Big update, what happened?

fryman

Jul 20th 2005, 6:06 am

Ok, I'm not interested in hearing about your new rankings, you can go post those here http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=21886

What I would like to discuss is what just happened... this is a very weird update, there seems to be a hard algo tweak from Yahoo. Searchenginewatch says that Yahoo sudenly went back to their usual algo of on-page optimization... and I must say I agre to that, keyword density seems to be playing a top role in the new rankings.

I also noticed that when targeting double keywords, like "blue widgets", I am now ranked in very good spots for "widgets", sometimes ranking top 10.

Any other comments?

nohaber

Jul 20th 2005, 6:27 am

I have good rankings with almost zero on-page optimization on Yahoo. IMO, Yahoo is still in its infancy as a search engine being a basic combo of Link Popularity(importance) and Information Retrieval(specificity) score. The way I think Yahoo operates is this:
1. they recalculate link pop scores and we see big jumps as is now
2. the other time, the simply expand their index. Changes in SERPs are due to anchor text, on page SEO and new/removed pages

I view Yahoo SERPs as this:
- they change a little daily mainly based on new found anchor text links
- unless you wait for the next link popularity update, you won't see huge improvements for competitive keywords

In the years, my rankings have always climbed slowly and made a couple of big jumps in the updates.

kalius

Jul 20th 2005, 6:29 am

I think On-page stuff is more inportant. I have a non competitive term I have incomming links with that anchor text, but I dont have that text exactly on the page. my rank for it is N/A on tracker.

mjewel

Jul 20th 2005, 7:13 am

Searchenginewatch says that Yahoo sudenly went back to their usual algo of on-page optimization...

I have a general cateogry site that used to sell "blue widgets" but about 6 months ago, I moved all the "blue widets" to another domain that I've owned for 6 years. The new site now only has "blue widets" and is ranked well in MSN and Google. Yahoo initially indexed about 500 pages and ranked it #5 - #8. After adding the co-op (which may be a coincidence) yahoo dropped all but 1 page and hasn't sent any traffic to the new site in about 2 months. Both sites are custom coded, proprietary product- nothing to do with affiliate products.

The old site doesn't mention "blue widgets" or even have related keywords- and hasn't for about 6 months. The only link to the old site that mentions "blue widgets" is a DMOZ listing.

This new Yahoo update now lists the old site #2 for this highly, highly, competitive keyword that hasn't existed for 6 months on the site- while the new site that has only "Blue Widgets" still only show has one page indexed and of course, doesn't rank for the term.

The yahoo ranking makes no sense unless it is giving a huge amount of weight to the DMOZ listing- but even that doesn't make sense because there are thousands of DMOZ listings that mention this competitive keyword.

There is also no obvious connection between both of these sites. While I own both, one is in a business name and the other isn't. They are with different hosts, on different class C ip's. The only similarity is that while the addresses are different, they are both in the same city. The only other possible connection is that they both run adsense and have the same "ID" in the code.

Really odd, but it certainly has nothing to do with on-page optimization in my case. Unless Yahoo is using 6 month old data, I am at a loss.

ferret77

Jul 20th 2005, 7:17 am

i jumped a lot on sites where i added more keyword dense content

GuyFromChicago

Jul 20th 2005, 7:23 am

i jumped a lot on sites where i added more keyword dense content

And on the flip side, some of my sites where I haven't changed anything on page in months got a bump in the rankings. All I've done for those sites is add more links.

mystikmedia

Jul 20th 2005, 12:26 pm

I am seeing the more importance for onpage factors on this side too.

stimpsy

Jul 20th 2005, 1:02 pm

My opinion, is they did some kind of rollback, prior to the last update. I work for a SEO company, and all the sites I've worked on from the last update to now, have all been deindexed. Now, the pages are back in the SERP.

It looks they realized the last update was sucky-sucky, and they simply decided to go back to the old index, and to start a new update using different factors..

