down under the current Yahoo situation.

[fryman]

I'd be glad to excahnge a rank at Yahoo for one at Google. But I haven't seen any improvement at all in Google from using the coop. Actually, not even in Yahoo, the only difference I can see is in that unknown little engine called MSN

[yo-yo]

500 weight in the coop got my site indexed in 24 hours :)

[SEOGuru]

My intention was to provide an explanation. I am not providing a "theory". You can choose to take what I've said to heart or not. It is really no benefit to me either way.

With that said, let me cover some of the ridiculous statements that some people are pulling out of their warped sense of reality.

First, I don't think people understand how search engine rankings ACTUALLY work. Since this is what I do, let me explain it to you.

Rankings sites are like trying to solve a simultaneous equation with dynamic variables that are changing even while you are trying to solve it. As with any regression equation, it takes many iterations to reach a point of non-significant error deviation. So there is never an actual "answer". The algorithm just keeps calculating until is gets as close as it can. In the case of ranking the entire Internet, even with thousands of servers we are talking about TRILLIONS of calculations with countless iterations. It is like a pendulum that swings back and forth until it gets closer and closer to the center.

As you can imagine, without a control variable, it makes it near impossible to have a decent starting point. So, what they have done is used certain factors that they deem credible to form a base. Many sites were dropped right away in the first iteration. Yes, this means you would not even rank for your own domain. But when scrubbing those dropped sites, they will reintroduce many of them into the new formula. This doesn't mean you will have the ranking you had before but it is highly unlikely that you are completely banned.

So many people have stories about what they are experiencing in THEIR industry or THEIR keyword. Do you honestly think that Yahoo has it out for you? Do you EVEN think they have checked the results of your specific keyword or phrase out of the billions of possibilities? They create a formula (usually based on a standard pre-existing model), go through a series of tests to see if it works in a few sectors, implement the formula to the main index, then continue to alter the new variables until things even out and seem sufficient. Inherently in such an equation, it will start out as bad as it can get then usually get better with every iteration.

I hear some people spitting out utter non-sense about getting sites banned by pointing links to it. Luckily there are also some sensible, level-headed people here that realize the rational application of such a notion. Must I say it again? You CAN NOT be penalized for something you can't control! It defies the fundamental philosophy of ALL search technology. Anyone who believes they can get a site banned by linking to it is floating in a false reality. Think of the logical result of that. All results could be made completely irrelevant.

Again, that doesn't mean the links can't appear to hurt you. Maybe you were getting credit for links you shouldn't have. And when you drop, you think you are being penalized. (I’m not talking about being removed from the index in this case, that is another issue)

I have thousands of websites with millions of indexed pages. Some have the co-op, some don't. Some with the co-op have gone from top 5 in huge keywords to not ranked (just like many of you). Others with the co-op have actually gone up in ranking. I also have many sites that do not have the co-op that have been dropped or gone up in ranking. The problem is NOT the co-op. Nor is this a temporary glitch in rankings. YES, the rankings will continue to shift just like the FLORIDA update on Google. But even when the dust settles, it will not be the same rankings you once knew. My findings are based on information I know from industry contacts along with my own calculations. I'm not talking about a paper and pen, opening a spreadsheet in Excel, or even a little formula I program in a day. My partners and I build MASSIVE search analytic systems. Almost to the scale of the search engines themselves.

I didn't codename this update either. I heard if from a friend of mine in the search industry. I don't know where he heard it but he has always been very credible and works closely with the company in question. I really didn't care because the name of it is irrelevant and it sounded fine to me.

You really need to look at the bigger picture and the end results. Not a day from now, but a month from now. The formula has changed and new triggers have been put in place. Just like FLORIDA it starts out very rigid then eases up in time as sites are reintroduced. Yahoo is obviously experiencing many "false positives" with their current iteration. They will remedy it.

Keep in mind that Yahoo does not have an obligation to ANY business. They can use websites as "guinea pigs" if they want. It is amazing to me when businesses think they have legal justification for being ranked on a FREE search engine. You could have been #1 for 6 years and they have absolutely no obligation to keep you there. If the success of your business was based on your ranking in a single search engine, then it is a poor business model.

EVEN if you paid to be in the Yahoo directory, all that means is that your site is in their directory, that's it. It does not mean they couldn't ban from the natural listing anyway. They don't keep checking sites after they have been approved for the directory. They rely on their formula to catch sites in violation of their guidelines and TOS. So it is entirely possible to be in their directory and not in the SERPs (at least for right now).

People need to calm down. Look at the bigger picture. The net result (whether it be a week or a month) will be that traditional strategies will not be enough to get you ranked well in Yahoo. This isn't a complex concept to understand. You already have dealt with a similar situation before with Google. In the past Yahoo has valued on-page optimization more while Google tends to rely more heavily on links. Yahoo is introducing new variables and tweaking old ones because they feel they can make their results more relevant in time, especially before the retail buying season.

