It's a choice. Make an informed decision and go with whatever you decide. 1. I think anyone who is trying to convince himself/herself that the Coop is not a "link exchange scheme" is in denial. 2. That said, Google at least is unlikely to ban you for Coop links. As I said above, if they decide to take action (or have taken action) they will do what they usually do, which is to ignore such links, meaning you'll get no benefit from any incoming Coop links. Part of the reason for this is that, as others have stated, if Google were to more actively penalize Coop links it would be too easy to knock out a competitor by pointing your Coop weight at that site. 3. I never had 300K in Coop weight to sling around as some people here seem to do but my experiment over several months with using Coop on two sites convinced me that there was an initial benefit but that by late 2005 it wasn't helping any more. At that point, given some of what I was seeing and reading regarding Google's response to link buying and selling, I decided to discontinue the practice. 4. I saw no loss in SE rankings or PR or anything else at all noticeable after discontinuing the Coop program.
Nor did I. I stopped running ads and figured I'd drop quite a bit. The words I was targetting dropped a few slots, but certainly not the apocolyptic drop I had expected.
No. That doesn't mean I'm here to trash the Coop or advise anyone else to dump it. I just made a decision for my own sites based on personal observations and discontinued my involvement.
please post the email... there is enough speculation and rumor going on here so any facts would be helpful
shoe, concerning your previous penalty because of too much internal linking, what is considered too much in that case? Will it be ok to have 5, 10, 20 random links to your other sites on every page, what do you think? I definitely don't have as much experience with coop as some of your here, but can say it worked fine for me sor far. I did a ranking experiment couple weeks ago, I pointed 60K weight to one old site to improve the rankings, it didn't help at first, then I spread this weight along the site's pages (so it was around 5K for each page) and my site started to appear in msn top 10 and in the top 20 in google. It's a highly competitive and very lucrative term, so I'd say it can be called a success. What I've learned from this though, is that it's better to spread the weight across different pages of the site, instead of just pointing it to one url, I think google also measures a ratio of internal links (links to other pages of the site, excep the main page) and includes it in the algorithm.. ~MG
First response was an auto-response. I posed the question as to why a respected site was removed from Yahoo's index. One that I do no use for SEO activities... Just a hobby that has been indexed for a long time. Here is the auto response: Just an FYI, I am not going to post all this in one posting.
Next I followed proceedure and the links provided in the automated email. Included below is my response (at the bottom of the reply) and the reply from an actual Yahoo employee.
I went on to address each of the TOS questions and asked specifically with regards to the Coop. Here again is the response, and my comments that brought about this response.
Finally after following Sky's advice and seeking help from the links he provided, I was sent the following:
No, no one every specifically states anything specific. But I just read between the lines and have taken it for what it is worth. Just an FYI, this paricular site has never been allowed back in Yahoo's index. This email converstation took place in Septmeber of last year (2005) btw.
Mia- I guess I am confused.. I thought you said you got a email from yahoo saying your site was banned for the digitalpoint coop ?
I took the assumption it was as I could find no other reason and given the repsonses I got, I still take that assumption. I like the Coop and use it, in moderation and have no similar problems with Google, MSN, etc.. No no one every specifically said anything about the coop being the cause. But I doubt I would ever get a specific response. What I did do however was run through every part of the site in question and check/double check for every possible TOS violation. The only TOS violation I "assumed" was the links that rotated at the bottom of the site. To be clear, each of the sites I have had banned from Yahoo had NO COOP weight pointed at them. They did however have Coop ads running on them. Whether that is the cause, again, anyone's guess. I'm not worried or upset about it, and would certainly not discourage anyone from using the Coop as a result. My traffic rarely if ever comes from Yahoo. Now I have had people say similar things to me in confidence. With all things SEO and otherwise... YMMV!!!
I also stopped using Coop relatively recently for a couple of reasons. I was afraid that I'd lose many of high rankings, but that didn't turn out to be the case. BTW, I had about 10k+ weight at one time. With regard to Google penalty, we probably need to wait and see how they'll set up their bots in the coming weeks (or months).