OnPage still seems to be the major factor....

crazyhorse

Jul 20th 2005, 1:08 pm

stimpsy

Jul 20th 2005, 1:14 pm

Crazyhorse, I'm not stating that the index you currently see is the old one. I'm only saying they have reverted to the old index, and they then have started a new update. So, the pages that were indexed from the last update to now were initally gone from the index. Now the pages are back up again, with a BL update, but the SERP do not reflect it yet. IMO...

longcall911

Jul 20th 2005, 2:14 pm

I saw what I think are these new SERPs for about 2 days roughly 3 weeks ago. And, they are definitely not any 'old' SERPs at least not for my kws and not for the last 7 months.

On-page, specifically density does seem to be the key, but I'm only about 65% confident in that statement.

At this point, I haven't figured out anything better :-)

/*tom*/

smindsrt

Jul 20th 2005, 2:55 pm

On-page, specifically density does seem to be the key, but I'm only about 65% confident in that statement.
/*tom*/

Tom-

We have a site that is a very competitive real estate KW and it moved up to #5 with about 1% KW density. To us it almost kind of feels like a small sandbox. Several of our clients sites are now on the first page....... like five sites and numerous KW's all overnight. (Small Yahoo Sandbox, IMO)

Still very much link based. :D

Stuart

smindsrt

Jul 20th 2005, 3:12 pm

BTW, I'm seeing two sets of SERPS for Yahoo right now. One KW has a 31 position differnece.... probably depending on the DC.

yo-yo

Jul 20th 2005, 3:52 pm

IMO - sitewides aren't working after this update - I've had two sites steadily ranking with just sitewides - they're both gone from the top 50 :(

smindsrt

Jul 20th 2005, 3:54 pm

IMO - sitewides aren't working after this update - I've had two sites steadily ranking with just sitewides - they're both gone from the top 50 :(

Good job Yo-Yo! I would tend to agree they have been devauled in Yahoo.

longcall911

Jul 20th 2005, 7:52 pm

To us it almost kind of feels like a small sandbox. Interesting.... that explanation could also fit my situation, if by sandbox we are talking about a 'too many links too quick' filter.

I have been reasonably aggressive in link building, in addition to lowering my kw density a bit. Either one could be the cause of a drop from #1 to #3.

There's one other possibility I can think of. In the past, I have seen my site fall during an update, only to re-take the same or better rank once the update has completed.

So, maybe it is best to see what shakes out over the next week or so before jumping to conclusions.

/*tom*/

PinoyIto

Jul 20th 2005, 8:29 pm

It seems onpage have the biggest factor on this update.

iskandar

Jul 20th 2005, 10:43 pm

yo-yo

Jul 20th 2005, 10:50 pm

Spammers won the day ....I will wait until the end of update to comment on it because the SERP are looking very very stupid and funny right now.
However i think that onpage factor is highly important so far...that's why spammer won the day.
Hope by the end of update the index go reliable again ......

This is most likely (at least i hope) one of those 2-3 day "things" they do and everything changes again. My $$/earned today just decreased by 300% :(

iskandar

Jul 20th 2005, 10:58 pm

me too .. i'm back to zero.had only 1 click the whole day ( what a joke!) .. my ranks are replaced by a lot of spammer/irrelevant site. But i'm holding my breath and hope that it's temporary

ferret77

Jul 21st 2005, 7:32 am

I guess as a spammer I am very happy with the new results

pretty much across the board on my sites using standard seo

1) increased keyword density
2) reciprocal anchor text links

I have seen improvements

on sites which I ran coop ad I saw either major increases in rankings or major decreases

chachi

Jul 21st 2005, 8:46 am

I think Ferret77 hit the nail on the head. I think on-page stuff can help, but the real winner is anchor text. I saw not-too-competitive stuff with only on-page jump a bit, but the big gains came from increased links and anchor text.

joeychgo

Jul 21st 2005, 8:53 am

I have seen NO changes whatsoever...

