Inktomi & Yahoo

Have I been penalised?

[cyberfyber]

Hello all, due of course to the recent events concerning Yahoo and Google, my interest in the subjects has perked up.

I've done extremely (and I do mean EXTREMELY)well with Google for well over 2 years. 'and it only seems to get better and better. 'what with over 900 pages on my biggest site, of which I update quite a bulk on a regular basis, believe it or not.

Problem is, as with many other folks, I've lost roughly 25% of visits which amounts to big numbers considering how many I usually get in a month.

So, what's my concern? I've not the slightest inkling as to how or why I could have ever been penalised by Yahoo or Inktomi. Yet the numbers and results from searches seem to tell me nothing else. I've got (if I'll be allowed: "If I do Say so Myself") excellent structure, inter-linking within my site(s), keyword density, enough relevant content which more than rivals anyone in the top ten for any of a 100 sorts of keyword or keyword-combo searches. Not to mention, enough good incoming links from similar sites as well as governmental sites.

BUT, I'm not even within the top 1000 for many searches on Yahoo, MSN, About, Oveture, or any other whose data comes from Inktomi or whatever (although, I do reign in Infospace, somewhat for what reason I don't know).

This of course leads me to believe that I've been penalised.

another note is that I've recently signed up for Inktomi (wrongfully so, since I think I was already within its portals to begin with) which it seemed like a total waste of my money, which in turn is the least of my worries right now. Of course the fact that before 1 1/2 weeks ago, I had that extra 25% of traffic which is now lost....which is why I'm even bothering to be concerned right now.

So as an end to my RANT, how do I go about determining if I'm right? That I in fact HAVE BEEN PENALISED? 'and what should I do next?

I thank all who've made it to this last line of my post in one piece. And I thank you in advance for any insight.

[Abigail]

I keep asking a similar question and have yet to receive an answer........have you run a search for your site in the Yahoo index? My guess is yes, and you are getting a list of your pages but no search results, right?

[cyberfyber]

Quite a number of my pages are in there. But, I can only find them if I do a search using the exact spelling of individual pages, such as:

"This-is-the-page.htm"

will of course bring up that particular page from my site(s).

but to actually do a search for a combo of keywords which are prominent on any page? OR, to even search for the exact string of text indicated on any one of my page(s)' Titles?

Haha, ZILCH. (least not within the top 20, 100, or 1000.

[Abigail]

Let's hope Tim takes notice of the question - it has been buried a couple of times already when I have asked it. Is it a penalty or is it a question of "Patience, patience"?

[2_much]

Yahoo search is so new that it's difficult to tell exactly what they're doing.

Before you assume it's a penalty, you might want to study the sites that are actually ranking to try and determine what they're doing to be in the top of the results.

After a while you'll begin identifying patterns, which you can then apply to your site.

The only thing you have to be careful with, is that by changing your site to optimize for Yahoo you might lose your Google rankings.

Hence, you might want to consider other alternatives to optimizing for Yahoo.

[cyberfyber]

Many Thanks for the input, and yes, I've considered the possibilities of screwing around with things so much that I hurt myself in other ways.

I have taken a look at the sites that do well and I can't figure it out...but of course I'll keep looking.

[freejung]

I have just observed the same phenomenon, and it appears to have been going on only since the switch. It's not just a matter of optimization. If I search for my exact titles, I get sites which have linked to me using those keywords before I get my own site. I don't even come up first for my own name. Results in Google are still normal, btw.

Something strange is afoot. It looks like some sort of penalty to me, but I don't know what I've done to deserve it.

[cyberfyber]

EXACTLY!

for my biggest and most popular site, everyone who links to me comes up, except me. Of course entering in the full URL of my site(s) will bring me up, but if I enter in only part of my site(s)' name, then these other folks show up.

My very first impression was a penalization of some sort, and I still can't explain it any other way.

[freejung]

cyberfyber, obviously you and I have a vested interest in finding out what is up, as does anyone else to whom this has happened. could you sticky me your site url so I can check it out? Also, anyone else who observes this, please let us know. Maybe there are commonalities which would give us a clue. It's not a link exchange penalty, I have another site which skates much closer to the edge on that issue and it's doing great. Could it be affiliate links? I have those on the "penalized" site, not on the other. Could a human have reviewed the site and simply decided that it sucks? I don't think it's that bad!

Also, it occurs to me that this may be the sort of thing which simply clears up in time. But it's very odd.

Anyway, I'm stickying you my URL so you can take a look at it.

[Abigail]

And - I have seen myself in 2 search results - both searches came as a result of someone searching for the merchant I am promoting, and on the first page in a high spot, no less - the merchants were named only twice in the text body of the webpages. Very strange indeed.

