High traffic site dropped from Y!

No obvious reason...

[johnser]

Hi

We're talking to a potential client who has been consistently ranked in the top 10 for months on Google for <competitive term> which has approx 60k searches daily.

They were also appearing in Yahoo.com top 10 for same term. They have a great directory listing in Yahoo.

3 weeks ago they just dropped from Yahoo for no obvious reason. They're still top 10 on Google. When I search for their exact directory title text "Very Competitive Term", they still don't show up. They are still listed though...

Has anyone any experience/knowledge of why a good clean site with 400+ links can just drop from Yahoo.com despite having its Y! directory & Google listings intact?

Thanks in advance
J

[heini]

Johnser, do all the other listings from the directory cat show in the serps?
Do the serps reflect the goole serps, or is there any other stuff mixed in?

Just fishin around..

[johnser]

Heini

It appears that the results are almost identical to what they were 3 weeks ago except the site in Q is missing.

Of the top 20 sites in Y for this phrase, 19 are dir listings just as they were 3 weeks ago. (#23 on Google SERPs for the same phrase is appearing in 20th spot on Y)

Any help?
J

[heini]

>Any help?
I'm afraid not. I was thinking of a selective take over of the Y serps with Ink or other results.

[tigger]

I presume this was a paid listing with Y, if so have you contacted them to ask why?

[johnser]

hmmm - Have you ever heard of something like this before? I haven't.

I would have expected the credit card to have bounced or be dropped from Google for this to happen but its not that...

[startup]

One can get a paid listings without using a credit card. Check to see if your client knows when the renewal date is. My bet is Yahoo wants more money.

[johnser]

Startup, is it possible that Yahoo could put an automatic block on the site appearing until more $$$ is forthcoming?

Even though the site is still listed in the dir?
Wouldn't the auto-renew have kicked in?

Thx

[startup]

We don't know what "auto renew" info they(Yahoo)have. The company may have paid by cheque, the credit card may have expired or the submition was paid for by a third party(SEO).
Yahoo's concern is money at this stage in the game and seeing as the directory results are secondary, I can see them removing a site from the SERPs.
Contacting Yahoo as "tigger" has suggested is your best approach.

[greenspan]

I had a FEW sites disappear from th Y! Directory for NO reason. I've been in contact with them, and they can offer no reason. "you'll just have to pay again!"

I love google.

[nipear]

On some terms Yahoo is hand editing the results. It was posted a while ago here about this. From the serps I've been monitoring they are have been the same for about 3 months now on Y, while changing on Google.

But if you're completly filtered out, you could have been tossed by an editor, but who knows what's going on over at the Yahoo factory...

[johnser]

Guess I'll have to just do that.
Thanks all for your help
J

[MikeNoLastName]

Along these same lines,
We've had a site in the Yahoo free listings since around 1995. We were between #3-#6 on a very major (top 100) search phrase the entire time until about 9 months ago. Then suddenly our listing vanished completely from the top 796 results for that term. Like the other poster in this thread, all the other listings nearby are mostly the same and basically the same ones which show up on all the other engines near us. We're just missing. Not that bizarre normally I suppose. HOWEVER... what's REALLY strange is we are still very well placed in the index in general!
Our major search phrase is of the form WordA WordB. It is a proper name which is often abbreviated to just WordB. (is that obscure enough? :-)
We don't come up at ALL under WordA WordB or even WordB WordA for that matter. But we still come up in the top 20 for WordB alone and amazingly enough in the top 30 for WordA alone which is quite a common word used for many un-related things. And we still come up in the top 10 for many, many combinations like: WordA WordB WordC and WordA WordB WordD which are also quite popular phrases. We are a PR6 home page with many interior pages also PR6 and still in the top 20 on Google for WordA WordB.
Therefore it appears to me that some editor has manually blacklisted us, not off the index, but JUST FROM SHOWING UP UNDER A PARTICULAR TOP SEARCH TERM!
I've written them a few times, without response, but considering it IS a free listing and we still get almost as much from them as from Google, despite the blackout, I don't really want to P--- them off or draw undue attention. Just thought you'd all be interested in the experience.
Mike