Partial Penalization?

Only the home page is indexed

[paladin]

We have a client with the following problem:
.com domain, Google PR of 8, over 3,000,000 pages indexed in Google, plus they have a Yahoo Directory listing. Now the problem is that it looks like at some point in the past they annoyed some of the Gods at Yahoo. As a result, only their home page is indexed in the Yahoo search results.

Any ideas on what could cause this and how to help them get their other pages indexed in Yahoo?

thanks,
Alon

[twist]

I did a massive 301 redirect about 2 months ago in order to shorten all my urls by removing an unnecessary variable. example.com/pages/info/1 to example.com/info/1

MSN dealt with the change fine, Google is still a horrendous mess showing 6,900 results for my site, a mix of the new addresses and old addresses. Yahoo was slowwwwly updating the links, not quite the mess Google has but still a mess.

I have been slowly climbing since the 301 redirects in yahoo. 800, then thousand, 2,700 just the other day. Today I checked my backlinks which was around 21, and all but my dmoz links was gone. I checked my site and I have only my home page listed. Odd thing is, I was coming in about number 15 under my own name (2 seperate words when spelled out). Now I am number 1. Why would they ban my site then put move me up the serps?

Are all those sites that backlinked to mine also now gone? I am either banned because they are seeing duplicate content from the 301's or they are getting ready to do some type of big update. It's fine with me because some russian site was using a bs 302 to my site and they are gone also.

[arbitrary]

twist, something is up but I am not sure what.

Last night, I did site: on several sites. The sites just had the homepage listed. Today, when doing site:, the pages are back and in some cases, there are 1000+ pages showing.

I thought the same thing, that either they are going to do an update (in earnest) or they are going to clean house.

[marketingmagic]

I can't see recip links page(s) being a reason for a ban/penalty or anything else negative, provided of course they are related to your sites content and theme.

Having a on topic recip links page is useful to your visitors and is how the web was built. Can't see Yahoo or anyone else penalizing sites for doing a proper recip links page.

[soapystar]

links page=links farm=algo manipulation=yahoo review opinion

[DeanLetendre]

If your site is banned by Yahoo Search, then what do you do to get back in? We noticed a couple of months ago that only our home page was being included when doing "site: domain.com". We have 5 listings in the directory but only the home page in the search. Does it help to pay the $299 for the human review, even when we have pages listed in the directory?

[soapystar]

nope..the $299 only helps Yahoo get richer....

to get back in the serps you need to write a really really reallyyyyyy nice email.....if you dont you wont get past first base....then....think of all the past indiscretions you have or might have made..no matter how white hat and no matter how long ago...confess these to the review team and make sure you tell them why you realise this was spam and you will never do it again..be sincere...
make sure you have no seo on the site... be prepared to email several times and never sound impatient....if your site isnt an affiliate site you may be lucky and get a sucessful review...dont make the mistake of thinking pasing the review has any connection with the reason you were banned...

[DeanLetendre]

I am a novice. When you say no seo on the site, we are using a seo firm to help in this area and no success with yahoo, should we eliminate all of there suggestions, it seems to be working in other areas. Are h2 tags considered search spam? who do we write to?

[garytexas]

Just got back into Yahoo after one year ban, and yes if only your index page is listed, you are banned!
They do this incase one searches just for http://www.example.com

1
removed minor crosslinking to my other sites.
2
Dumped all 11 pages of reciprical links.
3
Removed the words reciprical link exchange from my link to us page. Replaced with link to us
4
Dumped my keywords meta tag on all top level pages( ie one click away) will finish removing them from all pages.
5
Removed all aff links from above the fold on index page.
6
Added yahoo ads to below the fold index page
Hope this helps

PS if you have recip links pages and they are not exactly on topic, small and link to authority sites only, you are a link farm, maybe a small link farm, pss when requsting reinclusion tell them you dumped the recip pages and unless your are a spammer you will get back in.

[edited by: engine at 6:00 pm (utc) on Nov. 19, 2005]
[edit reason] examplified [/edit]

[twist]

Just for the record, the other day I checked yahoo and only my homepage was listed (read back through thread). The next day everything was back to normal and it's even getting better. I changed nothing. Just letting people know not to pull your hair out the second your site dissappears, give it a day or two and if it doesn't come back, then pull your hair out.

[martinibuster]

Hey twist,
Thanks for the update. You're right. Sometimes sites drop during updates then return. I had one site a few months ago that dropped out entirely except for the CSS file, but then it returned a few days later.

[Freedom]

garytexas is right. I had to dump all my link pages to get back in, and in the last reinclusion, I told them I was a former link trader but had given that up - which is true. I am sick of link exchanges and link exchange emails. Which is basically what I said in my reinclusion request for that particular site.

Now that I am "back in" - I paid a bit to Search Submit to get indexed every 48 hours on 6 urls. Still waiting for their reply 4 days later. Deadline is supposedly today, but not sure how they count "4 day review." Either way, they seem to be waiting until the last minute.

They had no problems charging my CC right away tho.

[DeanLetendre]

Freedom,

Who did you write to? Or where do you go to email Yahoo about this? I tried calling for answers and kept getting the run around and the suggestion to try their search submit program. When you eliminated the links page, did you see it harm your Google rankings?

[soapystar]

you wont see the google hit till all your link partners catch on to the removal. The hit will happen over months.

[Freedom]

You might be right about that soapystar - but I think recip linking is dead in Google too. A lot of SEO webmasters I know are starting to think recip linking is dead. A lot of good people are backing away from it.

Dean,

You can check the status of your site here: [add.yahoo.com...]

This is the link for a second review:
[add.yahoo.com...]

[soapystar]

its not dead in google. The algo has evolved around it thats all. Just like the sandbox. Some webmasters swear you cant get new sites in Google. Others know different.

Do you see any sites in the top of the serps on Google with NO links?

[Freedom]

I haven't taken the time or interest to figure it all or to speculate on what the seo flavor of the day is, perhaps it's all true organic links that got them better rankings. Or authoritative links.

I am just focuing on the safe and effective things that I know that work for me. Boring stuff, but it produces results that I can build on.

As for my own personal strategy of link building in teh future I may or may not use, I have a few ideas I might try. But I think by and large the reciprocal linking as we knew it is over with.

Thats just my opinion. You work it they way you feel is best for you.

[soapystar]

hey..i didnt say i do it.....