Banned For Being #1

Thanks alot for that info, although I find it humorious the phrase you chose and why DP wouldn't be #1. Good point though!
I have tried the same thing with mine and I'm not as sucessfull as the example you show, it appears as though I'm completely banned from organic SERPS only.

 

I fully agree that DP should be #1 for that paragraph long search phrase I used, and for thousands of other terms that they are not showing up for. My point here was that if someone is talking about a lawsuit that's based on being banned from the index all Yahoo would have to provide is something like I did - show a result set that includes the site that's allegedly been banned.

 

Well I am running out of ideas for this. As a matter of fact I've decided today that I'm telling my mommy on them .

 

You and me both. I think there are 3 possibilities:

1) These results are due to some sort of manual intervention by Yahoo. I don't think this is the case, but that's just my opinion.

2) Yahoo has it's own "supplemental" index and for some reason sites that should not be included in it are.

3) Yahoo's algo is f***ed and it's impacting a relatively small (in comparision to the number of sites indexed) group of sites that at face value don't have many common on or off page factors.

There could be other reasons too...these are just the first 3 that popped into my head.

Anyone else know of any other large, popular (couple hundred thousand + backlinks) sites with primarily original content that is not ranking for it's own name?

 

I'm not surprised. I had a 100% Pure Spam eBay affiliate page that got as high as #3 on Google for the term "ebay" - it was on page 1 for a month, and now the entire domain has been completely banned from Yahoo for over 2 months. There is nothing else spammy anywhere on the domain, which is a legit business site.

 

Banned as in the site doesn't rank for the terms you would like it to or banned as in it can't be found in Yahoo's serps no matter what you search for or how deep you dig?

Is this the same site you mentioned in the “Here's Yahoo's reply to my request to get unbanned” thread?

 

Banned as in no pages are returned in any searches at all. It still shows up (albeit with a way-too-low page count) if you do a site:domain.com search but I cranked up the Keyword Tracker to 100 and it still does not rank for any words at all - I tried a bunch that it should be on page 1 for, even terms like the name of the company, products, etc.

Same site in my other post? No, but one of the two where exactly the same thing happened. I've done spammy stuff in the past on both sites and am on the long, long, long, long road to recovery.

Stupid decision to put spammy stuff on domains that you actually care about and need for other reasons. A lesson hard learned.

 

I don't think it is an algo issue, I personally think these are direct targets for one reason or another.

Each of these sites, briandunning.com, digitalpoint.com, both were ranking #1 for just about any related term you could think of, and now they don't even rank #1 for a keyword search including their name.

If you run a site search on yahoo for:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=si...om&fr=FP-tab-web-t-297&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site:www.briandunning.com&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t-297&fl=0&x=wrt

None of these pages are cached, with the exception of the main domain, and the title is the anchor text used to link to them... I feel it is something more than "just a F-ed up algo", but not going as far as saying they were manually targetted.

 

Look at #8.

Same thing as DP. It will show up in the serps, just not where it *should* for what it *should*.

 

My conclusion to all of this is these sites are definately targetting for assassination by Y! I can see similarities in ALL cases. In fact, when I emailed Y! they confirmed my ban.

For me I am pretty certain on what triggered this but am reluctant to say as it may NOT be true. What I can say is I haven't been doing it for 4 months now and still no serps! (I am assuming my infraction).

All I'm saying is tell me why? This site has lots of unique content, been online since 1999, Y! directory most popular, ranked in top ten with all other SEs, sells top of the line B to B products with money back guarantee, Alexa 5 star rating, over 100/k invested in programming...on and on! I have thoroughly checked my competitors out and the funtionality of this site blows most away! So Y! is not only taking away from me but also it's search users.

I have also joined site match to see if it would make a difference. I was accepted Monday and can see 0 refferers from Y to date! So now I'm not only banned from serps but ripped off for $100 .

 

That send a bad example that no matter the effort we put on our site marketing Big $$$ will always outrank us.

 

Wish I would have found this thread earlier. My main site is going through the same Yahoo crap as the other listed here. Entire website is still indexed, and I still have all of my backlinks showing. I just don't rank for anything at all anymore. Overnight our Yahoo referrals dropped to zero. We had more top 10 rankings that I would ever care to count, and we have never used anything that anyone would consider unethical. Then, gone....

I emailed yahoo, and the best I have gotten out of them was "It has been determined that your site may not comply with Yahoo!'s Content Quality Guidelines located at:". I don't even have a positive confirmation that our site is banned or anything else.