.

chachi

Jul 21st 2005, 9:20 am

No soup for you! :)

debunked

Jul 21st 2005, 9:58 am

I made no changes to the pages that have jumped up in Yahoo's serps. These are pages optimized for google, that mostly are top ten in google and now are climbing to the top in Yahoo.

crazyhorse

Jul 21st 2005, 10:26 am

Still no changes. Shawn's advertising pages doesn't show up on Yahoo as well. Neither are some of my pages. Maybe its the number of links gained over a certain period of time. I know that someone from here ranks really well on the term "photography" and has used the coop before.

Doppy

Jul 21st 2005, 12:01 pm

This is most likely (at least i hope) one of those 2-3 day "things" they do and everything changes again. My $$/earned today just decreased by 300% :(
Your earnings went down 300%? So you're actually losing twice as much money as you used to make?

kdb003

Jul 21st 2005, 12:19 pm

Your earnings went down 300%? So you're actually losing twice as much money as you used to make?
i was thinking the same thing(that sucks)

stimpsy

Jul 21st 2005, 12:25 pm

Guess he meant his earnings are down to 33% of what they used to be..(?)

yo-yo

Jul 21st 2005, 12:37 pm

Yeh I'm bad with math :D

Lets just say yesterday I did about 1/3 of what i usually do :(

Doppy

Jul 21st 2005, 2:07 pm

That's what I figured -- I'm just giving you a hard time :D

Though it sounds like you've already got one :(

Roze

Jul 22nd 2005, 5:03 pm

My backlinks (according to Keyword Tracker, yahoo all) have jumped from about 1700 to 3600 and slurp has used almost 200MB's of bandwidth in the past few days and hit 12,000 pages. (I'm not sure I have 12,000 pages unless it's duplicating VBulletin threads, both the "live" version and the archives).

Also, Yahoo finally noticed a few keywords I've been trying to incorporate into the site but they're not top 10 yet.

fryman

Jul 22nd 2005, 5:04 pm

Yesterday I lost my first new ranking... I was #3 for "hair loss", now I'm on page 2

So, I guess they really are still working on their update

iskandar

Jul 22nd 2005, 6:52 pm

They should. If not no one would use yahoo anymore since their search results have been pathetic this week

PinoyIto

Jul 24th 2005, 3:23 am

one of my site got 6000 pages index and 300K Link Popularity this update but the sad thing is that all my keywords which rank good before the update are gone. And now no more traffic from yahoo.

crazyhorse

Jul 24th 2005, 3:27 am

one of my site got 6000 pages index and 300K Link Popularity this update but the sad thing is that all my keywords which rank good before the update are gone. And now no more traffic from yahoo.

Same here . My linkpopularity is enormous as well on Yahoo. More like then on any other engine as far i can check of course. 70k indexed number of pages brings me about 10 visitors a day. :p

shareaway

Jul 24th 2005, 7:30 am

same story here (although not 70K of pages, geez), not sure what the deal is, maybe overoptimization? i didn't think you could with yahoo. I'm starting to get nervous it's not going to change. I'll wait a few more days and then maybe do something.

Cyclops

Jul 24th 2005, 7:34 am

Yesterday I lost my first new ranking... I was #3 for "hair loss", now I'm on page 2It looks like shoemoney took over your spot :D .

I just watched his poker video ;)

fryman

Jul 24th 2005, 7:54 am

Is the hairlosshelp.com site his? I must admit, it is way better than mine :D

PinoyIto

Jul 24th 2005, 10:08 am

if those site with lot of pages index and high link pop don't get good position from the serp so what is the factor now to get good rank.

