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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by yo-yo

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]

Originally Posted by spdude

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]

Originally Posted by GuyFromChicago

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]

Originally Posted by kalius

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?