Yahoo review of penalized sites

Believed by Webmasters to be clean

[Sunset_Jim]

Has anyone who submitted an e-mail to Yahoo since the switch on February 18, regarding a penalized site you belieive is clean and follows Yahoo's guidelines, had a positive response from Yahoo? I was told in early March a respons from the editorial review board would take 4-8 weeks. Later I saw in a post that the promised time is longer.

[HarryM]

Tim,

Today I received a reply to my email to the wbmasterworld feedback address stating "There are no current indications that your pages have been blocked from the Yahoo! index." But I am still at a loss as to what is happening.

I have a .com site hosted int the UK and with one Inktomi PFI page, and Yahoo! Slurp crawls my site regularly. But I am only getting a trickle of traffic, and that only for my PFI page, or for searches from Hong Kong. I have checked three Yahoo sites and Hong Kong is the only one that gives decent results. So what is the problem with the UK and US sites?

HONG KONG hk.search.yahoo.com

Keyword searches return all the pages I tested. :)

But there were problems listing my pages:

- site:http://www.domain.com (HK and All Web) shows no pages
- site:www.domain.com (HK only) shows one page in Big 5 encoding
- site:www.domain.com (All Web) shows the index page only

UK uk.search.yahoo.com

I am hosted in the UK, and yet it gives the worst results. :(

- keyword searches (both UK and All Web) returned the Index page and the PFI page, but no others.
- site:www.domain.com (both UK and All Web) only shows the index page.
- site:http://www.domain.com (both UK and All Web) shows none

US search.yahoo.com

These results are very strange :o

- keyword searches returned my Index page and my PFI page, but no others.
- site:www.domain.com shows the index page and the PFI page

But

- site:http://www.domain.com shows most (several hundred) of my pages, including recent pages

Is there a roll out program? Can I ever expect to see results from the US or UK? I get Google traffic from all over the world so I can only assume it is a Yahoo technical issue that is stopping me getting the same results from Yahoo.

Any information will be appreciated. (from anybody.)

[yaelede]

I signed up with Overture/SiteMatch, and I was approved 10 days ago. (my site still didn't get back to the index at all..)
However I checked my SiteMatch control panel recently, and I have noticed this line:
URLs with Errors: 1

I sent a feedback to Overture, and they replied that the possible reasons could be that Slurp couldn't access my site...it was up all the time as to my knowledge.
They advised to go to this page support.inktomi.com, where I could simulate Slurp spidering (I was told that maybe there was something wrong with robots.txt...I have made no restrictions in it..). However I can't access neither that page nor inktomi.com.

Could you access any of these pages? If yes, there must be problems with my ISP..

[cabos]

This is from Ink's FAQ section on how to get your site to rank better.

Funny thing is if you do what they suggest they can turn around and say you have been banned for violating one of their content guidelines. This entire area is too subjective and very few major corporate decisions are made with such subjective guidelines. The only thing that really makes sense as to what is guiding them is $$$$.

Is this the reason why a large number of commercial sites have been penalized? Does it really have to do with content guidelines or is it purely a matter of Yahoo economics?

They actually provide advice on how to improve your site to do better in SERPs, though it appears that if your "marketplace" encroaches on Yahoo's market, there is a high chance of your site being penalized whether or not you truly are competing with them.

FAQ from Ink.
Q: How do I make my page rank higher in the search results?

A: Here are a few tips that can make sure your page can be found by a focused search on the Internet:

Think carefully about key terms that your users will search on, and use those terms to construct your page.

Documents are ranked higher if the matching search terms are in the title. U

sers are also more likely to click a link if the title matches what they're looking for.

Choose terms for the title that match the concept of your document.

Use a "description" meta-tag and write your description carefully. After a title, users click on a link because the description draws them in.

Placing high in search results does little good if the document title and description do not attract interest.

Use a "keyword" meta-tag to list key words for the document. Use a distinct list of keywords for each page on your site instead of using one broad set of keywords on every page. (Keywords do not have much effect on ranking, but they do have an effect.)

Keep relevant text and links in HTML. Placing them in graphics or image maps means search engines can't search for the text and the crawler can't follow links to your site's other pages. An HTML site map, with a link from your welcome page, can help make sure all your pages are crawled.

Use ALT text for graphics. It's good page design to accommodate text browsers or visually impaired visitors, and it helps improve the text content of your page for search purposes.

Correspond with webmasters and other content providers and build rich linkages between related pages. Note: "Link farms" create links between unrelated pages for no reason except to increase page link counts. Using link farms violates Inktomi content guidelines, and will not improve your page ranking.

[IITian]

Seems like Yahoo is following this strategy. Title, keywords and description from its Auto portal:

<title>Cars - New car prices, car pictures, car reviews, used cars, used car prices on Yahoo! Autos</title>

<meta name="description" content="Find cars, new car prices, kelley blue book prices, car pictures, car reviews, Toyota, Honda, BMW, Nissan, Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Chevrolet, Mazda, Acura, Volkswagen, on Yahoo! Autos">

<meta name="keywords" content="cars, auto, autos, car, <all makes one by one>, kelley blue book, kelly blue book, auto insurance, car insurance, kbb, car reviews, car pictures, used car prices, new car prices, blue book, compare cars, auto show, car shows, car search, car ratings, car safety, yahoo autos, buy a car, build a car, auto warranty, auto loans, auto loan calculator, car specs, auto insurance quotes, car models">

It must be okay to follow this template. I don't see any repetition of keywords to get higher placing on some of the most competitive search terms which will violate its own guidelines. Looks totally organic to me. Don't you agree? However, if you dare to use the money word "car" even once on your page, we will know you are gaming.

[Marcia]

yaeled, try running your page through an HTML validator.

[IITian]

In reference to my post above, in contrast, my subdirectory that competes with Yahoo Autos that has been "penalized" has the following megas. You can see how it violates all of Yahoo's guidelines, whatever they may be because ... ;)

<title><Company> Cars Review</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="<company>" />
<meta name="description" content="<full company name> (USA, <region 1>, <country>) and its cars, autos, pickups, wagons. <company>! " />
</head>

[soapystar]

IITian
that is one of the spammiest metas i have ever seen, no wonder they have banned you. Sheer coincidence that you compete with Yahaoo on that keyword of course. Their guidelines are very clear.

Guidlines=goalpost+/-(n)(where n is a random number between 1 and infinty)

[soapystar]

yes, and make sure you dont have excessive popups as stated in their famous guidelines. Oh, by the way, alexa says for Yahoo:

Site Stats for yahoo.com:

Popups: Many (16% of sessions have popups)