Because this is so unprecedented and without any justifiable reason that I can find, i still have to believe that it is some kind of error on Yahoo's part. Or yahoo just hates me and the rest of you. Probably wishful thinking, but its all I have with Yahoo right now.

 

I definetly agree with alot of your points..... Well said.....

This is exactly how I feel about it.... If it is algo related than there isn't much that I or even Yahoo could do about it, but once a site is targeted as I know my site was, this begin to hit a very gray area...

Yahoo should be in a position where they have to atleast explain why this happened...

If you take the 2 laws I listed into close consideration this is what I believe:

CALIFORNIA CODES
BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONS CODE
SECTION 13741

THE LAW:
13741. It is unlawful for any person or other legal entity to make
any deceptive, false, or misleading statement by any means whatever
regarding quality, quantity, performance, price, discount, or saving
in the sale or selling of any commodity regulated pursuant to this
chapter.

HOW THEY BROKE THIS LAW:
I believe that my site ranking #1 for such a long period of time created complaints from Yahoo PPC advertisers. Yahoo lied about quality in order to remove my site from their index. Now taking into consideration that directory listings, PPC ads, and paid algo submissions are all sold services and or commodities, which I participate in all of, makes this a business sale and or transaction and they should be honest with me about all aspects of my site when quality is dependent on where and which services they are delievering.

THE LAW
17001. The Legislature declares that the purpose of this chapter is
to safeguard the public against the creation or perpetuation of
monopolies and to foster and encourage competition, by prohibiting
unfair, dishonest, deceptive, destructive, fraudulent and
discriminatory practices by which fair and honest competition is
destroyed or prevented.

HOW THEY BROKE THIS LAW:
This one is very simple....
Yahoo used discriminatory practices to elliminate fair and honest competition which they blatently distroyed and are preventing by removing my site for no good reason.... If they would like to prove me wrong, than they will need to explain exactly why my site was removed. I'm going to want details and lots of them....

 

Join me at:

http://classactionyahoo.blogspot.com/

I know there are many of you here that have been affected by Yahoo's discriminatory practices.....

Share your stories.... I may need them.....

 

I agree with GuyFromChicago. It could be a sign that you were just seeing a fluke. I would give it some time.

 

Clasione, I think youre going about this in the wrong way..

 

They could atleast give me an answer..... I've been trying to talk with them for over a month.... Now the issue is also communication and the gross lack of it.......

Coming Soon: www.ClassActionYahoo.com

 

Your probably right... I probably am, but when people get jerked around by a company, they have the right to tell others about it... I was being nice about it.... Not saying anything, wiating for responces from Yahoo that have never came...

I'm getting alot of people telling me how they feel about this situation and similar situations that they have experienced... Some people are talking here in this thread and others are sending PM's and emails to me letting me know how much of a big deal they actually think this is.... Sometimes I just want to forget about it and move on because the site is still doing great, so this hasen't effected me that much, but others are telling me that this situation looks like something I should be acting on and shouldn't be swept under the rug......

 

Where you receiving a high number of visitors from Yahoo, and has it affected your income in a major way?

If the answer is no, then I'm with schlottke - don't waste time and money on it, move it on to another domain. If it's yes, then is the class action against Yahoo going to lend you with a dent in your pocket, because I think your going to have a testing time getting anywhere with this.

Search engines have no right to rank you No1. or No. 101 - you say you have a .net and .com domain name, could it be cross linking that has caused your the problems.

I've heard of people been penalised or banned by Yahoo because they have 2 or 3 sites linked together.

 

This is correct that they do have a policy for sites that cross link, but this site has been on two seperate domains for years... It is not cross linking to another site, just itself which happens to exist on another domain...
It should not be penilized for cross linking to itself... I have already tryed explaining this to Yahoo which they do not comment on... I'm simply not taking half the site down because it "might" be why this is happening... Even if this was happening, and it was completely algo related, I believe it would not be a big issue to make an exception when it is obvious that it is an additional section of the site.....

The.com version of the site is about 1,000 pages of news, info, and primarily static info while the .net half of the site is alll user interactive with forums and classifieds.... The site was seperate from the beginning for server reasons and it is not a linking scheme.. Now the .net half of the site is about 100,000 pages....

There are plenty of other big news sites that have half on one name and half on another or more and they are not effected...

I also believe if this was the problem, both halfs of the site would be effected, yet only the half that was holding the valuable spots has been effected, the .net has not seen a filter as far as I can see..........

Main:
www.longislandexchange.com

Interactive half:
www.longislandexchange.net/long-island-chat/
www.longislandexchange.net/classifieds/

It should be pretty clear that it's the same site just large...