Any one can figure out what's yahoo algo using this update?

yo-yo

Jul 24th 2005, 5:25 pm

For some reason I get the feeling it might be "new" links that get the most weight however some people here's results disagree... I have a site with a huge amount of link pop and tons of the links have the anchor for my kw. I was ranking top 3 for 6 months and now poof I'm gone... The only thing that changed from this update to the others that I haven't done is build more links... so it has no "new" links coming in...

shareaway

Jul 24th 2005, 6:47 pm

I have ALL new links, huge increase in backlinks, but no traffic. I'm starting to think it has more to do with the update not rolling out completely. I was thinking maybe there was a sandbox type thing for new pages. Does anybody have newly indexed pages doing well? that would prove my theory wrong. I don't really think there's a sandbox anyways. I dunno, that's the only thing I could think might be up.

Cyclops

Jul 24th 2005, 7:30 pm

For some reason I get the feeling it might be "new" links that get the most weight...You may be right....one of my sites has gained new links over the past three months by my submitting to directorys and coop links. It had been drooping but now its on the way back up.
I don't really think there's a sandbox anywaysWith my limited knowledge I would have to agree. I have three new sites, around three months old which for PR are at 3 + 4.
Some people would call the 3 month period where they had no Pagerank the sandbox......but how can anybody expect a site to rank straight away.
It takes time for all the pieces to come together.

PinoyIto

Jul 24th 2005, 7:44 pm

Well my site is 8 months old but the pages index are all new only end of last month and this last month. I don't know if that is the reason the pages index is not old enough in their database.

I have ALL new links, huge increase in backlinks, but no traffic. I'm starting to think it has more to do with the update not rolling out completely. I was thinking maybe there was a sandbox type thing for new pages. Does anybody have newly indexed pages doing well? that would prove my theory wrong. I don't really think there's a sandbox anyways. I dunno, that's the only thing I could think might be up.

longcall911

Jul 25th 2005, 5:16 pm

For some reason I get the feeling it might be "new" links that get the most weight ...I've probably doubled by links in the past 6 months and I slipped from #1 to #3. Go figure.....

In my kw group, it is the older, less active (in terms of SEO) sites that improved.

/*tom*/

toocoolforschool

Jul 25th 2005, 10:06 pm

They indexed about half of my site (about 4000 pages), up from the 18 pages they had for the first month and a half. Nice. Too bad they don't send all that much visitors to me...

fryman

Jul 26th 2005, 1:13 am

Ouch... damn Yahoo, just lost a keyword that was earning me 30 bucks a day with adsense... :mad:

gford

Jul 26th 2005, 5:05 am

I didn't go through all the pages, to see if this was posted.

http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000158.html

It gives some insight..

dazzlindonna

Jul 26th 2005, 7:33 am

yeah, fryman, today was a bad day for me. it looks like any gains i made in the past couple of months, just got reverted. any new rankings were lost again. for me, it's like it was a rollback.

debunked

Jul 26th 2005, 8:01 am

What's funny is when a newbie gets jealous of what i wrote here (http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=245685#post245685)

But he only signed his name - dork, but I couldn't find dork in the list, that is a strange name though, I wonder what it means. (I needed some other color besides green in the list, but I won't ask shoemoney what color it is -LOL)

Cyclops

Jul 26th 2005, 10:02 pm

But he only signed his name - dork, but I couldn't find dork in the list, that is a strange name though.He is calling you a dickhead :D

yo-yo

Jul 29th 2005, 2:53 pm

I'm seeing big changes again today... I'm back baby, I'm back!! :D

Web Gazelle

Jul 29th 2005, 7:20 pm

Is the update over yet? I hope to get some more nice rankings. ;)

smindsrt

Jul 29th 2005, 10:51 pm

Yes big changes again today. Lost some gained some.

Web Gazelle

Jul 30th 2005, 2:29 pm

I see a little slip for one KW now. Dang, can't afford that! I want to be number 1 in all three.

longcall911

Jul 30th 2005, 5:17 pm

For my main site, I had slipped from #1 to #3 for my most important phrase, but dropped to page 2 for most secondary terms.

