Shawn- What if someone was pointing Co-op weight to a site and that site didn't want the co-op weight pointed to them? What would you do if anything?
I used to think that too ... but the word almost was added not so long ago to Google's Webmaster Facts/Fiction "There's almost nothing a competitor can do to harm your ranking or have your site removed from our index." And speaking from personal experience, I believe the ability to penalize a site with excessive 3rd party back links - i.e. Google Bowling - is real. I've actually seen this talked about as a tactic in the SEO contests - pattern seems to be send a ton of links against a site, which then gets an initial boost, but then it gets hammerred. Actually makes sense to me as a next-generation anti-web-spam technique in the continueing arms races beween SEO's and the search engines. Good way for Google to see what SEO's types are up to as link farms (or whatever) are exposed.
It would be difficult to validate that just one site doesn't want to receive coop links, let alone thousands of them. I can think of a couple ways to do it, but they're either labor-intensive or have other negative aspects.
There is this guy I compete against, who has a site thats number 1 in google and yahoo for a super competitive term, and recently I saw his site appearing in coop ads, which seemed sort of strange to me. Why run ads for a term you are already number one for? And recently his site disappeared from yahoo for a day or so, but its back now, so its probably nothing.
Your telling me if you had site that was nubmer 1 for like year without any coop, you would add coop to it?
I did. And the site has been up in the number one slot for several years. Personally, I've found that sites like that are great for dumping uneeded coop weight. I have no fear of the site getting banned from Yahoo, like the newer sites.
Absolutely right. If you're number one and you don't do anything, you probably aren't going to stay # 1.
I don't know, I love the coop and all but if a site is already number 1 without it, then I would keep it off. yahoo and google seem to not be that thrilled with a bunch of coop pointing at new site
Either way, in many cases it won't matter with or with out coop weight. Some sites (and I have some) just naturally rank at the number one spot, and will stay there based on a number of factors. One I have in particular stays there because of longevity, relevancy, and a number of other reasons. However, there are a number of other keywords that it did not rank well for so I used the coop to push more weight towards getting those other kw'd recognized. Google, I would have to argue with you on. They may penalize you for too much too fast, but I've yet to see them ban a site that either had coop ads, or got coop links. Yahoo on the other hand will ban, and does ban sites that use it. Unless.... Unless they site is old enough to be so well ingrained in Yahoo. Any site I have that is well aged, and has been naturally ranked, stays in Yahoo with or without coop. Anything new, Yahoo has nuked. Mainly those sites that have the coop ads on them, not necessarily the ones with coop links pointing to them. In the end, you do what works best for you. I'm not saying the above is fact, I am just sharing my experiences. YMMV.
I got some , but as always there are so many other factors which it could be, yahoo has either blessed or totally crapped on my sies that have coop on them, sometimes one for awhile then the other, at least with new sites. A bunch of original coop sites that I thought were gone, at least in rankings, are starting to show again google, probably starting to get get thru the age filters
I hear you there! Again, I agree, and have seen the same thing. Either "blessed" as you say, or "crapped". The only pattern I have seen is "age". I think that "age" has a lot to do with this. It has to be one of the biggest qualifiers in their algo.
Thats like the only major change they have made to their algo in like 4 years, at least in my opinion I have cranked some new sites as recently in yahoo with the coop, but not a lot of coop, and less competitive terms, but I that isn't the rule, most of the gains I got in yahoo thru coop have gone after awhile.
Just two months ago I messed up and unintentually got one of my sites banned from Google by doing.... Site also lost it's PR. grrr!!!!!