How to get "un-penalized"

I've been penalized, I know why, and I need to fix it.

[markis00]

Well, for all who've read my post about a penalty incurred by Adsense; I've discovered now that I wasn't penalized for switching Adsense layout types.

I thought about it; and realized the same day that I posted links between two of my sites that happen to be irrelevant to each other.

I realized after reading the penalty thread in this area that what I had done could have incurred the penalty; in fact, it most likely did, and have since removed the links.

The wierd thing is; I only put a link from one site to the other; and both my sites were penalized. But this makes sense to me.

I haven't seen the link that was caught by yahoo removed yet; I'm wondering, in the next update, is it possible that Yahoo will realize the sites are no longer linking and remove this link; thus ending my penalty?

I have emailed yahoo about this problem; asking if indeed a penalty was implied, and am yet to hear back from them.

Does anyone have any experience as to how a Yahoo penalty can be resolved in this manner? Or how long it takes for Yahoo to update itself and realize the sites are no longer linking?

[busted broke]

helenp

You say you were reincluded. Can you also confirm that you had personal contact with Tim. This isnt the first case where reinclusion follows personal help. I see no evidence of a real system of review in place. 90% or reinclusion seem to follow finding a personal contact within Yahoo who gives the specific reason for ban or early help in the first few days of the changes on this forum from Tim.

[helenp]

>>>You say you were reincluded. Can you also confirm that you had personal contact with Tim. >>>

Sorry, Tim hasn´t done anything, in fact he said It was aproved when it wasn´t.

As I said the oficial way worked with me.
[e-mail], I was back after writing again several times again asking what happening with my oficial apealing.

If you think 5 months is personal help.........
I wrote [e-mail] for more than 3 months ago, and several times. before that to inktomihelp.

As well I written [e-mail] and this has resulted in nothing.

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 11:51 pm (utc) on July 31, 2004]
[edit reason] Corrected email address at helenp's request [/edit]

[markis00]

I submitted two urls to yahoo for them to "review," that was a week ago.

I wait and sulk. :/

Yahoo's my only source of traffic; Google sends me nothing...

[Rick_M]

I sent an email about mine over the weekend - no response yet - looks like I shouldn't be in any hurry. Amazing how overnight they can remove 70k of my pages - I really don't think anything I do is that aggressive either when it comes to SEO.

Wonder if one of my competitors reported me or something? I'm pretty comfortable that I would pass a manual inspection though. I guess I should be happy that Yahoo and MSN (which also shows I'm gone) only make up 20% of my total traffic.

[textex]

I am seeing other competiotrs getting the boot as well. We have a real balck hat in the industry. I would bet he is doing something or reporting us to Yahoo! for something.

[bbonline]

I wonder if all the sites that have been penalized by Yahoo have Adsense, are big sites and are run by active "successful for years" marketers.

To me Yahoo isn't blocking sites that doesn't comply with their guidlines but sites that are very comptetive to get the visitors and are performing "too good" in the search engine listings.

Things look odd to me to say the least.

Another thing that strikes me is that if Google had done anything close to what Yahoo is doing it would have been noticed by the media such as SearchengineWatch etc., and even gotten to the press not to mention the effects on this forum. But Yahoo certainly gets silk glove treatment on this penalty thing.

[Rick_M]

I got a reply today from the [e-mail] address - but I'm not exactly sure what it means as it was a very brief response asking me what my site's about.

I had sent them my URL, so I am guessing they looked at it, which suggests they have concern about my site's content. I personally don't believe any of my content is questionable - except that I do have several parts with affiliate links on them, and adsense ads running - which hopefully they don't consider enough for a ban.

I replied back with more specifics on my site's content in case they did not go look at the URL I sent them. I'll see if I get another response. Still pretty scary. Hopefully they'll sort it out.

I don't know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that there are others in the same boat.

[cbpayne]

All my sites with Adsense on them rank well in Yahoo - its not a problem.

[Rick_M]

Got another reply. It appears that it is because I have used the Amazon data feed to generate search engine friendly pages on my site. While I'm glad they will be aggressive on removing duplicate content, I'm upset they knocked out my entire site. Also, I have incorporated a lot of the amazon content directly into related pages - I'm not sure if that will be a problem or not.

