Can you BAN a competitor?

I've already finished this show. I'm not repeating myself.

Thank you very much, you've been a fine audiance!


Cheers.

 

Arguments aside, the outcome of this is practically going to determine whether or not Yahoo has some showstopping issues with its filters. Quite a few coop members command an immense amount of weight which can potentially be used to drop sites entirely from search engines.

It just dawned on me that there's a double edge effect with using weight to drop competitors from Yahoo entirely: by putting a theoretical 100k weight on another site to remove their listing from Yahoo, won't you be subsequently increasing their Google and MSN SERPs (potentially enough to counter the loss of Yahoo as a traffic source altogether)?

Either way, I'm keen to hear the outcome, as I'm sure many others are.

 

That was my fear Art. Which is why I picked a competitor that was already doing well in Google and MSN. (so I couldn't really help them that much)

I also made sure that the link text was not their primary keyword. So basically I want the massive amounts of links to trip the filter while limiting the positive effect it may have in Google and MSN using their anchor text. Actually if it was a "travel" site and you sent a million links with the text link "power tools" it could actually HURT them in Google and MSN too. Not sure about that though.

 

Good point.

In relation to hurting their Google rankings (I'm not quite sure about MSN), it really depends on what school of thought you subscribe to, do we truly know that backlinks can have ANY sort of negative effect upon a site? (if you ignore the first "talentless hack" Google bomb as an example ;p). I'm excluding Yahoo in this question, since their logic seems to be immensely flawed. We'll find out I guess.

How long did it approximately take before you noticed your site drop? Has Yahoo made any attempt to fix the situation or do they just not care?

 

My site rose to top 3 in 250+ keywords and was just GONE one day about 10 days ago when the Charlie update hit. It didn't drop slowly then disappear, it just vanished.

I paid the $299 to get into the Directory and was approved. My thought was that since it was a hand-review of my site it might help me in getting back into the SERPs. NO GO. They don't care.

So I emailed Yahoo using the yahoo team email address and the form on their site. No response.

I know I'm not the only one who was affected. A lot of you were, but I guess I decided that I'm going to take a proactive approach. Basically see if I can use this situation in a positive way. Maybe we can find out for sure if this is the reason, and heck maybe I can deliver a deathblow to my competitor in the process (at least in Yahoo).

 

They added you to the directory AFTER you were banned? Were you actually added?

 

Yeah, that is why I did it. I figured if they could hand review me and add me to the Directory AFTER I was banned (about 4 days ago) then I should be reincluded into the SERPs. But I guess not. Maybe it is a different division or something.

 

coopGuy, I find it terrible that you are playing with your competitors SERP's! Why not use one of your sites?

You have a theory that the coop kills SERP's, then you publicaly point your weight at your competitor, that is unethical. I hope this thread will loose you any faith in the eyes of DP users.

Act like a professional and have some ethics. Of course you will get picked up on the filters if you pick up a few millions links in 2 months.

 

It looks like it might just be possible to ban a competitor from both Yahoo and MSN using co-op weight.

 

I think it's clear that Yahoo hates coop. They used to love it, and one of my sites was ranked #1 in Yahoo for some sweet keywords for a few months with basically nothing but coop weight going for it. Now you can't find it in yahoo for even the most obscure keywords. The coop weight was nothing new, Yahoo just changed the way the react to it. I bet you can get someone banned from Yahoo with enough coop weight (but the more links they have already, the more coop weight it would take.

 

I HAVE used my own sites. 3 of them are banned. But that will not get Yahoo's attention. They need to know that their little update can be used maliciously. That is what gets headlines and gets their attention. Google seems to have realized this long ago.

You certainly have a right to your opinion ServerUnion. I have no ethical dilemma whatsoever with fighting back against a competitor that has screwed me over for years. This isn't a random site I picked. I know these people personally and they have done some seriously underhanded stuff to my companies over the years.