If you don't agree with me, fine. You certainly have a right to your opinion. I really don't care either way. I merely thought that some people would be interested in what is going on since most are fairly clueless.

~SEOGURU~

[GuyFromChicago]

This is why GuyfromChicago or most everybody would love to be experimented on.

That's why I suggested the CNET site/phrase. I'm not interested in trying to benefit from this, but I would be interested in the results. Can a significant number of links in a very short period have a significant negative impact on the yahoo serps? I honestly don't think it would and haven't seen evidence that would change my mind.

[spdude]

That's why I suggested the CNET site/phrase. I'm not interested in trying to benefit from this, but I would be interested in the results. Can a significant number of links in a very short period have a significant negative impact on the yahoo serps? I honestly don't think it would and haven't seen evidence that would change my mind.

CNET is a PR9 site with probably millions of links already, built over years... adding a couple of million more wouldn't drop it from the serps.

[classifieds]

You are one patronizing SOB. I don't know if you are correct or not but your delivery needs a lot of work. It's difficult to read past your arrogance to get to the content of your message.My intention was to provide an explanation. I am not providing a "theory". You can choose to take what I've said to heart or not. It is really no benefit to me either way.

With that said, let me cover some of the ridiculous statements that some people are pulling out of their warped sense of reality.
<snip>Lot's of stuff deleted</snip>
I merely thought that some people would be interested in what is going on since most are fairly clueless.

~SEOGURU~

[fryman]

lol, don't bother, classifieds, that guy is a joke. With his multimillion dollar empire and his "thousands of websites and millions of pages indexed"... lmao :D

I knew it was just BS when he even invented the charlie stuff.

[West_of_Willamette]

I do see things that jive with what SEO Guru says, so I am very interested in hearing more. However, I hope he offers some specifics and advice about what is going on and how to best react to it because it would be quite arrogant to make those "all-knowing" posts and then go away and hide.

[Infiniterb]

Regardless of right or wrong, the results after major updates never come back the same. Most of the information presented in this thread by SEOGuru is somewhat obvious. Yahoo is doing a major re-indexing right now, and with the movement people are seeing, things will come back, but to think they'll be exactly the same is fairly silly.

[kepa]

Infiniterb is right, nothing new was put forth. But what got me a little worried was the "this is not a temporary glitch" (I thought he was implying that whatever was happening was over) statement followed by "it takes many iterations, yadayada" followed by "when the dust settles" implying that it wasn't over. That seemed contradictory to me. The bottom line is that whatever is happening is not over yet, thank god, because the crap is still floating at the top. Furthermore, what everyone is will continue to discuss till kingdom come will still be speculation.

[Arnie]

Out of desperation I guess, Yahoo's ads a lot of "nitty gritty" like music senders and so on, but google is playing "The Waltz" in this business and that will not change in the long run.

Yahoo at its best for the moment is "God" for aunties searching for family and holiday pictures.

When money talks the truth is silent, perhaps Y doesn't have any obligation in written form, - but what about the credibility they are going to lose together with blackpainting the industry as a whole?

[spdude]

I'd be glad to excahnge a rank at Yahoo for one at Google. But I haven't seen any improvement at all in Google from using the coop. Actually, not even in Yahoo, the only difference I can see is in that unknown little engine called MSN

Three weeks ago, I dropped like a rock from Google with all my co-op weight. Was tempted to blame it on the co-op... Now I'm back like never before... adsense jumped from 130 to 360 in one single day and the data centers are still only half updated. My previous all time one day high in adsense was $291. The present rankings I have in Google IMO are 80% because of the co-op. Another site I'm monitoring (which is using co-op heavily evident from how often their ads are showing) jumped in Google for some unbelievable terms.. ranking number one above aol.com for one of their main keywords!

So, I strongly believe that co-op links are given full credit in Google.. and all the stuff about link churning and penalties is not true at all, as far as Google is concerned.

With the right mixture of an old and established domain, very good 'on-page SEO', hige PR home page links.. one or two high PR site-wides, and massive co-op links, insane rankings can be achieved in Google. This is as true today as it was four months ago.

[crazyhorse]

Did anyone see a significant gain in indexed pages last/this week. I saw mine rise on Yahoo from 40 k to 60k. Just wondering whether this might have to do something with the freaking weird serp changes at Yahoo. Is there anyone at this moment that can confirm officially what is going on?

[jamjv]

I just noticed this and had to share.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=online+poker&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1

Look at all those quality websites, have a look at #6.

Crafter's Gallery, The

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=online+poker&sm=Yahoo%21+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1

Good job yahoo.

[Arnie]

62 million sites for online poker? Guess Las Vegas and Macau has bought Yahoo.

[ferret77]

#
Heartland Christian Homeschool Center

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is number 12 for online poker

[justicewhite]

I'm seeing a similar behaviour to G with Yahoo in that my new site is dropping in the SERPs. Maybe Yahoo is carrying out a similar Sandbox work :(

[Las Vegas Homes]

I think Yahoo has created a sandbox of their own. It looks almost like google did 12 to 16 months ago. I could be wrong and I am not the brightest one here but it looks very familar to googles when they applied the sandbox filter.

