I went from #26 to #256 :(

altavista drop

[kelownarealtors]

I noticed my altavista rank drop from #26 to #256 overnight. When I use the link: search for my domain, all my links are up... yet when I do a domain: style search I notice altavista is using the data from my first attempt. I guess it's possible that I uploaded an old index.html file, and that got indexed. My domain name DOES come up, when I type domain:www.me.com at altavista. On Yahoo, it doesnt anymore. Although Yahoo, shows a sub-page. Does this sound like I've been banned, punished, or just uploaded the old index.html? I've since uploaded my current index.html in hopes to be re-ranked. I really don't remember uploading an old one... seems fishy.

Thanks for any help.

[Webtoolpros]

Hi,

I don't think you were banned or banished, unless your site content really affected the major search engines.

From experience, I've had a web site located #2 out of 70,000 and in a month it would banish off the face of the earth.

All I can say is use pure html and if so, try to keep up to date with creating search engine friendly sites.

Some of my sites have gone from 300 indexed pages to none. Strangely at least in yahoo, 3 months later, somehow 600 pages were indexed.

Keep trying and don't give up!

[hannamyluv]

Altavista has been defunct for quite some time now. What you are seeing are Inktomi results, which is owned by Yahoo.

[kelownarealtors]

Altavista defunct? Thats funny.. cause this is the first web site I've built in quite a while. Boy things are different now. I can't figure it out, but I certainly wont give up, i only published my first pages Dec. 24 (LOL) I can't give up quite yet... it's only been 20 days or so.

I made my home page XHTML 1.0 and CSS compliant and put some buttons on them.

I can't really see the "search engines gods" caring about my arena of key words (a few thousand searches a month) enough to actually ban me, but I have no idea really what filters exist today, and what they do. I keep hearing about a "sandbox", like some penalty box you can be thrown in.

All I know is, since I disappeared from Top 25, down to like 400 now... in that time, MSN beta found me, and their cache of my document (dated Jan. 14) ranked #10.

Like I said before, I'm still in HotBot (inktomi?) when I search [domain:www.me.com]. It's just all the structure of my indexing is exactly like my first publish, DEc. 24th.

Is Scooter (altavista)even around any more?

I was given this cgi called master-spider for better keeping track of spyders, but im reluctant to use it.. but my awstats still show activity (very recent)

Inktomi Slurp 158+9 2.48 MB 15 Jan 2005 - 01:07
Googlebot 192+4 1.95 MB 14 Jan 2005 - 23:00
MSNBot 36+10 417.47 KB 14 Jan 2005 - 22:40
Unknown robot 0+8 19.61 KB 14 Jan 2005 - 22:32
(identified by hit on 'robots.txt')
Alexa (IA Archiver) 38+6 830.01 KB 14 Jan 2005 - 19:36
LinkWalker 27+2 643.54 KB 14 Jan 2005 - 07:46
Unknown robot (identified by 'crawl') 193 2.98 MB 11 Jan 2005 - 22:07
Unknown robot (identified by 'spider') 146 2.30 MB 08 Jan 2005 - 09:04
AskJeeves

Is there any chance you can be banned or punished but still crawled every day? How often do the search engines re-index your index.html and rank it?

Thanks

[hannamyluv]

Is Scooter (altavista)even around any more?

Nope. Not as far as I know. If you do a site google search here, you can read the history... But basically (If I remember correctly), Overture bought FAST, Inktomi and AltaVista, then Yahoo bought them all. Y! installed Overture to get rid of adwords on Y!. Used some FAST and AV technology to improve Ink. Installed Ink to get rid of G results on Y!. Then toasted FAST and AV and replaced results with Ink. It happened over the past 18 months.

It doesn't sound like you are banned but youwould be surprised at whatis an important keyword these days. I have personally seen good old fashion clean SEO stuff work well in Ink but I am no SEO guru. You may want to revisit those elements and make sure that they are all in place on your site, then go from there.

[kelownarealtors]

I have all my keywords in place now, I'm ranking in the Top 10 at MSNbeta... but, no other index (yahoo, teoma etc) will refresh my index.html, it's like everything reverted back to my document the day i first published. Is there a way to make them delete their cached page and review it again. what is the typical turn around time for yahoo? they are still using my index.html from dec 34, is that typical? curious.

[hannamyluv]

I have all my keywords in place now

What to you mean by this? What sort of actions have you taken to make sure "your keywords are in place"?