advanced search on yahoo made my rankings appear.

[SEOGuru]

as with most of you, my site has fallen off the face of the earth on Yahoo.

It has over 1.3 million links, is over 3 years old, and has thousands of pages indexed.

Site command still shows the index page and all other pages.
Link command still shows links and they are still growing daily.

It was ranked in top 3 in hundreds of terms, then was delisted, banned, or whatever you want to call it.

But today I found something.

You see I was using the keyword ranking tool and suddenly it said that I was ranked in certain keywords in yahoo. But when I went to the actual site, it wasn't there.

So, I changed my preferences to show 100 results instead of 10, and there they were. Granted, it wasn't the homepage, and it wasn't even close to my previous rankings but some sub pages DID actually show up. Can ANYONE explain this? Why would showing 100 results make some of the subpages appear. Furthermore, is this evidence that I am not actually banned but just caught in a filter somehow?

I'm not sure what to think anymore. I have yet to see my homepage show up anywhere.

I did change the IP address of my site a week ago (a few days before Charlie hit) but I doubt this had anything to do with it since so many other site have been affected. Also, on the few subpage results that showed up, it didn't have the "www." in front of the link. What the heck does that mean?

Sorry, seems I am asking a lot of questions, but I have a lot that need answering....as do we all.

[Arnie]

Ranked or not, do you get any traffic? I don't - and that is it what counts.

Seems like Y playing around and trying to protect their over-priced directory listings, which I suspect are now in the top of the search results ( I'll have to look into this a bit), or has anyone checked this possibility already?

[SEOGuru]

You brought up a good point. After you said that I went back and checked my #1 keyword. In the new listings the top 12 are ALL in the Yahoo directory. And yahoo themselves are now #1.

How interesting.

[Arnie]

What happens, when thousands pay for directory listings to be in the search engine results on the top? Prices are up again, I guess. ...What a foolish policy then... nothing to do with search anymore.

[SEOGuru]

it almost seems like Yahoo is now a paid inclusion site though "officially" they would never say that.

By the way, I just paid the $300 right now to be listed in the directory. Not that I really wanted to give them the money but if it got back in the SERPs, I'll make back the money in a few days. Also, we can use it as case study. If I'm relisted, well, that will say a lot won't it? lol

The only thing I absolutely refuse to do is join their SiteMatch program. Isn't the entire POINT of being listed in the natural listings to get FREE traffic? If you have to pay them $0.30 every time someone clicks your link, what is the point in that? You may as well do PPC.

[Arnie]

it almost seems like Yahoo is now a paid inclusion site though "officially" they would never say that.

Code word "Charlie" hahaha....
"cheap charlie" would be a more appropiate term.

[Las Vegas Homes]

How can you tell if any of the natural results are paid inclusions? Sorry if this is a dumb question but I dont know the answer. Thanks for the answers in advance.

[Arnie]

Use the web search tool and check your(or any other) keywords, then take a title or link from the results and check it under directory search.

There is perhaps no chance to say if that it is a paid inclusion or not, since Y offers free inclusion to their directory too, but it's very likely.
So it looks like a directory listing is obligatory for Y's web search results and that has nothing to do with web search anymore.

[Arnie]

I just found two sites on top that are not included in the directory. - Under review? - or could it be that they act on complaints? Or do they include their sponsors in natural listings at the top?