You say "of course you will get picked up on the filers if you pick up a few million links". That is my point though. Google and MSN don't ban you for even 5 million added links. Google will just devalue them so there is little benefit (especially if they disappear like the coop links do). Yahoo is screwed up and I'm going to prove it to them (or try anyway). Even if I have to send out press releases to media organizations with the results of this test.

The funny thing is when people think it is criminal. I can't remember someone going to jail for search engine optimization. I'm not talking about copyright infringement, or getting them banned via the DMCA. I'm just pointing links to them.

It is hilarious really when I think about it. Do you know how many people actually PURCHASE thousands of links? They spend THOUSANDS of dollars to do so and hire SEO companies to create pages for them, they join link exchanges and spend hundreds of hours trying to get links etc. Here I am GIVING a company millions of links. Regardless of my intent, the whole thing is just hypocritical compared to the reality of the SEO Industry. Heck, maybe I should call them up and ask them if they are willing to pay me for them. haha

I could have just as easily told you, "I really like this company and I want to help them out by giving them free 'advertising' and links". Had Yahoo not done this update, that would have been seen as OK, even if I was still "PLAYING WITH THEIR RANKING". In fact weren't we playing with the ranking of that charity site that Shawn pointed all of those links to? Sure, the intention was good, but ultimately it hurt the site.

Furthermore, this theory has NOT been proven yet. It is only a hunch based on what I've heard other people say and what my sites have experienced. What if there really is no filter? What if I just gave them a million links for free and it helped them? Oh, THEN it would be ok because I'm helping them right? haha

I don't pretend to be an angel. For those that have private messaged me and know my websites, they also know that my sites are very legit sites, with separate corporations behind each one. I don't have a bunch of affiliate spammy sites. And as a business owner, I am going to do what I need to do to survive in this new search marketplace. If my competitors can't defend themselves, that honestly is not my problem. I'm not taking their site DOWN. We aren't talking about a Denial of Service attack. We are talking about rankings in the NATURAL listings, something that was free to begin with. Maybe they should do a PPC campaign instead.

 

coopGuy:

Are your 300 domains registered to the same owner?

Are they cross-linked to the extent that an SE would logically assume they are controlled by the same entity?

Is each site on a different class C sub-net?

Do they have any page attributes (layout templates, css definitions, file names, etc.) distinctly in common?

/*tom*/

 

coopGuy, I just prefer to take the high road on these matters. Lowering ethics and values to meet an attack always seems to come back to bite you. In the end, words cannot defend action.

 

Good luck to you as well ServerUnion

I need not defend my position any more than I have. I have not tried to gloss over or shy away from what I am doing. Everyone knows exactly what I'm doing and why. It really is none of my concern if people have a problem with it.

 

No need to defend, you are right, your position is clear.

 

Actually Tom, they are on different IPs on different C-Blocks, registered on different dates by a proxy company, controlled by 3 different corporations. They have unique content with randomly created CSS file and style names, randomly created directory structures, randomly created non-reciprocal linking schemes, with different layouts and color versions, with automatic Google Sitemaps, OPML files, and RSS feeds created each day for unique pages also created each day that are automatically pinged via 4 different methods.

 

You certainly covered all the bases.

This should then be a very accurate test. There's a similar one going on at http://forums.seochat.com/showthread.php?t=38501&page=4&pp=15 starting with post #53.

It will be very interesting to compare results. The other test targets G, but we'll get a chance to see how all 3 SEs respond.

/*tom*/

 

I know of a site that is a blatent spammer that dominates MSN. I would love to see them and all their clone site go away. I am very interested in this "experiment" and if anyone wants to knock out a spammer with co-op weight just send me a PM.

 

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that the co-op could knock someone out of MSN. I think right now it will only effect Yahoo.

 

My link total in Yahoo went up by another 100,000 today. This is nuts. I have NONE of my weight pointing to my site anymore. I'm actually trying to lose links and I can't.