Site gone again from Inktomi

Head bashing starting again?

[johnnydequino]

Looks like my PFI site is gone again off Inktomi. My "free" site is also no longer on inktomi. Whatever algo they are testing, it sucks.

Anyone else notice the same pattern that occurred last month?

jd

[Fur_Ball]

Hi.
I have been lurking on this forum for some time and they have been a fantastic resource for me.

I am suffering a similar problem as described in this thread but with a slightly different twist.
None of the URLs I have submitted to Inktomi or FAST through PositionTech have been spidered since the 1st of Jan this new year (some have not been spidered since the 29th Dec).
All of them, without exception, have fallen out of these indices. It is not that they are not ranking; they are gone!

Position Tech is still accepting submissions and submission renewals, but there is no spider activity from them.

Is anyone else experiencing such a problem?
Has my account been penalised?
PT have not been forthcoming with an explanation.

Are people experiencing this problem having any problems with FAST? Does anyone submit to the FAST index?
So many questions, I hope someone can help.
I look forward to your replies.

FB.

[kanetrain]

That is very strange. What happens if you do a search for your exact url?

[Edouard_H]

Yes, very strange. Though I'm suffering the experience of many posters in this thread, my sites are being crawled - the problem lies elsewhere.

When you view your URL listings in PT what is shown in "status"? Are you seeing an error or "refreshed"? What date is shown?

[TomWaits]

When you view your URL listings in PT what is shown in "status"? Are you seeing an error or "refreshed"? What date is shown?

Refreshed Jan 6. It was Dec. 30 until this morning. Still same problems, though.

[kanetrain]

ya, looks like we have all been hit with the same Ink PFI bug. I'm not sure that there is anything more we can do but wait it out. I have tried a number of things to no avail. I'm convinced that it is an Ink problem and not anything with our sites. I have reformated my page, fixed html, changed meta tags, changed body text etc. etc. and we are still MIA.

[operafan]

But the mods doesnt seem to have anything to say? Maybe we newbies aint experienced enough to spot an algo switch?

Anyway we'll see if there's anymore input ....

[chris knight]

Ive seen this sort of frantic activity before, mainly with Lycos and their PFI. One minute i had great positions the next they were all dropping like flys, i really think theres some sort of problem at the moment and all we can do is sit it out. Im not really 100% convinced this is an Algo chnage anyway becuase not all of my pages have gone (most have) but not all. Now all pages use the same optimisation so if it does it for one it should do it for all of them.

Hope that helps, but as i said..positiontech say it is a technical problem that if not done so already should be fixed in 24 hours.

Chris

[TomWaits]

Ours is fixed now. Refreshed and in all indexes.

[my74]

I just checked MSN and my website is #1 for our keywords and search terms. I feel sooooo much better now.

[kanetrain]

Inktomi search is down. Anyone else able to confirm this? Hotbot.com returns no results, search.positiontech.com returns an error:

HTTP Status 404 - /InktomiSearch/PositionTechSearch.jsp

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

type Status report

message /InktomiSearch/PositionTechSearch.jsp

description The requested resource (/InktomiSearch/PositionTechSearch.jsp) is not available.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[kanetrain]

OK... looks like search is back up.

But my PFI pages are still gone completely. Looks like the issue that was affecting many PFI pages hasn't been completely resolved. We are at 6 weeks dropped completely from Inktomi and still counting. Is anyone else seeing their dropped PFI pages returning? Mine are MIA still.

[jim_w]

johnnydequino

Take it from me, better to head bash than pullout hair. I’ve been doing the latter for 20 some years :-(

[steveb]

PFI still not in Ink.

[snort]

my PFI pages are still MIA.

[afterburner]

I have been watching this thread and have experienced the same MIA for my PFI but as of 1/8/04 my pages are all back.

[kanetrain]

afterburner... that is certainly good to know! We'll all keep our fingers crossed for the same results. I've been working with PT to change some of my pages and get my PFI back in. They've been great to work with. I'll keep you all updated and let you know what happens.

[flobaby]

Hey guys. My first post after lurking for a month (love this board!). Nothing useful to add except that I wish I'd read the Inktomi threads before submitting a couple weeks ago. I paid for my index to be listed and what do I see when I search for my site? Four old pages that don't even exist anymore. Lycos is totally insane as far as support, sending me some silly form response, so I can see there'll be no justice and I probably lost $34.

Reading that some of you see your pages is heartening though and I hope we all soon appear where we belong!

[kanetrain]

I really believe that in some circumstances it can be somewhat dangerous to submit your index page to PFI. I've lost two pages that way. I've been saying this honestly for almost 8 months: Inktomi PFI can get your index page dropped from the serps (under some circumstances). It happened to me and it's happened to others as well. I don't know why or what exactly trips it, but I know that it happens.

I think this is what causes problems...at least part of it: If Inktomi picked up an internal page first before it picked up your index page for free... then there is a chance that it will start treating your internal page as your index page and will completely drop your index page completely if you try to PFI to get it in. That's what has happened to me. Does anyone else have similar experience?

I don't know exactly how it works, but I think it's totally configured wrong at Inktomi...and they give precedence to internal free pages. I think that PFI pages should be given precedent and obviosly, an index page should always be treated as the index page (PFI or not).... but it seems that in many cases, PFI is trumped by old pages indexed by ink from your site.

