can anyone understand this?

another yahoo algo change?

[dawlish]

I recently submitted a website to yahoo using their business express. Initially our ranking on keyword searches was quite low as the results were ordered by category.
However when the algo was recently changed on yahoo.com (September) we shot up to position 2 or 3 for most of our keyword searches as the company name has the keyword in it and we have quite a good description.

Today I notice we cannot be found and are back down on page 7 or 8 below lots of irrelevant sites. Are we being penalised for some reason?

[Travoli]

We had a top 15 ranking on our most competitive keyword. It seems to have disappeared this weekend. Traffic is way down. I look at the sites listed on the first page, and below the 15th result or so, they get very irrelevant. I hope they reverse their changes.

[Napoleon]

Yes... there is a pattern here.

I was hit with one of my sites this weekend. Strangely enough I consider it to be the best and most content worthwhile site I have ever designed.

This has happened before with other sites and seems to occur when they are reasonably new... initially they rank high on entry, then they fall very badly, then they (not always) recovery over time.

My guess is that your sites are fairly recent?

It is annoying though when this happens because it certainly isn't based on content, nor on the description/etc (the one given to my site is excellent).

I would say it is some click pop or visitor duration quirk. Whatever, it doesn't help me (or you) and it doesn't help Yahoo either.

[Hunter]

dawlish,

The pattern that Napoleon speaks of does seem to occur with newer sites. I would suggest in the meantime that you speed up your load time as much as possible thru graphic optimization and work on getting more quality inbound links (as well as some outbound).