Can you BAN a competitor?

I'm just throwing a bone out here and see what people think. OK, I know that no search engine is supposed penalize you for anything that you can't control (like links), but I gotta tell ya... that is exactly what it looks like Yahoo is doing.

Now technically you CAN control links, but how can Yahoo determine which links from other sites you control and which ones you don't. I've said this before but my site has been completley banned on yahoo. Was #1 on 250 keywords some returning 20+ million results. Had 1.4 MILLION links that have now dropped to about 850,000. I got most of these links in the last 90 days. Not all was from the co-op, maybe 30%. I do have over 200,000 weight distributed between a couple different sites (all of which are gone in Yahoo).

Doesn't that make you think... what if I pointed it to my competitor? What would happen? There is no other factor that I've done to get banned so one has to assume that it isn't simply having a ton of links but how fast you seem to get them. Plus co-op links aren't permanent so they keep dropping off every time Yahoo goes back to check those pages.

Just wondering what others think of the idea. I guess my concern is that though I might be able to get my competitors banned on Yahoo, do I risk HELPING them in Google and MSN. haha

 

I've said it to others before, point all your weight at my site however you want

I don't think Yahoo, MSN or Google will "ban" you for links pointing to your site. There's just soooooooo many reasons why that doesn't make sense.

 

Feel free to point it to any of my sites in my sig as an experiment

 

This has been discussed before. I'm pretty convinced that IBLs can *never* hurt you. As has been said before you can experiment by pointing your weight at my site

 

I believe yahoo is giving a penalty based on incoming links in "certain" circumstances. I also believe the coop can boost rankings in many circumstances. I think there is a filter that is triggered by an unknown combination of factors- not soley based on number of links.

Try searching for digitalpoint on Yahoo. They used to be #1.

Also, the experiment with the charity site that pointed weight towards it was also dropped out of yahoo after initially ranking pretty high.


This is just my opinion, as well as others, and many also disagree.

 

This would just be a simple casualty of the algo... like Yahoo wont hesitate banning a site that gets many links in a short period of time, even though it makes NO sense... still IMO it will happen in the current situation. BUT because your competitor would probably benefit more from very high serps in Google.. and the drop in Yahoo would be negligible in comparison to the benefit they will get, no one in their right mind would actually try such a stunt.

 

I agree. It would not makes sense to ban a site based on the number of back links they have.

 

I had the same thought the other day. Look at what happened to the "Charity" site when Shawn pointed 10,000 weight to it. It's now totally wiped out from Yahoo and MSN. It's a PR5 site, so you know it had some good backlinks and probably good SERP prior to the co-op experiment (since co-op does not improve your PR).

 

That is the point I was making. Logically, I think there is no way incoming links can hurt you but if it walks like a duck.....

These are experiements with control variables. What else has Digital Point done to disappear? A ton of great unique content. You have to look at the links.

The charity site is the same way. They probably didn't even know what happened but they dropped off the face of the earth as well and weren't doing any other "tricks".

Now... I understand that you may drop in a search for a keyword. For instance, maybe Yahoo simply DEVALUED all of those thousands of links and hence, you would drop in ranking in certain keywords. But that isn't what we are talking about here.
We are talking about not ranking in a search for your DOMAIN.

To me it seems like sites are getting completely dropped from the results (even if they aren't dropped from the INDEX). And there is a strong argument to the notion that massive inbound links in a short timeframe is the cause. I don't know for sure, but the information we've collected is pretty compelling.

 

I have a lot of weight.... I am willing to point my weight to any one of your sites to experiment this... pm your url and I yahoo position. I am willing to run this experiment.

 

If that truely is the case then Yahoo (SBC) aka Same Bad Company is not going to be around very long.

Does anyone really see a lot of traffic from Yahoo though?

I'd put them at number 3 and falling. MSN has already overtaken them IMHO. But what do you expect with a telco running the show

Here are the top 6 referrers for one of our larger sites:

1.http://www.google.com/75,640
2.http://search.msn.com/21,531
3.http://search.yahoo.com/20,320
4.http://forums.mccoypottery.com/15,222
5.http://lists.mccoypottery.com/10,905
6.http://aolsearch.aol.com/9,048

 

For my sites (prior to yahoo F**k up) it was:
Google: 385,612
Yahoo: 296,213
MSN: 104,750

Then again, I was ranked top 3 in 250+ keywords in Yahoo. The amazing part of those numbers is that I was only ranked on the first page of 3 keywords on Google and it still destroyed Yahoo and MSN.

 

I've been ranked pretty high in Google for my KW's, and still am. I have not really seen a change either way. Yes, I use the Coop, among other things. Either way, I did not see a huge influx from Yahoo in the past, and I have to say that I have not seen a change either up or down as of late.

 

I tend to agree somewhat with coopguy. I have a new site that was ranked in Yahoo at # 15 for its primary key phrase. I had only done some internal linking and added a few links from other sites.

These rankings I had in yahoo were stable and then I added A LOT of links to this site. The next day the site had drop from Yahoo. So I am under the impression that this could be the case.

Just to test this with Yahoo I tried this with another new site I have. It also ranked in yahoo for its primary key phrase # 26, the site is less than 10 days old, and was stable. The following day I pointed over 800 links at it, the site drop from Yahoo.

This may only be the case with new sites and it is some type of sandbox or link filter applied. Both of these sites the bots have been visiting every day and this includes google. I am going to try and remove some of those links and see what happens, if they pop back into yahoo then I will know.

 

i think yahoo is not happy with co-op links
and even it would have dropped those as you acquired them so quickly.
such a huge number in just 90 days could be a reason for that

 

MSN is getting better that yahoo. yahoo is slowest to index the pages and even updating the rankings on search engines.
i am finding that msn is the has done the best work in last couple of weeks.

just my opinion though

 

This is one thought that has not been mentioned as far as I know. We all need to remember that Yahoo is coming out with something to compete with google adsense. SO it would be in their best financial interest to make their results less relevant. Just food for thought.

 

I dont believe they have enough market share to risk doing something like that.

 

That maybe true, but it is food for thought. It will all play out soon enough.

 

If you think about it

how many people will really take the time and resources to point lots of links at a competitior,

the amount of times that would happen is probably so small that it would cause no noticeable change in index, especially if its done on some sort of sliding scale so big established sites would be be immune.

I think its very possible to penalize sites for who links to them, do you guys still see any blog spammers doing well in yahoo?