Yahoo penalty

Discussion in 'Yahoo' started by Tidal74, Feb 13, 2007.

  1. #1
    Interesting- my site www.vistusa.com has always ranked poorly in Yahoo getting less than 1% of traffic from that search engine. Despite this it still is indexed (1100 pages) and ranks well for a couple of terms. As i didnt understand the lack of rankings I sent yahoo an email and they responded indicating that:

    It has been determined that your site may not comply with Yahoo!'s
    Content Quality Guidelines located at:
    http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/deletions-05.html.

    I am surprised to be indexed and yet still penalized- I have read on many forums that I would be removed from the index entirely if truly penalized. On another note - I have spent a lot of time and work on my site and cant figure out why I am not meeting the guidelines- any help would be appreciated. I have unique meta data for about 80% of the pages.
     
    Tidal74, Feb 13, 2007 IP
  2. Tidal74

    Tidal74 Active Member

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    #2
    sould be visitusa.com - any ideas on what guidelines its not complying with
     
    Tidal74, Feb 15, 2007 IP
  3. motoxxx

    motoxxx Peon

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    #3
    I have noticed that EVERYTHING seems to be fluxuating at an accelerated pace these days. All three of the SEs seem to doing strange stuff. What made me relevant and on page one yesterday sent me to bottom of the list today. I don't really get it.
     
    motoxxx, Feb 17, 2007 IP
  4. KingofKings

    KingofKings Banned

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    #4
    I think what answered you about your site was a stupid automated computer....
     
    KingofKings, Feb 17, 2007 IP
  5. Tidal74

    Tidal74 Active Member

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    #5
    I agree it seems to be a very general message- perhaps we could detract rank for this
     
    Tidal74, Feb 18, 2007 IP
  6. linkpro

    linkpro Peon

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    #6
    That EMAIL is sent to anyone writing in about why there site does not rank. Nobody goes and actually looks at your site....its some low level customer support person sending you that email.

    1000's of people write in everyday with the same question...
     
    linkpro, Feb 20, 2007 IP
  7. Tidal74

    Tidal74 Active Member

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    #7
    I agree I combed my logs in detail and couldnt find anybody from yahoo having looked at the site. What's scarry however is that some low level reviewer can have this kind of control over my website and if its in the index.
     
    Tidal74, Feb 20, 2007 IP
  8. starke

    starke Active Member

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    #8
    yeah that's not a good thing. You might want to run some scans to check on your keyword density and stuff like that.

    I've heard of many instances where people will increase their rankings by lowering keyword density to no higher than 2-3%...

    The other thought here is that you are doing well in google, which is about 50%+ of searches... I probably wouldn't change it then...
     
    starke, Feb 20, 2007 IP
  9. gio

    gio Well-Known Member

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    #9
    those were just automated messages i think.
     
    gio, Feb 21, 2007 IP
  10. tropico

    tropico Peon

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    #10
    hahaha.. quite possible. lol
     
    tropico, Feb 21, 2007 IP
  11. clasione

    clasione Notable Member

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    #11
    I am having a similar problem with my site. My site has been adversly effected for over a year. My pages are indexed but they do not appear in the search engine.

    Do you run the Google Adsence program?
     
    clasione, Feb 21, 2007 IP
  12. Sem-Advance

    Sem-Advance Notable Member

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    #12
    Edited see issue below:
     
    Sem-Advance, Feb 21, 2007 IP
  13. Tidal74

    Tidal74 Active Member

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    #13
    Did you look at the site?

    1. It is mostly in frames which search engines (Google in this case) usually cannot / do not index.

    I havent used any frames, except for some hotel data- which I dont care if it gets indexed

    2. You have no meta data for your pages.

    Almost every page has metadata

    3. The site is like 10,000,000 other link farms....there is no quality whatsoever.

    All content is unique and orginal, lots of orginal photos from all over the US.

    I think perhaps you post this just to get a rise out of me, but am willing to listen to more specific comments as perhaps it can lead to improvments in the site.
     
    Tidal74, Feb 21, 2007 IP
  14. Sem-Advance

    Sem-Advance Notable Member

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    #14
    Hmm

    Seems I looked at the misspell site you posted first and did not realize it

    http://www.vistusa.com/

    Seems they are also riding off your brand :mad:

    That is the site I meant is crap.

    However on your site a few issues

    1. First upper left hand nav link sends me to another site...not a good thing in the SE eyes

    2. Keyword tags do not match page content (Yahoo matches keyword tag to page content for spam checking)

    On this page

    http://www.visitusa.com/state-camping/index.htm

    You have this keyword tag,


    <meta name="keywords" content="Hotels, Guide to the USA, Hotel reservations, lowest rates, Hotel Rebates, best quality, motels, Vacations,Helicopter Tours, Cruise Ship, Destination Guides, Travel Tips" />

    Its a camping page with no mention of anything camping related

    Keywords in the tag are not mentioned on the page

    cruise ships, motels, helicopter tours, destination guides & travel tips (none of which are to be found on the page).

    3. For the most part yours is a very well done link site which has some minimal content which also can be found on other websites.. having used copyscape.. so it seems the content may have been rewritten.

    Hope that seems a bit more fair.

    4. Also some pages look like dupe content..IE state beaches, state mountains
     
    Sem-Advance, Feb 21, 2007 IP
  15. Web Gazelle

    Web Gazelle Well-Known Member

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    #15
    I have seen sites show many pages indexed with the yahoo site explorer but those pages were not getting crawled. If you got an email about the guidlines you are probably getting hit with a penalty.
     
    Web Gazelle, Feb 21, 2007 IP
  16. Tidal74

    Tidal74 Active Member

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    #16
    Hi Sem
    Thanks for taking the time to look at the site in more detail. I agree with you in terms of the meta tags not matching on some pages- I just cut and pasted the tags for alot of the pages where the content was not really unique. I tended to think of these as orginizational pages as they are more intented to help the visitor find things. However- I have other sites with worse meta tags and some with none that are not penalized. Perhaps I hit some threshold in this regard and maybe none is better than crappy ones. I will work on getting this fixed. Also I agree with the affiliate link thing and will remove that.
     
    Tidal74, Feb 21, 2007 IP
  17. Sem-Advance

    Sem-Advance Notable Member

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    #17
    Hi
    In order for the pages to have been indexed ...they had to have been crawled first.

    Tidal74

    Glad I could help.

    I am not sure of the entire process with Yahoo ...but if the tags are missing then Yahoo cannot apply the spam check, and therefore could not filter anything it did not like.

    Peace
     
    Sem-Advance, Feb 21, 2007 IP
    Tidal74 likes this.
  18. Web Gazelle

    Web Gazelle Well-Known Member

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    #18
    Right, so at one point they were all getting crawled and now there is a penalty in place and they are not getting crawled.
     
    Web Gazelle, Feb 23, 2007 IP
  19. wisam74us

    wisam74us Well-Known Member

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    #19
    Hi
    I am not sure about how to detect Yahoo penalty, but Yahoo traffic has disappeared for one of my websites
    The site still indexed and you can find it when you search the domain but 0 traffic coming from Yahoo now (It was 40 hits /day)
     
    wisam74us, Mar 2, 2007 IP
  20. Web Gazelle

    Web Gazelle Well-Known Member

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    #20
    Asking Yahoo about a penalty is a big waste of time as you will get their gneric response.
     
    Web Gazelle, Mar 2, 2007 IP