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Yahoo Travel is an affiliate of Hotels.com. All other affiliates offering the same content are actually competitors of Yahoo. How do I know? Look at the content from the same hotel listing on any other affiliate site of Hotels.com and you will see. Yet Yahoo doesn't ever mind including themselves in search results. They unfairly discriminate against other affiliates however and also effectively snuff out their competition. "McDonalds can be in my town but not yours" so to speak. Yahoo will eventually be reported for unfair trade practices.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 10:20 pm (utc) on May 10, 2004]
[edit reason] no specifics please. [/edit]
Could it be that there is a copy of your sites being used by other sites?
Perhpas you might want to try using javascript to link between your sites, and changing the template a little bit, to see if this brings your sites back?
Yahoo will eventually be reported for unfair trade practices.
An interesting thing that came out of the SK versus Google lawsuit was that Search results are regarded as opinions, and as opinions they are protected under free speech laws.
One assumes that Yahoo's search results may be regarded as their opinion of relevant results, and also protected as free speech.
There is a big difference. A better anology would be Bill Gates not allowing competitors' products on MS OS saying that in his opinion they are no good.
There is a big difference. A better anology would be...
My statement isn't an analogy. It's an apples to apples comparison.
Google was not a competitor of Searchking and it could be reasonably assumed that its search engine result is like its 'opinion.' Yahoo, on the other hand, is a competitors of businesses it is trying to penalize. Most likely it falls under the scope of anti-trust and consumer choice. Just give it some time.
In my opinion, whether Yahoo is a competitor is irrelevant.
Yahoo is exercising it's opinion of what constitutes a relevant result. It's an apples to apples comparison, and not an analogy.
>>competitors
Yahoo is a portal and has been for years. They've got travel, jobs, personals, web hosting, free email and free yahoogroups, shopping and more - and they're an ISP as well. They also sell advertising and have algorithmic search that freely includes thousands of companies out there also in those same businesses - all of them competitors.
[help.yahoo.com...]
>>numerous keywords on 6 sites, that all of them were dropped from Yahoo search results. No two sites were programmed the same or had the same topic even.
Multiple sites offering the same content
Search engines can't "see" graphics and interface design, what counts is the text on the pages. How different were the numerous keywords from site to site, aside from the geographical localities?
>>The only thing they all had in common was linking between them, for the purpose of providing "other city" choices for our visitors.
Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
If they warranted linking to "other cities" for choices then the pages must have been very closely topically related.
What percentage of your actual content was different from page to page between the sites, and with the exception of the city names, how different are the search terms on a corresponding page by page basis? How about directory and page naming?
>>We could care less about the "popularity" effect of "crosslinking".
Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity
Terms of service and guidelines relate to appearances - not to personal intentions, which there is no way for anyone else to know much less an algorithm determine that.
How about inbound links? Does each site have their own independent inbound linking? How similar is it between the sites?
>>The sites do not violate any of Yahoo's guidelines to the best of my knowledge. So, what to conclude?
Conclude that if the sites were dropped, in the absence of getting "lost" because of server down-time, that the guidelines may just have been violated without you doing it deliberately. It happens every day of the week.
>>Look at the content from the same hotel listing on any other affiliate site of Hotels.com and you will see.
And how many of those other affiliate sites are still ranking in the top 10 or 20 of the organic search results? Did those also disappear altogether? Your attorney will want to know that.
>>Yahoo doesn't ever mind including themselves in search results.
If you do a search for search engine at Yahoo, Yahoo comes up #9.;)
What are your guidelines on spam?
Yahoo! strives to provide the best search experience on the Web by directing searchers to high-quality and relevant web content in response to a search query.
Pages Yahoo! Wants Included in Its Index
Original and unique content of genuine value
What Yahoo! Considers Unwanted
Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
Herein lies the problem. If Yahoo now currently bans or demotes a site's ranking OR if they have EVER done this - due to content that isn't unique and original, then they have applied their rules unevenly and with discrimination.
Take this as one example out of many: a search for 'stratosphere casino hotel and tower'. They appear in search results as follows:
PR = 1 (Stratosphere Casino Hotel & Tower, Las Vegas : Find reviews, prices, and availability on Yahoo! Travel).
PR = 2 (Comprehensive hotel information, including descriptions, cost, availability, photos, reviews,maps, and nearby airports, attractions and restaurants for the Stratosphere Casino Hotel & Tower. ... Las Vegas - Stratosphere Casino Hotel & Tower. Hotel Guide > North America).
Each of these links takes you to the same results page, which is a short intro of text and photo that tons of other hotels.com / travelnow.com affiliates have on their pages. Then if you click on the more info link, you'll get the same hotels.com / travelnow.com datafeed / approved affiliate text that can be found all over the internet. The travel portion of their website certainly is a regurgigation of what you can commonly find on the net. Little extra fluff here and there like all the others. But the core of it is to sell the hotel space using affiliate content.
Hardly "Original and unique content of genuine value".
Certainly "Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages".
Diversity, unique, original, same content - these are the words/phrases that stand out when I read them. So, I still maintain that if Yahoo has EVER or NOW penalizes affiliate sites for their duplicity, then they stand very guilty.
It may be argued that Google penalized Searchking to preserve the integrity of its serps, whereas Yahoo might be penalizing sites to destroy the integrity of its serps for its financial gains.
Quite different issues.
Doesn't change the fact that the serps are an opinion, and thus may be protected as free speech.
However you want to slice it and dice it and attribute hidden meanings and motivations to their serps (while you're at it, why not blame the unseen hand of the Illuminati?), it's still an issue of Yahoo expressing their opinion.
Whether you like it or not is beside the point. Whether you feel it harms anyone is also beside the point.
So, I still maintain that if Yahoo has EVER or NOW penalizes affiliate sites for their duplicity, then they stand very guilty.
actually you seem to sugest that they actually take the time to read through the hundreds or thousands of pages on that type of site to see if its identical. A previous poster made the point that dmoz struggle to do that with 10,000 editors and just indexing the index page or selected sub pages. Unlikely that they really do that. I have mentiond before and i still believe that at best they get a general impression of your structure and made a quick judgement. If you look like all the rest then you will be deemed as being just like the rest, whether u are or not. As for Yahoo abiding by their own guidelines i think this has been demonstrated on several occasions not to be the case even though Tim has stated their urls go through the same filters. This opens up the question of how you are hand edited then since this appears to be the point at which evenhandiness goes out the window.
Doesn't change the fact that the serps are an opinion, and thus may be protected as free speech.
The judgement stated this was only a defence in absence of other factors that could well apply in other cases. The serps being an opinion is not an absolute defence. I would also question whether a site being removed totally from the serps is the same as the SK case. There is no display of relative merit in that case, it would also be far more straightforward to demonstrate the loss caused.