This evening, my secondarys are all back to top 4 positions pretty much across the board.

Before 7:00pm tonight I thought this was a horrible update, loaded with irrelevant results. Now, an hour later, I see this is a great update with the most relevant results Yahoo history! :-)

/*tom*/

ferret77

Jul 30th 2005, 5:24 pm

i think its funny when people say stuff like

"my site just jumped to number one, and by the way yahoo is best search engine there is, great relevant results"

For some reason peoples ranking seems to directly corresond to quality of a search engine and its results.

fryman

Jul 30th 2005, 5:29 pm

Actually, Yahoo has one of the worst results I have seen...

I am still monitoring the keyword "acne". Do a search and just take a look at that .ru site that is all over the first and second page

Can't get worse than that.

ferret77

Jul 30th 2005, 5:56 pm

that .ru comes up for some of my terms too

for awhile there is this other guy, who has a sub domain for every city and state, and he had results 7-15 locked down for one of my terms. And all them where redirects

Las Vegas Homes

Jul 31st 2005, 2:19 pm

I dont know what yahoo is up to, but whatever it is I wish they would stop. The results are terrible and for the most part not very relevant. The real estate industry has been turned upside down in yahoo. Some very good sites that have been number 1 for some time in several markets are now nowhere to be found.

Web Gazelle

Jul 31st 2005, 2:52 pm

Every .ru site must been destroyed! :mad:

longcall911

Jul 31st 2005, 3:33 pm

i think its funny when people say stuff like

"my site just jumped to number one, and by the way yahoo is best search engine there is, great relevant results".

That was the point of my post.... as Rodney Dangerfield would say "these are called jokes" :-)

/*tom*/

iskandar

Jul 31st 2005, 5:22 pm

Yahoo really sucks!

It appears to me that Yahoo is putting more emphasis on sites that has more links than contents.

Currently good SERPS are obtained by pages that has tons of links to the search topic. It does not have to contain any info whatsoever. This sucks!

Why should I search yahoo for something like "acne" and be presented by a bunch of pages that lead me to more "acne" links? Stupid and crazy! They does not seem to care about the site's theme at all. To rank highly now, you just need to link other high ranking pages on that particular topic. Bloody absurd!

I hope this algo is temporary. If not I predict the demise of yahoo because the results have been weak and highly questionable. Thinking about it has lead to acne all over my face

MobileP

Jul 31st 2005, 5:29 pm

i think it's very easy to be no1 on yahoo. get 10 domains and use this code provided by the top spamers on the net.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0">
<meta name="ProgId" content="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<title>long title + keywords</title>
<META http-equiv=description content="a long desc with keywords">
<META http-equiv=keywords content="keywords">
<META NAME="Classification" content="more keywords here">

<META name=revisit-after content="7 DAYS" >
<META name=robots content="index, follow, all" >
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="PopUnder.js"></script>

</head>
<frameset rows="10%,*" framespacing="0" frameborder="0" border="0">
<frame name="header" scrolling="no" src="top.htm" noresize target="main" src="" FRAMEBORDER="0" FRAMESPACING="0" BORDER="0">
<frame name="main" src="link" FRAMEBORDER="0" FRAMESPACING="0" BORDER="0">
<noframes>
<body>

<p>This page uses frames, but your browser doesn't support them.</p>
</body>
</noframes>
</frameset>
</html>

btw is this black hat? What'S blackhat anyway? i never learned this technique and as i see 10 pages with similar - POOR content and almost the same title(just the domain in the title was changed) before mine i think these spammers are getting away pretty good with it.

I was no.1 before the update for a very good keyword, now i'm on page 3 with 0 traffic. Oh well :) The biggest part i don'T understand is, the keyword isn't even on their pages? they are just using som af code as the "frame link source" How is this possible?

Web Gazelle

Aug 1st 2005, 8:41 am