How to get the top 4 listings in Yahoo for your keyword

This guy is doing it ...

[profitpuppy]

Just found out that one guy has got the no 2, 3, 4 and 5 spots for a very popular keyword on Yahoo. Can't mention the keyword because of the forum rules, but I find this VERY interesting. He also has no 2 and 3 spots for a different keyword. Both of these keyword are extrememly profitable areas of the internet ... one top 10 spot is probably worth $10k per month in affiliate commissions.

I'm not going to talk about the spam implications of this as I know this is not a place to report spam (it has already been reported by several people to Yahoo in any case but they don't seem to have done anything about it.) What I'm curious about is why his listings are at the top? It's very strange.

The domain names have nothing to do with the topic of the site. It seems that they have a lot of pre-existing incoming links. The way that he/she seems to have done it is to get a recently expired domain name for ANY topic whatsoever (the 4 domain names that he has are for totally different topics and the links are from sites that are totally unrelated to the product that he/she is selling). This domain name that he/she uses must have lots of pre-existing links and then he/she puts a new site on it, and then gets a listing in Yahoo. The keyword he is mentioning is listed in the title or description, but obviously it is not in the domain name because they are totally unrelated domain names. Something in the Yahoo algorithym is putting his sites right to the top (There are 201 competing sites in the Yahoo directory for this keyword)... the only thing I can think of is the pre-existing links.

I don't know whether Yahoo classifies this as spam (I would, but Yahoo doesn't seem to have) ... but it does seem to show you something about the algorithm ... incoming links are very important??? ... but in a totally different way to Google. These sites would have zero chance of getting a top ranking in Google because the incoming links are totally off topic.

Any ideas of how this is even possible?

[startup]

PR is a big part of what you are seeing.
Now, I want you to try and answer the rest of the question. The more research you do the more you learn. I don't mean to be rude and I know PR is only part of the complete answer.

[profitpuppy]

Yes, pagrank is probably part of it, however it must be a cached pagrank ... two of the sites have page ranks of 7 and 6 respectively the other two pages are not listed in google (probably because when the domain expired google spidered and found that they were not there). My guess is that the two pages that are not listed in google, previously had a high page rank and Yahoo is using a cached record of their pagerank ?????

[startup]

Okay that takes care of PR. What else could be responsible for the rankings?

[profitpuppy]

His sites are fully optimized with the keyword in title, and everywhere else. It is also interesting to note that the 4 sites are in 3 different categories in Yahoo.

I also noticed that the two sites that still have pagerank are listed in dmoz and google directory ... this will have to go ... totally different topic.

[steveb]

I don't know if this will answer your questions, but I am battling a group of 15 to 50 (I don't know how many) doorway sites. They now rank 1, 4, 5, 6 and 11 on Yahoo search results for a compettive keyword. I believe what happened is this:

They were all submitted to yahoo via their bulk-submit program last month (or the most recent cycle).

That's it. New paid submissions (all linked together, with hidden text). I'm curious to see how they will rank after the update. (I and others have reported them the past few weeks.)

[startup]

"His sites are fully optimized with the keyword in title"
The Yahoo title or the page title, or both?

[eljefe3]

Profitpuppy,

I know which sites you are talking about and it does seem strange in that all other new sites get shuffled down to pages 5-7 and these new ones are right there. One of them even looks like it could be a borderline adult domain name. Things that make you go hmmmmmm

[packetproductions]

The Yahoo system is very boiler plate unless if a human adjust things internally.

This guy submitted these sites months ago and he has had awesome positions with other sites for the last 2 years.

I know who he is and I would assume (99% know) this to be the case.

Tried over 20 sites with Yahoo this year and not only did I lose money, I kept losing postions until I had none left.

Yahoo is sinking downhill since the Overture deal and they have absolutely no wish to place new sites on 1st matching pages because that would circumvent people from clicking on the overture listings and thats where they are making money today.

This fella is inside, thats why he does not do pay sites, he is simply affiliate and pretty much non traceable.

Packetproductions

[Abrexa_UK]

Packetproductions, what do you mean by "inside"? are you saying that he is a Yahoo employee? or someone who has inside information on how to boost a site? or does he have connections in Yahoo who are willing to alter his listing positions?

That would be worth a lot of money ;)

[profitpuppy]

I don't necessarily think it is an inside job. When we see things that look too good to be true our brain goes to ... he must be cheating ... but it could just be that he is using the Yahoo ranking algorithym to his/her full advantage. This is the interesting part. I think when you see sites like this you can quite possibly learn something new about how Yahoo ranks sites

[startup]

profitpuppy,
If Yahoo has updated they are using a very old "cached PR" value. There was some movement in the positions but, nothing to reflect the true PR of two of those sites. This is getting very interesting, thanks for bringing it up.

[Shakil]

Just went and took a look, amazing that this sort of stuff is getting through on places such as Yahoo, when at times even relevant keywords are substituted in titles and descriptions.

On another note, the industry this relates to, is by far 1 of the hardest to get top search positioning, every dirty trick is being played by every man and his dog.

Shak

[willtell]

I don't think this is at all surprising. Yahoo has had financial problems and has laid off many folks. They have a huge job with fewer employees. It would seem likely that they are not doing any maintenance on existing sites given the resources they have. they are in 'sell mode'. They have to keep new listings coming in or they are going to be hurting worse.

[startup]

Some of us do considered this as, having fun. The owners of those sites do know it won't last forever and it is a calculated gamble. Let's see how long they last.

[startup]

We are now down to one of the 4 original sites. Update completed?
The last site wouldn't be there if this was done "by hand".

[profitpuppy]

We must not be looking at the same sites. All 4 are still there ranked 2, 3 9 and 11 on Yahoo.

[packetproductions]

I still feel that the positioning was done internally, sometimes a short time with many good positioned sites will allow an owner to see what site is converting the best and I think that is the one that has been left to convert.

I know this to be true because there are sites on Yahoo that are always on top. In some cases, after Yahoo refreshes, the site go down to the middle or bottom of the list and a week later they will be on top again ( on tope meaning top of keyword searches ).

Keywords within the site no longer matter, every Yahoo listing has a code and that code tracks internally how many hits a website gets. If someone where to refresh the codes manually, the site will then come up on top again as to reach a sufficient amount of hits for the price paid.

I have had really good sites approved but sometimes I wont get any good postions, I dread seeing some of the Yahoo Editors email addresses when they send me approval notices beacuse I know if the wrong editor approves my site, my site will not be postioned well at all.

I have been doing marketing for clients for the past 3 years and I have never seen Yahoo do anything like they have in the past 5-6 months. It no longer makes sense to submit becuase its a shot in the dark and it cost dollars.

Well thats my input, I hope it makes sense because sometimes nothing makes sense except the obvious.

Packetproductions

[2_much]

Hi Packetproductions,

I think you're a bit off in your analysis. There is no clickthrough and no editor intervention in the keyword rankings. If you analyze it enough you can see definite trends.

[profitpuppy]

Yes, I don't think it's an inside job. Of course it's not impossible, but I think it's unlikely.

What's interesting is to try to work out exactly why he/she has managed to get these top spots. If anyone has any more imput as to the reasons for top rankings it would be much appreciated ... I can think we can learn if we put our collective brains to it.

[startup]

profitpuppy, please check your "sticky" mail.