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Can't any search engine out there come up with anything original? Seems like all any of them ever do is let spam sites into the SERPs and give them the advantage over their pure, innocent competitors.
Some world we live in nowadays, isn't it?
Im sorry but i think things are moving to a whole new level with Yahoo. With Google you can tinker with your site, clean it or otherwise then watch for the change. With Yahoo you trip a filter/human review penalty once no matter how many years youve been up and your toast. You have to ask for a manual review and hope for the best. Even if succesful it seems to be moving into a timescale of months to see the result. Even then you have no idea what may or not be the problem and to all intents and purposes that site is a dead duck. Its not like a law saying do not covet your neighbours wife or you will be penalised. Its like a law saying do not have a certain thought about a section of soceity. The onus is basically on you to be your own judge and second guess the law makers.
They charge you for this 'service' and, if you 'run out of budget', charge you again to 'reactivate' your URL's!
At least with AdWords you loose your positions if you let the budget run out or the clickthrough rate isn't achieved - so at least you have some way to 'cap' your budget.
Still having problems as to how I justify Yahoo's programme with our clients. Basically, I can't. It's not as though you have a fair chance of getting listed and ranked if you do come up with a very large pot of money.
I cannot figure out why else they would take out good content sites from their results.
Its a joke. How can Yahoo claim to want to provide the best search results when they are dropping sites left and right.
So far in my industry, 2 major sites (not including mine) have been penalized. One is cleary the most authoritative site in the business and the 2nd one was voted Forbest Best of the Web in 2003.
Is Yahoo really trying to present the most relevant sites?
Reality:
sites were penalised by INK before the guidelines exsisted.
what is the core new product? Sitematch! Clearly designed to give participating sites a boost with the regular spidering. Now the sites being picked on are the sites that have prooved sucessful with the Yahoo fliterless algo with so called GAMING YAHOO crimes. What does this mean? Well it may mean they are edging past the benefit fresh tags and spidering wil give meaning sitematch inclusion will lose some of its benefit. Its true that sites trying inclusion with sitematch are also getting flitered but this may jst be accpetable collateral damage from there eyes. This is just my 2 cents understand but lets never forget Yhaoo is purely profit driven and nothing is done without that goal in mind. Google at least started as a university project, there is no comparison.
Bottom line is Yahoo doesn’t give one iota about whether they are damaging thousands of businesses. I accept that. The manual review system is further proof of that to me. The major culprits aren’t in forums or submitting their sites for manual reviews. They aren’t testing the limits. They went miles past the limits years ago. Suspend their accounts and they’ll be back in a couple of days.
I agree, they seem to reward the cheaters.
Yeah.... your 2c is what is driving Yahoo's new billion dollar search engine strategy.
Key points, as you mention, are
1. Core New Product: SiteMatch
2. Yhaoo is purely profit driven and nothing is done without that goal in mind.
Id add,
3. They are basing their decision on a conclusion, that Yahoo portal users will continue to use their search engine whether or not it is serving up the most relevant content.
basically they are saying - even THINK about spamming our search engine and you'll be penalized - BAM.
It's not such a bad idea, really. We need to clean up search engine spam and this shot gun affect is definitely one way of doing it.
Thats fine but what is "spamming"?
Based on the sites Im seeing dropped, those with many cross links, multiple channels of distributing their content - Yahoo, Amazon, Ebay shouldnt be in the results either.
In fact, give me 99% of the sites that show up on the first page of Yahoo results and I will give you reasons why they should be considered to be "spamming" Yahoo.
if you take the ime to go through Tims and Yahoo_mikes post you will see fairness plays no part. They have admitted sites will come down on the basis that theres a chnace, not a certaintity they are spamming. For instance mike said being on an Ip shared by large numbers of spammers will take you down. he may have qualified that by saying in his experience the other sites nearly always are spammers, but theres the rub. Its based on your percentage cnace of being a spammer. Hows that if you happen to be innocent. We still are left wit guidlins that would allow them to justify taking out 95% of the sites in their index, but this sint happening. Just a selected few. But look at the sites that are being pulled, small time mom and pop sites who swapped a few too many links. I ask the question how did they come to be picked out. There is no explanation coming forth. How are they prioritising the sites for bans? It just doesnt add up any way you look at it. Lest not forget many bans predate yahoo guidelines.
