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I have read Yahoo's content guidelines. I saw only two potential problems. One was "excessive keyword repetition". I approached this very carefully, because I didn't want to mess up our Google listing. I removed the instances where keyword repetition were used for that purpose (places like image tags), and we dropped a spot or two in Google. No big deal.
I used the webmasterworldfeedback e-mail address and they replied that our status has not changed. So it's not a keyword repetition issue.
There is only one other potential issue. We have registered a number of different domain names, and they all are hosted by the same company and all display the same thing. For instance, we have xyx.com, xyy.com, xyz.com, all hosted by the same company, all pointing to the same domain. (The owner did this in order to protect all possible variations of his company's name). Could this be it? If so, would adding a robots.txt file in there to prohibit Yahoo from visiting any of our sites besides xyz.com solve the problem? Hope this makes sense.
My solution (hopefully temporary) is I took one of our unused, unloved domain names and built a whole new site around our products and submitted it to Yahoo. New text, new pictures, no pointers to our other domains and an e-mail address just for this domain. Yahoo accepted it last week, and it is climbing up the ranks.
My beef is the games Yahoo plays. I have asked politely just what is it that violates their content rules, but they refuse to answer. Wouldn't it make more sense to explain what the problem it is? How many thousands of reputable companies are there that are wasting time and money trying to solve problems that Yahoo could solve just by TELLING US WHAT WE'RE DOING WRONG? I resent these cat-and-mouse games Yahoo plays. I have never seen a company do this. It's absurd! We're banned, while genuine spammers still appear on the first page of Yahoo's search results. We've all seen it.
I will not use Yahoo search anymore. They play too many games. I'll keep using Google, and I hope Microsoft comes out with something good soon.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 10:47 pm (utc) on July 18, 2004]
[edit reason] Please, lets leave the specific keywords out of it. [/edit]
Same here. Sincere effort made by me. Studying content guidelines, etc. Make many changes, where I know would hurt me, just in hopes I would make some change to get me back in.
But you know, it is not the end of the world. I am actually taking in more money with my site than ever. Doing great on google. Struck up a relationship with an on line newspaper that has been a good fit for both of us. Building up my content. Like what I do and I am not going to let Yahoo! spoil it!
Good luck to you.
Perhaps Yahoo have very good reasons for not wanting to explain why a site has been penalised but imho its not because they might be gamed...it could be that the judgements are so subjective they simply cant be quantified or that they need to reserve the right to penalise a site for reasons other than the guidlines and by quoting the guidlines rule all the time they dont have to specify those other reasons or give away that the reason is in fact not a quality issue...
I was doing a site design for a client in March. It was obvious the domain he purchased would trigger the purchase of variations of the domain name. I advised him to purchase a few of the most obvious ones to stop interlopers. Two weeks later I had to reverse myself when people were describing this problem with Yahoo in various forums. Its now July and nobody really seems to know the answer.
My solution since March has been to advise people they can purchase the domains but only sit on them. Without question Yahoo’s automated algo is triggering penalties on 100% legitimate sites. If the penalty is triggered you certainly don’t won’t to be dealing with anonymous manual reviewers. Manual reviews are about whether they like you more than any of the guidelines. It’s like the McCarthy communist hunts of the 50’s. If they don’t like you they’re going to get you. I’m sure there were some communists like spammers but most weren’t.
Mssg me if u want the link to my postings/ journal of the experience, it's quite entertaining.
100% exactly.
It’s like the McCarthy communist hunts of the 50’s.
hum......i always felt it was like the witch hunts..they submerged you in water and if you drowned you were'nt a witch, if you survived you were! So if you claim not to be a spammer but appeal for a review you must be a spammer. Thats why they dont show the appeal address on their website, cause only spammers will apeal, right?
but i said a long time ago everyone assumes Yahoo is after the best serps on the net...there is a strong argument that it only needs to LOOK like a serps to enable them to piggy-back their other products and services on the back of it...
It's very likely that this is the problem. Whether it is the problem or not it should be fixed anyway, per ogletree's msg#7.
Y!'s dup content filters have gotten a lot of folks in trouble, I believe.
It took Yahoo more than 3 weeks to display the new results, and it didn't pick up any of the other pages in the domain. Just the homepage. Yahoo spider doesn't appear to be checking links. This is on a domain that already existed in Yahoo.
It took Yahoo more than 3 weeks to display the new results, and it didn't pick up any of the other pages in the domain. Just the homepage. Yahoo spider doesn't appear to be checking links. This is on a domain that already existed in Yahoo.
Exactly the case with my web site, which has had a strong pr6 link (and several other inbounds) for two weeks now.
