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Oddly, for the same keyword phrase, we are in the top 40 in Google, top 20 for AlltheWeb, and #11 in Altavista. And it appears to keep climbing in Google and AV.
I dont think it is being penalized because the site is ranking well for other keyword phrases and doing well for the same keyword phrase on other engines. I am very puzzled by this.
Is anybody else having a similiar issue or any ideas on why this would be happening?
I'm suspecting that there may be penalties applied that aren't elsewhere. Not that I did anything - I didn't. But there were a couple of things done to the site that I accidentally found and sent word to be corrected but it may have been too late by the time they got around to it.
Two things I know for sure:
1. A bunch of pages were added to the site with slightly different products - but the pages, both site template and page content, are just about practically identical - graphics and all. They're maybe 10% different at the most, if that much.
2. When I first took on the site about a year and a half ago, I inherited a couple of paid Inktomi listings with bCentral. The site had never been in the database, even though it had of course been submitted. Their check found hidden text - it was white text inside color background tables. I immediately had them change it with a warning about that - hidden text is not popular with search engines, even when it's accidental.
I checked the homepage a couple of weeks ago - and lo and behold, what did I see but a new color table right on the front page, with white text inside it. I had them change it, but it sure did get crawled like that.
Maybe, maybe not - but it pays to be safe rather than sorry; there's no balking if there is really a penalty, regardless of innocence. It did not look good at all, and all those "almost" dups are still up there.
Check for dups and font and background colors, just in case. Unless there's a deliberate reason, it's not a good idea from a search engine perspective regardless of which one it is, and is always worth double-checking.
Take awhile to figure out this secret sauce, but I'm guessing all that Scooter crawling is a significant part of it.
It was consistently climbing and then just got clobbered. Funny things is that it is doing well in Google, Ink, Altavista, and Alltheweb. I thought that they were the engines that Yahoo used.
All we have been doing is adding backlinks as fast as we can. Makes me start to wonder if maybe we actually got added in a bad neighborhood. But if that were the case, why wouldn't any of the other Search Engines be bothered by it?
Reason is my stats show a number of Yahoo hits and on investigation they do indicate a very recent and thorough spidering of my site.
I would also like to know who is supplying their data.
traffic is so strange...it looks like every week it is "shift" of results - once we are top 5,then down to 20...every week..sales follow the same path...one week zero...other week they come in...
On a sidenote, Yahoo is still showing Overture ads on the right hand side that look exactly like Google AdWords. Which is the biggest change in Yahoo within the last month or so.
vbjaeger, is there by some chance a second domain name being used for your site, possibly with a 301?
In the meantime, it's questionable where the results are coming from, no one knows.
Wait a minute- Did something change when I wasn't looking? It is still Google backfill.