The majority of the sites are mom & pop sites.
While many penalties are form Ink. Yahoo shows no stopping at penalizing sites.
The quality of content on some of the sites that are penalized is fantastic. Though I guess they added a few too many links for Yahoo's liking. Perhaps Yahoo is saying, "hey, adding outbound links is our domain, so stay out of the business of showing people other sites aside from yours" :)
We need people to be afraid of spamming.
It's the innocent mom & pop webmaster who gets hurt.
How do you improve your game when sites thay have taken years to build are banned.
I too would like to know the answer to that.
They're throwing out a lot of babies with the bathwater.
Appreciate the name of newbie though Ive been in this business since 1984. Only problem is I manage one large site and have not attempted to hide what Im doing.
As Soapy says, coming to a town near you.
Yahoo aint Google. Yahoo has cast too broad a net and they are catching dolphins with the tuna.
I'm sorry to hear about those whose sites were dropped. Innocent bystander or targeted victim... it still sad to hear about someone's misfortune.
We need people to be afraid of spamming.
you will never get a spammer to be affraid of spamming, sorry thats like getting a beer drinker to be affraid of beer.....
just play your game, what ever advantages there are being a Black hat there's just has many being a White hat, it how you play the game not what colour you hat is ......... I should know I do both!
DaveN
this is the point. The only ones truly suffering are the 'one site' guys. This is not hurting the pro's. As you say, it wont frighten the spammers.
Well said.....I don't discriminate by the color of your hat, but if you want to be holier than though then please acknowledge that those of us that like to drink beer might not be........and we ain't ashamed of it :)
Black hat, White hat, pink with yellow stripe hat.....who the heck cares.........some of us do this to make money, it is how we live. If we offend your sense of decency.....IMHO tough luck!
My competition is DaveN.....he cheats, so do I.....we should have mutual admiration for whom ever does it the best.....as for the whiners who complain about us.....you really think we give a hoot about your opinion?
Just spend more time learning how to play the game, you will reap 10 fold.
I have had white hat sites banned, googles Florida update hurt a lot of my clients, Inktomi PFI model hurt my clients, Yahoo's switch hurt my clients.
So what did i do..... I built new sites to fit the new Algo's..So that my clients would be happy again... My black hat sites where the testing grounds to find a suitable mix.
In the real world if you own a small computer shop (mom and pop) and compustore or PCworld open next door you have two choices fight them or move on.... your choice!
if you sell a product online and the spammers move in then you have the same choices ... fight them or move on
DaveN
anyway you are just reiterating the point of the thread. It was not to pussy around gaming Yahoo with a few swapped links and overdone keyword. Its go the whole and cheat your heart out, if you dont you are a fool to yourself if you think playing it their way will get you anywhere. Just do it like the pro's, that was my point.
[edited by: soapystar at 11:44 am (utc) on April 19, 2004]
So what did i do..... I built new sites to fit the new Algo's..So that my clients would be happy again...
Sorry, when you have an real company, not afiliated, with reputation, you can´t do that.....
I am very proud of our companys name.
I have an local familycompany, and if I had to hire somebody to promote my site, or to design it,
I hope I wouldn´t find "profesionals" with these ideas..........
One can change clothes, but one can´t change body.
You play by your name and Im pleased it works well for you.
You are bright enough to recognize that not all online business models are set up to be relaunched. Many are well established brand names that have been written up in major publications or other media.
I doubt though you have had any positive press written up about your online business ;) which is fine since your ultimate objective is to beat the system and make $$$. Respectable objectives.
but the money still comes in. We even thought about a rebrand once but hey many people know the brand! and searches are clever people if they see the brand name plastered all over in yahoo they search for the brand ( i have gigs of logs to prove this ) if the brand url does NOT come up #1 in the serps, then the se has a problem in imo, but 9.5/10 it does.
on sidenote when branding don't use keywords in the brand!, never give an SE a reason for not been #1
example if you sell "books" then amazon, barnes and noble are non keyworded brands....(ok barnes and noble do own books.com on a redirect but they use it for type in's)
DaveN
