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Back in Yahoo in one day!

After three year ban.

         

sachac

1:04 am on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



For several months I tried to get my site re-included in Yahoo SERPS through the usual channels. I read a few days ago that someone was successful in getting a response through search-support@cc.yahoo-inc.com.

I tried this, explaining that sometime ago, we incurred an Inktomi ban that was carried forward. I also explained that we could never understand why we were banned in the first place since are an ethical 25 year old company that would never do anything underhanded.

I submitted the re-inclusion request yesterday, and bingo, in 24 hours I'm back at least for my company name. The response from Yahoo was polite and prompt. I am impressed and extremely thankful for the suggestion.

bigbern

4:28 am on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



what artical did u read this in?

soapystar

8:59 am on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



whole site or just homepage?

regional yahoo's?
alltheweb?
altavista?

tictoc

9:38 am on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Did you do a site:yoursite search to find out if your entire site is back?

There is another discussion started by Crobb305 talking about some changes in Yahoo not including the update. It looks more like some penalties have been lifted for some sites (including mine for just the homepage). Very strange stuff going on.

sachac

1:08 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



The entire site is no back, just the index. The suggestion was made in an earlier thread. The site is coming and going, but this a very positive sign since it was nowhere to be found for the past three years.

soapystar

1:16 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



yes its very positive and allows for the site to be found when someone specifically is looking for it. My only concern is that a whole bunch of sites have been released to homepage only status so any ideas that this is happening because of a manual review would seem misplaced. It just seems like a change in the handling of certain categories of sites. What id like to hear more about is whther you have seen your homepage appear on alltheweb, altavista and regional yahoo's as this seems yahoo.com specific to me right now.

patc

2:24 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



sachac,

In my experience your home page will be first then over the next month or two the rest of your site will start to come back to the index. Welcome back to Y! It was great for me to watch too :)

sachac

3:36 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



We have disappeared at this time but our index page was ranking well for important keywords. From what I have read, I expect it will come and go for a while. For now it is not to be found in Alltheweb and Altavista.

crobb305

4:25 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



sachac,

Slow down. It's a little too soon to start polishing any badges. All of the sites that reappeared in the past 5 days have disappeared again. Furthermore, the index I saw that showed some of the "banned" sites returning were never posted to other portals (ATW, AV). So, at least for now, the long-standing bans do not seem to have been lifted, at least not yet.

I have seen this happen many, many times, where "banned" sites reappear for a week to three months, with only the homepage showing indexed (indicative of the remaining penalty). For some reason, the homepage will reappear then disappear again. Maybe a glitch, who knows.

I will say that some of the sites I saw back in the index after suffering a year-long penalty are worthy of being there. If this was a glitch that caused them to reappear, I still hope Yahoo will revisit these sites and consider a permanent removal of the penalty. These lifelong bans are just mean.

ddogg

6:43 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I had my site that was banned for a year or so show back up for its name and keywords around 5 days ago. Today it is gone again.

I should note slurp is still crawling me today (more so then when I was banned). So hopefully this is an old index or something.

crobb305

7:04 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Yep...gone for now. Maybe this thread with the big "My Banned Site is Back in Yahoo" title caught their attention and had them reconsider things. Maybe it was a glitch, or perhaps things will revert back.

BillyS

7:49 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Have faith, and look for steady improvement over the next two months. Good news.

jfj3rd

7:50 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



How about I throw an interesting twist into this.

Our company is the largest real estate hosting company with approximately 30,000 clients housed on multiple various servers.

About 3 months ago our marketing department which tracks rankings for about 600 of our clients noticed that Yahoo rankings started to very quickly drop for our clients. Some rankings which have been established for up to at least 3 years.

It was quickly discovered through our customer support department that it wasn't limitted to just the 600 that we monitor in this department. I'd guess that about 95% of our entire client base lost rankings in Yahoo. The rest survived the flip.

We considered C Blocks, server problems, Duplicate content, reciprocal links, site structure, age of sites and numerous things that could have triggered this.

Last Friday (5 days ago) our rankings came back up. We were THRILLED! However, as it has been pointed out, whatever Yahoo did 5 days ago... it took back today.

Curious to know... what tests have been done in regards to this odd behavior with Yahoo? What conclusions have been met or perhaps are being considered?

Also, what is the common industry that everyone is in that is seeing ranking roller coaster effects in Yahoo?

My $0.02

crobb305

9:26 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Have faith, and look for steady improvement over the next two months. Good news.

BillyS, what are you referring to? Last Friday, a handful of "banned" sites reappeared in the index. Today they are gone again. During the past week, that index never spread to the Yahoo portals, which leads me to believe the reappearance of those penalized sites in the index was a technical error.

I am very hopeful that the penalties imposed on those sites have, indeed, been removed as many of us have worked very hard to bring sites up to par with the quality guidelines. But, we all know how hard it is to get penalties removed, and I had a feeling that what I saw earlier this week was too good to be true.

randle

9:52 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



the reappearance of those penalized sites in the index was a technical error.

I do believe this to be correct, or at the least an experiment or some sort.