[cyberfyber]

What's even stranger, is how more than several times folks have gotten to my page through a main yahoo search.

When I go to look, it's from the first results page, but I would be nowhere in sight.

So, how'd they get to my page from Yahoo's first results page, without me even being there? Unless it's intermittent testing on Yahoo's part?

[Abigail]

Yup - seeing that too, today - many times - maybe we are starting to propigate over the site? one can only hope. No one seems to want to answer the question, strange that is too........

[flobaby]

Yes, I believe that's what's happening. I know for a few of my newly redirected pages they go in and out of the results for a few days and then they finally stick.

You might want to test on Hotbot, I've found it's keeping those new pages in the database without fluctuation.

[jchance]

cyberfyber, to find out if your penalized you need to find a set of serps which is short (so you can see all of them) and where you are included.

You might try searching for your exact title of a page or some long phrase on the page where its unique enough where you should be number 1. If you can do this and find some results where you are dead last and some other pages which might have a couple of the words on the page rank above you, then you are penalized.

Theres no fool proof way to know but this will pretty much tell you...

[cyberfyber]

Okay, anyone familiar with the advanced operators of
(-) & (+)

I never ever use them, but I just caught an incoming hit wherein someone used it on Yahoo. I then tried it at Yahoo as well as HotBot and I struck Gold,

OR DID I?

::::20 MINUTES LATER::::

Okay, I'm back now and maybe it's a false alarm since I just checked and using this method brings up the almost identical results as Google.

[Abigail]

how do you do that?

[cyberfyber]

Instead of entering something like:
(just an example)

Ohio Parks Photos

you enter in:

Ohio+Parks+Photos
-------------------

But like I said, I found that doing this will bring up results that are almost identical to Google results. Sort of like what I'd stickied you about the foreign Yahoo's still using Google? Well, same thing.

So it probably means nothing.

[edited by: cyberfyber at 6:00 am (utc) on Mar. 1, 2004]

[Abigail]

OK - got it and yes it works, what does it all mean?

[Abigail]

It only works for me if I tack on my .com at the end of the string. Guess I'm hooped.....for now anyway.

[mslina2002]

I am having the same problem as well similar to cyberfyber. Never occurred to me that my site would be possibly penalised.

When I try to search unique phrases for my site, I find certain pages that were freshly cached, from a data center 216.109.117.135 . I assume this is Yahoo and not Google?

I wonder if some data is still being drawn from Google and hence some pages still show up?

[Abigail]

I am thinking penalty - this morning all my PFI have disappeared 40 of them, that's a lot of money - I feel like someone is squeezing the life right out of me!

[Abigail]

When I run a search for my stuff I get a lot of pages come up that look like my pages but have other people's url's on them and when you click them you get my page - everything is screwy.

[soapystar]

since the weekend all my searches for my keywods have me nowehere. Like has laready been mentioned if i search for exact text i get a whole bunch of sites that have my title, my page desrciption but the url is from the linking site with a redirect or cgi type link. So all the sites linking to me for spamming reasons have been given priority in the index of my genuine site. I wonder if this is a mistaken duplicate content penalty.

[Abigail]

That's what I am thinking - it would be nice if "Tim" also took notice of this thread.

[freejung]

Soapystar, I think you may be on to something. Someone is linking to my site by putting it in a frame within their site, so it looks like my content is on their URL. If this is the problem, then Yahoo will probably fix it, since it is obviously beyond our control. What I don't understand is, why don't they penalize the site that is duplicating our content rather than the other way around?

This looks like a bug in Yahoo's spam filters. If we can draw it to their attention, they will probably fix it.

[twebdonny]

My Question, for the powers that be: Does Yahoo have the
ability to review and remove a penalty from a domain independant of Inktomi? It always seemed that old penalties imposed by Inktomi would never be removed no matter what was done to correct the offending situation.
Now that Yahoo has it's own crawler that is seperate from
Ink's it would be nice to start fresh without old Ink penalties on domains.

Thank you

[Abigail]

So let me get this straight - we are all probably being penalized because others have stolen our content and flogging it as their own?

So the victim's become more victimized - it should be easy with all that technology to see that 123.com pages DO belong to 123.com wouldn't you think?

[outland88]

>Before you assume it's a penalty, you might want to study the sites that are actually ranking to try and determine what they're doing to be in the top of the results.

I've studied quite a few in my area. They rank well because they're major spammers. Google controls them. Yahoo has no visible spam controls whatsoever.

[Abigail]

It's not a matter of ranking - it's a matter of MIA!