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About three months ago I did some major revisions to both sites, making them even more different than they already were.
The one PFI site that was still doing well with INK is nowhere to be found now! This site was ranking well for well over a year! No SPAM, no dodgy tactics, nothing!
Why would this happen?
The only thing I can think of is a competitor of mine scraped some text from my site and copied my Title verbatim.
Would this be the cause. I could really care less about INK except for the fact that Yahoo! is going to be under the influence soon!
Feedback is appreciated!
Without seeing the site, it is difficult to say what caused the penalty. If you genuinely feel that you have not even brushed against the Inktomi guidelines ask your PFI provider to get INK to do a review of the site. They normally will - and if clean (or cleaned up) will re-include the site.
Yahoo are tightening the relevancy rules on all forms of PFI!
I am finding this hard to swallow b/c almost the enitre web consists of affiliate links.
I am scratching my head as to why I did PFI since 2/3 of my sites that are clean are now banned.
It could also be that some of your affiliates were using not-so-ethical tactics to get clicks.
I am leary to ask for a review in anticipation that they will pull my other site for unknown reasons. When I asked the first time around why my site was delisted I got no straight answers. All I got was I am not sure, maybe b/c it is similar to the other site in your account.
This is fustrating cause I am very careful with my practices. I do not exchange links with spammy sites and I do not engage in anything unethical or spammy at all. I see so much junk that should be delisted.
Its amazing how much spam is thriving in INK!
Keep it up INK, users will realize the junk that is existing and jump ship.
The possible reasons they gave me were as follows:
1. They said:
too many hyphens
I say:
4 total hyphens in domain in question, but it is a 5 word search term. Also, I see tons of sites with 5 and more hyphens. Do you think INK would eliminate only paid sites with too many hyphens? What does eliminating good, clean sites with 4 or more hyphens accomplish?
2. They said:
burp in the system and I will see site again after weekend.
I say:
I doubt this is it, but I hope!
3. They said:
Told me to change my Title tag.
I say:
Site was ranking well before it dropped. Unchanged Title tag would not cause a drop.
4. They said:
Stale content.
I say:
I can understand a drop in rankings for stale content, but not a drop to not being returned in reults.
I am 3 for 3 with getting PFI sites dropped! INK is being a little too aggresive don't you think?
Has anyone else had PFI sites dropped for unknown reasons?!? I can't be the only one!
Input is appreciated.
They might've told you to change your title tag because you had a non-relevant title.
I am not up to no good. Yeah there are a lot of people that keyword stuff domains (keyword-keyword-keyord-differentkeyword-differentkeyword-differentkeyword.com) and the sites associated with these domains practice shady tactitcs. Not me.
I have a five word domain with 4 hyphens (this-makes-absolute-total-sense.com). My business is my livlihood, and I DO NOT practice any shady tactics at all.
I am in negative awww if I am penalized for having a content rich site, with lots of good links pointing to me, that offers a lot for users, but has a 4 hyphentaed domain.
I don't see any weight being given to domain names any more. Leave it up to the user, if you don't like my site name, then don't shop/visit there! But most users want quality, and don't care about a sites name at all!
Filter the spam, not the legitimate!
I would like to hear if this happened to anyone else.
And if you say you don't see weight given to domain names anymore, maybe you're not looking hard enough. From what I understand, it'll weigh nicely in your favor if you've got keywords in your domain name.
-panic
But twice
"About the hyphens in the domain name : for argument's sake, let's just pretend that you AREN'T using that domain name for anything shady."
I think you should read this page [webmasterworld.com...]
your comments suggest you have never seen it.
Seems a little under cooked to me. I have a number of domains with 6 hyphens and the page names have another 3 or 4.
Of course you need to have a non SE indexed short domain name for other forms of advertising pointing to the same site, but at $8 per domain name who gives a hoot?
>I could really care less about INK except for the fact that Yahoo! is going to be under the influence soon!
Hmmm....18% of my SE traffic currently comes from INK backfills on MSN, I care lots about how that performs. Possibly add on Y! in the future and getting INK right is critically important.
On the subject of why a PFI site has been dumped.....I doubt it has anything to do with the PFI element. I don't use PFI at all and INK indexes every page for free, although it only ever shows a couple when asked directly about how many pages are indexed!
INK is fickle, it is not abnormal to see a site appear and disappear once in a while. It seems to mainly hit sites less than 12 months old, after a while sites seem to become permanent fixtures and impossible to destroy.
Even the new ones always seem to come back again without any changes being made, it is just something you have to accept as part of the free traffic INK provides.
"INK is fickle, it is not abnormal to see a site appear and disappear once in a while. It seems to mainly hit sites less than 12 months old, after a while sites seem to become permanent fixtures and impossible to destroy. "
So, are you saying INK will periodically drop sites for no apparent reason, and eventually they will re-appear? Are you saying this is true for PFI sites too?
When you say "appear and disappear" and "dumped" do you mean completely out of index, or just SERPS. As mentioned, my site returns when I search for the URL but is not in SERPS.
Clarification is appreciated. Thanks!
-panic
-panic
-panic
Pretty strange. When I do a URL check, it is in MSN but those keywords that I used to score top 10, now gone. From the results returned, I dont see the top 10 belongs to INK customers.
When the page was first submitted, PT reported tons of hits for the first few weeks, then zilch! I checked and sure enough the page was nowhere to be found in Inktomi. I contacted PT about this, and they said the page was listed but just not receiving click-thrus.
I didn't buy this becuase it just happened to be the best performing page I've ever had for click-thrus. I thought it might be some kind of penalty for hyphens etc (it had 4 hyphens) but PT wouldn't answer me. I don't think they have a clue, to be honest.
Anyway, this page was missing from the radar for almost 6 months, then pow! it was suddenly back a few days ago, and guess what? It's racking up more click-thrus than any other page (just as it used to).
I don't know what's going on and PT aren't any help, but I don't believe it's got to do with hyphens. I've had several other pages (some from the same domain as this particular page is from) with 4 hyphens in the filename, and they've never had a problem.
Did you make any changes to your page prior to it being reinstated? If so, what kind of changes?
It looks to me like it's an issue at Inktomi, not PositionTech. I know I sound like a broken record for saying this, but I'm pretty sure it was an editorial action for keyword stuffing, cloaking, and/or anything else that goes against Inktomi's policies.
I THINK (not even close to being positive) Inktomi editorial randomly goes through sites/pages flagged with editorial actions to see if the issue has been resolved.
-panic
Standard stuff - keywords in page title, meta description, H1 headline, keywords in first paragraph, and in link text.
If it's been penalised for 4 hyphens, why haven't the other 3 pages (from the same site), also with 4 hyphens, been penalised?
Inktomi being weird?
-panic