It was our experience that the only penalized sites that temporarily reappeared were sites that are in the directory.

crobb305

11:08 pm on May 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



It was our experience that the only penalized sites that temporarily reappeared were sites that are in the directory.

Yes. This is exactly what I observed. All of the sites that reappeared were in the Yahoo Directory. For comparison, I did notice that sites that did not reappear were also NOT in the directory.

It was nice to see the penalized sites reappear in the search results. After all, if Yahoo has any faith in their own directory, and if people are going to pay them $300 a year to be listed, then those sites should be included in the serps, in my opinion. They shouldn't use double standards and this sort of internal inconsistency.

BillyS

2:47 am on May 11, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>BillyS, what are you referring to?

I'm referring to my own personal experience with Yahoo.

crobb305

4:33 am on May 11, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I'm referring to my own personal experience with Yahoo.

Oh, ok. I was sorta hoping you knew something we didn't and that something positive was indeed going to happen. :)

We all will just have to sit tight and hope that they will lift some of the penalties that are currently in place on some nice websites. Meanwhile, the index that showed the penalties lifted for some sites has been reverted back, and the pages have disappeared. Disappointing.

BillyS

5:47 pm on May 11, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



crobb305 - I do believe your experience too. Maybe that was a glitch, maybe it's forshadowing things to come. I have gone through a successful reinclusion request with Yahoo. They did confirm a problem and I slowly disappeared from their index.

Today I do get referrals from Yahoo. It's not impossible to be reincluded as some here state - I'm a success story.

randle

7:12 pm on May 11, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



It's not impossible to be reincluded as some here state

Agreed; it is definitely not impossible to get re-included; I have had sites that have gotten back in. (and hoisted a few to celebrate I don't mind admitting) However the fact of the matter is the amount of sites that are penalized is extremely high, and the number that gets back in is extremely small.

What I think about is why has Yahoo created this significant pool of sites, (those sites that have been corrected and now do in fact meet the guidelines) that they just don’t seem motivated to let back in?

Wouldn’t they want a compliant and quality site in their index? I mean that’s what this is all about; creating a search engine that displays the best sites that meet the users query. Why would you allow a content rich compliant site to be excluded, but return a MFA site?

It would do everyone, including Yahoo most of all, a world of good if they would come to a forum like this and talk about this situation with the penalties. Why do they occur, what’s the philosophy behind it and what, if anything can webmasters do to construct their sites in a way Yahoo finds acceptable.

All Yahoo has to do is tell the webmaster community what they want, and the vast majority with penalized sites will eagerly comply.

You can confirm your sites been penalized here; [add.yahoo.com...]

You can bring your site into compliance by following to the letter these guidelines here; [help.yahoo.com...]

And you can politely beg to get back in here; [add.yahoo.com...]

But in the end, the vast majority of well meaning webmasters with sites that would add to the user experience end up with this;

“You will not be receiving further notification
from Yahoo!.”

Is it possible to get back in? absolutely, but that doesn’t answer the mystery, or diminish the scope of these penalties in any way.

ddogg

4:06 pm on May 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



As of this moment my site is back in again. Hopefully for good huh..

randle

4:17 pm on May 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Is your site in the directory as well?

There is a reoccurrence of penalized sites, that are in the directory, appearing in the results today. Last time it lasted a few days.

crobb305

5:39 pm on May 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I am also seeing the sites come back. The sites returning are in the directory.

Maybe they are going to allow a directory listing override some penalties. Afterall, to be included in the directory, it had to be reviewed and approved by a human. They need to have faith in the quality of their own directory and a listing should be a signal of quality; they have fairly tough inclusion standards.

Good signs. I hope they stick. :)

stinkfoot

1:59 pm on May 18, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



After a 3 year ban, cleaning up all the html, I had one day with few hits from main keyword phrazes the dropped again.

Whats the point of this exactly? Anyone?

crobb305

11:41 pm on May 18, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



stinkyfoot,

When did that happen? Recently?

sachac

10:10 pm on May 25, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



After celebrating getting un-banned the site disappeared for several days only to re-appear today. Hope this sticks.

crobb305

12:02 am on May 26, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



sachac,
Is your site in the directory? I have seen some "banned" sites return to the serps, but they are all in the Y directory.

sachac

3:34 am on May 26, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Have always been ranked high in the directory for a few years. We're #3 for our category keyword as we speak. We are a reputable company with different web people over the years who have never had any reason whatsoever to anything unethical. Geez we have a staff of 200. It is a mystery why were we banned in the first place?

walkman

3:39 am on May 26, 2006 (gmt 0)



if Slurp is getting dozens of pages a day, is that site penalized? A while back, slurp would stop at robots.txt and index page, and I remember Tim saying that is a classic case of a Yahoo penalty.

is that still the case? Penalized sites: does slurp get other files each day, yet they do not appear in the index?

crobb305

5:34 pm on May 26, 2006 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



sachac,

Out of curiosity, are you seeing your homepage only when doing a site: search?

I see some "banned" sites that are still listed homepage only, reappearing for good terms in yahoo.com, but not on any other portal or yahoo UK. I can't explain it. Really odd. The only thing the sites have in common is a directory listing.