They suggested I use my robots.txt file to prevent spiders from accessing those pages and see if the pages come back in 2-3 months.

I'm curious is everyone else knocked out was for amazon product feed, or if there are other types of datafeed driven content that are causing site-wide bans.

I'm thinking what I may do is divide up my content onto separate domains - figuring if something on one domain gets a site-wide ban, at least the rest of the content should stay afloat.

Painful. But at least I know why I'm banned.

[cabbagehead]

Interesting ... but no. No Amazon content here. There is some affiliate content but only on a subdmain, and there's a robots.txt file on the subdomain as well ... problem persists. :-\

[Rick_M]

Well, they confirmed for me that they will ban a site for datafeeds / duplicate content.

[soapystar]

Well, they confirmed for me that they will ban a site for datafeeds / duplicate content.

huh?....they already do that with their own site!

[cabbagehead]

What did you get from Google that suggests they are now penalizing data feeds? Can you post the exact wording of what they said? The only cmment I've seen from them thus far is that affiliate sites are not welcome *unless they have substantial unique content in addition to the affiliate content*. I would be suprised if they suddenly started penalizing use of data feeds.

[Rick_M]

I don't know if I am allowed to post email from Yahoo - but nothing in the message says I can't. If Webmasterworld moderators want to remove this, feel free, as I definitely don't want to hurt anyone's feelings.

I've only included their reply as I really don't want to give too much identifying information about my own site:

Mod's note: Paraphrased email.

Amazon FEEDs are a "red flag" to Yahoo. Yahoo discourages them because such pages are duplicates of already indexed pages.

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 12:14 am (utc) on June 26, 2004]
[edit reason] NO email quotes, TOS #9 [/edit]

[carneddau]

I received a response from Yahoo today, I used the reportsearchspam email address mentioned in this thread.

Unfortunately the response is a description of what search engine spam is, I'd say this was a machine generated response if it hadn't taken 2 days to arrive.

Did anyone else get this response which starts:

snipped

My original email is below the response which makes me think that somebody must have read it and thought this standard, patronising response was the most fitting answer to my question.

The site in question is around 500 pages of original content (copy, pictures, maps) no feed generated pages. It has links to a few affiliate programs and links to other sites that do have feed generated pages.

I can only think that Yahoo are penalising the site because of the association with affiliate programs (consisting of around 100 links total in a 500 page site). It seems to me that the Yahoo search algo is programmed to wipe out sites that have affiliate partnerships or use content syndication. I'd really like to see if Yahoo.com would survive the filters they apply to the rest of us.

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 12:15 am (utc) on June 26, 2004]
[edit reason] NO email quotes, TOS #9 [/edit]

[markis00]

Well, I'm still waiting for the review department to get back to me..

I must say though, compared to Google, Yahoo has it going on. When I was removed from Google SERPS around update florida (as was a lot of people), Google just kept sending me auto-replies and machine generated emails.

At least Yahoo is looking into this for me

[cabbagehead]

Rick_m

Cool! Thanks for posting that. information like that helps a LOT. I just got an email myself indicating they will review my site. I'll let you guys know what they say on my end as well.

Rick - how long ago did you request the review? just trying to anticipate how long until I get a response.

[Rick_M]

It was amazingly fast - like 2 days for one of the email addresses, and 4 days for the "report suggestion" link at the bottom of the searches - or whatever the link is on Yahoo for reporting concern about their results.

While I doubt I'll see my site back in the results for at least a few months, if ever, I am impressed with their repsonse time.

[outland88]

I still know about 5 people who have been waiting for responses from Yahoo since early March. If anything they say they have been treated rather nastily by Yahoo reps at the mentioned forum e-mail addresses. Maybe after 4 months Yahoo is finally realizing all the BS they’re forcing on people. I doubt it, but I’ve seen stranger things happen in life. It’s like I said from day one. I don’t believe they’ll work out most of the bugs for at least a year. The law of averages say a few will get back in but the vast majority will be forgotten.