This thread is a good indication of what is going on, but if you watch around the web, there are numerous reports of similar problems.

I have dealt with 3 resellers over the past few months. Postion Tech has been amazing to work with and their support has been great.
I'm going through a process right now to get my index page back in the serps... were trying a few things and we should know if it works or not within a week or so.

This whole process has left me with a bashed head and 1/3 the hair I had (what I have left is turning gray). Perhaps the most frustrating experience I've had with any internet advertising yet. Thanks goodness for PT's support!

[steveb]

My pfi page is back in Ink... ranking dead last for whatever multiword string search I do to find it. But all my free pages continue to not be anywhere. So while this may be progress, it's still horrible.

[kanetrain]

steveb - are you sure that you don't have a editorial penalty on your site? Some resellers can find out for you if there is an editorial penalty.

[steveb]

You mean a penalty for having people copy my content and then see mine removed because I do pfi?

I believe Ink is working on seeing that my pages get re-included. I don't really care what screw-up caused them to be removed as long as they are put back... and of course I care that they fix any systematic screw-ups affecting lots of people.

[kanetrain]

Well... we've gone deep into this one and it appears that when it's all said and done, it may not be an issue of PFI at all.

It appears that the timing of the drop was completely coincidental. As mentioned before, my site was dropped almost immediately after signing up for PFI.

It appears that there is a conflict between homepage.shtml and index.htm on my site. index.htm is the real homepage, but over a year ago we had homepage.shtml up as our homepage. Ink still thinks that homepage.shtml is our homepage even though it is index.htm. It's a very complex problem that goes deeper than just blaming it on PFI.

At this point, I'm not sure what to do... we could pull homepage.shtml off of our server completely and wait for Ink to remove it or we could optimize homepage.shtml and hope for the best with that page in Inktomi. If we pull homepage.shtml we lose all of that Inktomi traffic for a period of time until Ink clears it out of the index.

It's a baffling connundrum. At least now, I've got some answers and I have PT to thank for those. They delved deeply into this issue even after they were 100% convinced that it wasn't a problem on their side. You can't even pay for support like that these days.

If you are going to PFI, use PositionTech. Time for me to go figure out what in the world to do from here.

[spaidermen]

I've heard about geographical and language-related problems of inktomi pfi, but I can't find a topic on this forum. Please point me to the right thread

[minnapple]

A bulk of pages that were MIA due to what I believe to be a positiontech/inktomi glitch, are popping in and out of the msn search.

Even the position of the pages are changing when searching in a narrow amount of time.

Somethings up. Hope it is a "Good Thing".

m i n n a p p l e

[kanetrain]

BTW, as an update...
We had some conflicts with two of our pages. Ink was getting confused as to which page was actually our homepage. We decided to have INK completely remove the older one from the database. We are just waiting for that to happen and then I think we may have resolution!

I'm very hopeful that this fixes the phantoming problem we have been experiencing once and for all! Fingers crossed.

[flobaby]

I have an update too. My free pages that haven't shown up in searches for probably 2 years (they're dead links, now 301'd to my index) are now showing up in searches with my index title and text! Not complaining at all, so happy to be back in the Ink game, but it is weird how Ink decides to resurrect these dead links while ignoring the paid-for index page.

Anyway, I'm a happy, head scratching girl.

[Edouard_H]

Started seeing some msn referrals again and in reviewing the SERPs, it looks as though the problems that were affecting our PFI pages have been corrected.

[7Sins]

It's good to see some people have recovered their inclusion and/or rankings, unfortunately mine continue to be missing in action.

[kanetrain]

Well, we thought we had discovered the problem and found a fix. It's probably a little to early to tell for sure, but it's not looking good... not looking good at all.

I had Inktomi completely remove one of my pages (homepage.shtml) completely from the serps. They believed that Ink was confused and was indexing an old page on my site and treating it as if it was my real homepage. THat listing received decent rankings in INk, but we decided to have them remove it, because that page is outdated and we are removing it from the site.

This morning, that page is completely gone from the serps, but my real home page which is PFI(www.mysitehere.com) is still gone. In fact, even if you do a search for origin url, you won't see my PFI page. In my PT manager, it says that it was refreshed yesterday, but it doesn't even show up in the serps.

Needless to say, I'm rather disappointed. Now, not only have I lost my homepage (which was in the top 5 for evey keyword in my industry before I PFI'd) but now I've also lost the only other page that was doing OK in Inktomi.

I'm invisible in Inktomi and nobody can figure out why. It's too early to say whether or not this latest change didn't work for sure, so.... I'll wait 24 hours or so and wait for the Ink index to update to see if we see any changes at all.

But, needless to say, it's not looking good. Once again, I have confirmed that my site has absolutely no penalties or demotions in any way from Inktomi. My front page just simply disappeared from Inktomi a few days after I started PFI. Since then it's been in and out and in and now finally out with no recourse. I'm sitting on 2 months out this time. Who knows how much this has cost me... I get sick when I think about it.

[canuck]

Yet another site been MIA from Ink since mid-November.

Anyone found a solution to this problem with any of the Ink resellers yet?

*mutter*