I subscribed to the CO-OP network and added several web sites, including 2 forums listed in DMOZ, representing several thousands of pages with the ads of the CO-OP network. I pointed the backlinks to a page that doesn't have the ads. I never touch this page, it is basically a web design company web site. Last week, Google apdated its index and my sites doesn't appear in the SERP anymore. It has now a PR0, and Google reports that it has only 45 backlinks Has this happened to you? Has Google learned a new algorythm to detect CO-OP networks?
One of my sites recently drop'd from google rankings but I assumed it was sandboxed since it was only 2 months old
As far as I know the Co op is not intended to increase nor decrease your PR. The co op DOES help with SERPs. Probably a natural algorithm update or I have heard that they are tweaking the toolbar. Check your PR again? I have have nothing but positive results from the co op
The co-op is not about links or PageRank. If that's what you are looking for, you are looking in the wrong place.
Some story like this concerns me, as I'm about to start running co-op ads. Are you sure that your PR is gone because of co-op ads?
I think it is VERY unlikely that your problems are anything to do with CO-OP - unfortunately, when something goes wrong people are too quick to associate this problem with the coop. I'd suggest that you remove your ads and close your account if you are concerned. That way you can concentrate on looking at other areas of your own optimisation, rather than a network, that for many has provided excellent results.
You know.... I was going to write something here but I think that says it all.... can we post that statement to everyone that joins? My 2¢: I have noticed an extreme increase in the amount of traffic to our website since joining the network. I have seen ALL of our keyword phrases in most of the search engines go up in rank, not just the keyword phrases that we use in the coop. Our website has been deindexed from 1 database of MSN's. We are in no way blaming this on the coop. We have 22,400 backlinks in Yahoo however this does not seem to help our rankings get past 22 in yahoo. We, again, are not blaming this on the coop. We are noticing traffic from search engines we never knew existed for the keyword phrases we optimized for in the coop. We contacted MSN about the problem with the deindexing however, what a bunch of not wanting to work, go around any question idiots! And the biggest problem is that they really feel that they have answered your question.... How did they ever get to be one of the biggest companies in the World!
Wayne, Are you listed in the Y! directory? If not it is likely that a listing would immediately boost you much higher than 22 (personal experience, they're hand tweaking certain serps).