[soapystar]

there does seem to be a difference in the way certain types of sites and penalties are handled. The example above spoke of an algo affect not an editorial decision. Other certain sites are given no indication of whether their site has been reviewed or not and what they should be looking for in addressing their site. Even with repeated emails asking for clarification on certain issues or general questions are met with a wall of silence. The two roads they use for webmaster issues are so diverse you have to question what is going on here. Why do we continually get examples of sites taken in hand and give specific advice like above and others that get a one or two line reply and told they can be told nothing at all even under pain of torture. Some webmsters tell me they have had great communication and even confirmation of when a review has taken place, others have terrible time with cold and generic responses.

[wellzy]

My site has been penalized by Y! also. They replied to me within 2 days. They gave me a list of coomon problems that get you banned (cloaking, kwd, etc) and told me I could ask for a re-review when my site was ready. I asked for a re-review last night and this morning had an e-mail from Y!.

They said the 'current status is appropriate' which leaves me baffled. I followed their guidelines to a tee. I'm trying to decide whether to give up or try again. I have asked them for specif details, but I don't think they tell anybody. I'll keep you posted

wellzy

[cabbagehead]

They didnt give a reason? Any chance of eeking a reason out of their response? Any chance you can post their response?

[wellzy]

They gave no reason. They simply stated that they felt the current status is appropriate (meaning the penalty is deserved). I have e-mailed them asking for an explanation. I seriously doubt I'll get one.

wellzy

[carneddau]

wellzy,

I've had a similar email. To be fair it's the second email from them in 2 days, maybe they've thrown more resources at this?

My email basically said that they will not discuss their algorithm and that the term "penalty" is only used by professional search engine spammers who use certain web forums to discuss their business!

Reading between the lines I think they are saying "Your site and business is spam, stop mailing us". Which, considering they only provided around 5% of my traffic, is exactly what I will do.

I've noticed that they are still using my images in their image search, does anyone know the User-Agent for their image bot? If they won't include my pages they're not having my images ;)

[outland88]

> My email basically said that they will not discuss their algorithm and that the term "penalty" is only used by professional search engine spammers who use certain web forums to discuss their business!

I’ve seen this message on other forums but with a little more detail. Apparently some Yahoo reps feel that WW is composed of a lot of professional spammers. None of the Yahoo reps sign their messages seemingly to evade Yahoo management tracking them down. Seems to me if they were doing things in sync with other search engines thet wouldn’t sink to this level. I truly doubt the quality of their manual reviews exceeds that of their replies. A light should go off in somebody’s head at Yahoo that no other search engine is really doing things like this. It’s just plain pitiful they brought doing business on the Internet down to this level with their methodology.

As a side note Yahoo is just flooding areas of Google with spam that I do business in.

[rhshinn]

the term "penalty" is only used by professional search engine spammers

I just received a reply using that same phrase from the reportsearchspam@ address mentioned earlier. I sent a message to that address 4 days ago, but had also used the webmasterworldfeedback@ address and sticky mailed a certain Y! person (when his box wasn't full), so don't know if it was just one email or some combination of the three that resulted in a reply.

Anyway, like many (most?) on this thread, I had a site disappear from Yahoo search results. Thankfully, the Y! responder was "not happy with the answer we give" for a query that should have shown the site and has "escalated" my situation to the developers.

Sounds hopeful, but we'll see...

[wellzy]

None of the Yahoo reps sign their messages seemingly to evade Yahoo management tracking them down.

My second Y! reply was signed. I wonder if the fact I used webmasterworldfeedback@yahoo.**** may have been a problem. Maybe they assumed I am a spammer. My site is clean too. I do well in Google, and have a feeling I'm missing some good traffic from Google. I haven't decided if it's time to just move along.

wellzy

[soapystar]

what does clean mean these days? i used to think it meant you didnt cheat but thats no longer the case. It now means optimising your site too well (gaming yahoo), large number of affiliate links, an affiliate site with a large but not substantial amount of unique content, swappng links etc etc. all stuff thats out their in the open to be seen and no cheating. Yahoo has re-written the rule book. you cannot say you shouldnt be banned because you are clean, thats not the criteria they are using. They are using many factors including their own take on quality.

[cbpayne]

>Yahoo has re-written the rule book.

Have they really rewritten the 'rule book'? or are they just usng a different business model to Google to differentiate themselves from them.

[carneddau]

Whichever way you choose to spin it they've changed the criteria for inclusion in their search results. They've definately moved the goalposts for affiliate marketers (Spammers as Yahoo call them), actually it's more like they've hidden the goalposts!