[Dirkjan]

If you have the money and time to invest in tons of sites, blogs, links etc like suggested: you could get rich in plenty of ways. dont mind SE traffic ;)

I personally dont think anyone could get a website out of Yahoo, when its ranked in their directory. My site was ranked in the directory and #6 on a keyword.

When I add 23k weight it stayed ranked #6 for that keyword. Didnt move a bit. The directory seems powerful in Yahoo to me.

[Dirkjan]

I think Yahoo has created a sandbox of their own. It looks almost like google did 12 to 16 months ago. I could be wrong and I am not the brightest one here but it looks very familar to googles when they applied the sandbox filter.

http://nl.search.yahoo.com/search?p=online+promotie+nieuws&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-tab-web-t-&fl=0&vc=&x=wrt&meta=vc%3D

www. onlinepromotie .nl is mine. It got ranked in MSN in 3 days. In Google I bet it hit, or will hit the Sandbox as I gain links fast. In Yahoo I expected it to hit the first results fast, but no. Not yet. Yeah by taking this small experiment into consideration I think they have a Sandbox, as this website is SEO friendly (mambo) and has a few good backlinks from PR5 links, in the coop for 100 links, and gets quality links daily for 21 days streak.

[wrkalot]

I don't know if this has been answered yet so... Paying for a Yahoo directory listing WILL NOT help you. I've been in the top 5 organic results for over 3 years. I have only had my paid directory listing for 1 year (expires in 30 days). I dropped from top 5 to *poof* in the organic results... Even though I am ranked #1 in the directory when sorted by popularity. Go figure.

Do you link I'll pony up $299 for another year in the directory? Not likely.

[SEOGuru]

To expand on what wrkalot said. I actually got approved for the Directoy AFTER I was banned in the SERPs (about 1 week ago) and it STILL doesn't help you. I think they are two totally different departments and they sent me a automated letter saying that being approved for the Directory does not mean you are automatically in the natural listings nor does it improve your ranking in the natural listings.

[jstroh]

I thought yahoo was more than 5% lol

[joeychgo]

Here are my thoughts.

COOP links will help you - IF you have enough static links also. If you dont have enough static links, then you will not see much gain.

Its that simple. The changing links isnt a problem, its the lack of static links. If they are disproportionate then the SEs smell a problem.

Its kinda like having only 4 PR8 links to your site - the SEs expect a certain proportion of links.

[Infiniterb]

Ok, got back up to 4th in Yahoo for my main KW but with a super old cached page (from like a month ago).

[hmilesjr]

I don't know what is going on with Yahoo. I got into their directory about 3 weeks ago and jumped from position 40 to 20 for my homepage. Around the same time purchased some high PR links in an effort to better my standing with Google. When Yahoo credited my BL's I dropped like a rock. My homepage is no where for my keyword phrases in SERPs, but I am in the index b/c they have indexed 44 of my 244 pages. Many of my subpages are indexed and ranked, at least they were until last night. Only thing I can figure is that they have some form of a Sandbox filter in place.

Any suggestions anyone?

[Jonson]

Please can any body help me that Yahoo deindexing my site,pages are deindexed from 15,000 to 85,and my links are gone from 40k to 5,000 with in a week.There is no position for my top keywords from last 1 month,(Before no.#1 & #2 )for all targetted 30 keywords
Further what steps should be taken to regain the position in a SERP?

[virtualkev]

It's nothing to do with co-op .i have no co-op on my site and just about all my trafic from yahoo has stoped.i'm not placed for any of my keywords any more.:mad:

[ferret77]

yahoo just kicked my homepage, no coop no lv

my site has been ranking for like year

[classifieds]

I've lost all but a few pages on 6 sites (combined loss is over 450k). Three are coop and three are not. All on different dedicated hosts with unique IPs and different registrars. A few where pushing the boundaries of aggressive SEO practices and the others where not.

I summed it up in this post http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=254013&postcount=8 and got three anonymous (from sissy wimps) reds for expressing my opinion - I'm sure they'll feel the same when it happens to them.

Fortunately G and MSN were/are 96% of my traffic so it's not been a financial hit but it bothers me deeply that I can't figure it out.

I'm still trying to find the common denominator but other than the ownership I have no clue what's going on (as moulder says "the truth is out there").

I'm still looking. . .

-jay

[Ellora]

Sorry to ask a total newbie question, but what is this co-op that people are talking in here?

[fryman]

This one (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/?s=1165) ;)

[alext]

Just to throw some more info on the fire.

I have had a site for about a year that has ranked in the 20's-30's for months on the KW I was aiming for. Hosestly I gave up on tracking it. Having checked tonight, I see it is now #10. #9 is a pure ad site (with 3 backlinks in google). #1-8 are reasonable.

My site is quality content, barely SEO, maybe 1% affil. links, no link program, no adsense etc.