wruppert - 4:56 pm on Apr 13, 2007 (gmt 0)

Our real estate related site ranked #1 in Yahoo for "ourtown real estate" for several years, until mid-December when it went to the third or fourth page. It has since crept back to second page.

It has been #1 and 2 on Google for about 2 years, recently started to rank #1 & 2 on live.com, and is #2 on Ask. Site is 5 years old, has been in the Yahoo directory for 4 years.

I believe it is an "over optimization" penalty, because like others mentioned, the title, h1, meta, and key search phrase are set to "ourtown real estate", including that last link at the bottom of the page.

There are many solid "ourtown" real estate sites that could arguably be ranked above us, and in that case I wouldn't mind so much, but the stuff above us is mostly very bad. "Under optimized" does not begin to describe it.

But honestly, I'm not going to touch the site. Our visitors love it, and Google and MSN are happy. I'm not going to mess it up for Yahoo.