caveman - 5:48 am on Jul 20, 2005 (gmt 0)

Thinkprog, another voice in agreement that Y! doesn't hand out penalties for such things, if 'penalty' is what you really mean.

However, I'm aware of several instances where sites, and especially site homepages, do not rank well in Y for the main two or three word phrase that the site is optimized against, even though the site's sub pages still rank for longer tail terms that include the core phrase. Sounds similar to what you've just stepped in. ;-)

Since you've recently made changes to your site it seems that the changes are a logical place to start looking.

Goog is much tougher on repetition of kw's in various places, but IMO, Y will knock out homepages or other pages for things they don't like. Y employs, IMO, some pretty nasty and at times over zealous dup filters.

Ways I believe I've seen pages get hurt on core site topic phrases include:
- too common backlink footprints with other sites from same owner on same topic (or another site that seems similar);
- heavy internal backlinking to homepage with core phrase that the site is targeting;
- templated pages that share too much in common with other site pages (e.g. insufficient original content on the new pages?, too-similar or identical META tag entries, certain kinds of templated pages),
- new pages that share commonly targeted kw's with other important pages AND contain signs of offering no added value (e.g., feeds of some types).

Y's algo is curious in that aspects of it seem somewhat forgiving, but in other respects, it can be easy to trip filters, especially related to duplication of all different kinds. It's one of the ways that, IMO, they are working hard to knock out no-value-added affiliate pages, though a given page (and it's associated backlinks) need not be an affiliate page to trip these filters.

As for general stuff, like Martinibuster, we still have some sites that appear to do quite well with not nearly the backlink help needed to do well in G. Not even close. That said, more recently, it seems that the right backlinks can really help you in Y!, and without the right backlinks, it can almost be hard to get listed at all. But this does not seem to be your issue, since you already had rankings.