Yahoo answers more Q's - continued from other forum

answering questions raised on another board

[Yahoo_Mike]

I'm unable to post to the other forum "Yahoo answers Site Match Questions" (not sure if I've been banned or if there's an issue with the board :-) and I wanted to answer a couple questions raised there.

Yahoo Mike

[Yahoo_Mike]

Questions about Sites that were previously banned".

The short answer is that yes, if you were excluded from the the Inktomi index, those exclusions were carried forward into the new Yahoo! Search results.

We are continuing to improve our content guidelines to provide greater clarity as to what is defined as a high quality site. We’re also working on a process to re-review sites on a more regular basis. If you have updated your web site and feel that your site is dramatically under-represented in Yahoo! Search results, please carefully review the content guidelines and objectively evaluate your site. You can find the guidelines at:

[help.yahoo.com...]

If you want to appeal the removal of your URLs, send an email to [e-mail]. Reviewing these submissions is a high priority for Yahoo! and we will attempt to address requests as quickly as possible. We regularly review our site editorial process and policies so that we can be more responsive and informative to webmasters and customers.

[Yahoo_Mike]

I believe several posters asked if the new Yahoo! Search is just a repackaged version of the previous Inktomi search...

Definitely not! Yahoo! Search Technology is a new product that combines the knowledge and experience of search veterans from all of the companies Yahoo! acquired over the past year. Yahoo! has also leveraged other assets through integration of Yahoo! Mail’s SpamGuard technology to help filter out low quality URLs, RSS/XML integration with My Yahoo!, and support from Yahoo!’s team of editorial experts to ensure sites are of high quality.

[helenp]

Thanks Yahoo-Mike,
Think many of us all aready written to [e-mail]

Should we write again to the adress you posted, or are our e-mail already in process?

[Yahoo_Mike]

SoapyStar:

I believe you had asked about whether the editorial guidelines for Directory and for Site Match / Yahoo! slurp crawler are the same:

No, they aren't. Yahoo! has separate guidelines for the Yahoo! Express directory submissions and for sites that are included using Site Match or that through the Yahoo! Search Technology crawler. You can read more about the guidelines here:

Directory guidelines: [help.yahoo.com...]
Yahoo! Search guidelines (used for Site Match and URLs included via the Yahoo! crawler): [help.yahoo.com...]

There are separate reviews for each and exclusion from the Directory does not necessarily mean you will be excluded from Yahoo! Search (or visa versa). It would depend largely on the reason you were excluded. One example might be that you tried to submit to a directory.

There are separate reviews for each and exclusion from the Directory does not necessarily mean you will be excluded from Yahoo! Search (or visa versa). It would depend largely on the reason you were excluded. One example might be that you tried to submit to a directory category that was deemed inappropriate. This would not impact the review of your web site content.

[edited by: WebGuerrilla at 5:26 pm (utc) on Mar. 16, 2004]
[edit reason] fixed split post [/edit]

[flobaby]

Yahoo Mike,
My question has to do with 301 redirects. Currently, if you have a 301 redirected to your index page, your index disappears from the results (or rather, the index info shows, but the link shows the original, pre-redirected url).

I'm assuming this is also why my directory listing never appears in searches, though I'm on the list for "most popular" in the directory.

What is the plan in the future for fixing this?

[soapystar]

Thanks.
Actually for me its the other way around. My site is in the Yahoo directory and all urls are in the index but do not appear in the serps for any search. You seem to be saying you do not have the same quality guidelines for the directory and the main search. The question would be why? Obviously it seems i was penalised by INk for an unkown reason. I have like others emailed webmasterworldfeedback but now you give a new url. personally im confused. I never recieved a reply from the former address. Why does a site gets in the directory past a human review for a fee but doesnt make it into the serps. Of all the engines you have why import the one from the most questionable banned urls list? or did you use a list from all of them?

[kanetrain]

Mike - Could you please address the issue of the vanishing homepage PFI problem? Many webmasters (such as flobaby) are noticing that their PFI pages have disappeared and in their place are dupe content links and 301 redirects. This, according to Yahoo, is an indication that the site (or page) has some kind of penalty... but all of the Inktomi resellers swear that it is not a penalty or ban of any kind at all. In fact, Positiontech still swears to me that my site has no ban on it of any kind, while Tim has made it very clear that my site does. Many of us have gotten so many mixed signals, it's disturbing. It's like dating a girl with multiple personality disorder. I now know for sure that, from what Tim has said, that the vanishing PFI homepage issue is indeed some kind of penalty and I am patiently (5 months now) waiting for resolution.

Could you please go into some detail on the difference between the vanishing homepage penalty and a regular editorial ban? What triggers each one etc.?

From my research, I have found evidence that the vanishing homepage ban is an automated penalty that hits only PFI pages and an editorial ban is a penalty that will drop the entire site from the index. Both are "eternal" bans. Is this accurate? If so, why are PFI pages treated differently than organic results if, in therory, they are supposed to be treated the same? Positiontech swore to me many times that PFI pages were treated the exact same... and yet... only PFI pages are hit with the vanishing homepage curse... in fact, my site's homepage disappeared immediately after signing up for PFI and is still gone.

How can you justify dropping all Inktomi PFI pages from the Yahoo index, while still keeping all of the Inktomi penalties from before? That sounds a little unfair especially given the fact that the Inktomi penalty system was sketchy at best (as I obviously know from personal experience).

[WebGuerrilla]

At this point, I think we need to bring a little bit of structure to the Yahoo Q&A process. These threads have become quite difficult to follow.

So if everyone will bare with me for a moment, I'm going to lock this thread down while I put together one that will allow all responses to be preserved in an easier-to-follow format.