Yahoo What gives? How do you tell if your penalized?

[Gateway]

Ever since the drop of yahoo using google we have been trying to figure out why we arnt listed in yahoo's database.

Our site has been around for almost 6+ years and has always had a #1 ranking in google for various keywords. Our site doesnt spam, nor does it have any special tricks to get better listings.. our site is a single domain name.

anyhow we only have seen yahoo slurp come by once and compaired to other sites we have which slurp visits daily we are getting a bit worried if we have been penalized, or banned from yahoo..

unfortunally we cant find a link or an email to see if this is the case.

thoughts?

[Gavstar]

Hi Gateway.. Im in the same situation I have around 7 sites. 5 of my sites are well positioned, but my 2 main sites appear to be penalized. They both show many backward links in Yahoo but there is no trace when searching for my two main sites. When I consider how much better these two sites are than my other sites I would expect them to be poisoned no1 for all of my search terms. Im thinking perhaps this may have something to do with them being penalized.

[Gateway]

yea. trying to figure out who to email at yahoo to see if there are any penalties for our site, i would think not there is nothing out of the norm on the site.. :/

we event tried putting some links on our sites that yahoo loves and getting them to spider over to the other site with out any luck.. dont even see the slurp come by :/

[walkman]

"trying to figure out who to email at yahoo"
several of us did. No answer back. If it makes you fell any better, you have plenty of friends who are in the same situation.

All I know is that Y! promised to do something about reviewing banned sites...no time frame given though. All we can do is wait and hope.

[Tim]

Try emailing [e-mail] Walkman:We have been busy lately at the pubconference and Search Engine Strategies conference but should be catching up with your email early next week.

[Gavstar]

Gateway, Walkman..

When you do a backward link search in Y. Dose your site show backward links?

[walkman]

"When you do a backward link search in Y. Dose your site show backward links? "

via link:http://www.mysite.com?
Yp, lots of them too.

[freejung]

I emailed the webmasterworldfeedback address and got a reply saying I was given a "demotion penalty" and that my site was going to be scheduled for re-review as it didn't look that bad. I find this encouraging, as it means Yahoo is using some sort of human filtering, and the process is subject to appeal. I would email them and be patient, you will probably get a reply.

BTW, thanks, Tim, for your excellent customer service / PR. This is the sort of thing we as webmasters want from a search engine.

[Gateway]

yea I dropped that email address a note to see what was going on.. hopefully I can get some sort of reply and can stop guessing as to why we arnt listed.

[Gavstar]

I just got a reply from Y..

They are saying that my site has been banned because I have traded links with other webmasters. And because I have affiliate links on my site.
I have only traded links with other quality sites. My site is a personal finance site full of content, you would honestly have a hard time finding another site with such a high quality of content. My pages have 0 - 3 sponsors, but its done in very good taste.
So now what choice has Yahoo left me?

[Marval]

Would love to see that reply cause the top 20 for a three letter term that gets searched on to the tune of a couple hundred thousand times a day is showing 20 sites that all have WM trades on their page and loads of aff links - seems to me that if that were a penalty they could effectively reduce their database by some 2 billion pages quickly

[helenp]

Wow, thats funny,
supose I am out for the same,
more or less,
I have maybe 15 links with others,
and the company thats in 2nd and 3rd place in yahoo, searching for my keyword, have an linkpage with an directory, with only 2000 link exchanges.........

[Gavstar]

Obviously Y search results are full of sites that trade links or have affiliate links. I have a few other sites that are very well ranked in Y that aren't near the quality of my site that has been banned. The reason I think my site was picked up was because it would have dominated Y for all my search terms.

[rogerd]

Gavstar, is there any link-farming, link directory software, network-linking, organized link exchange, or other possibly risky linking used on that site?

[walkman]

Gavstar,
Honestly they can't ban sites with affiliate links. I'd say that 90% of commercial sites have. Now if you just have links to a few sites with no use to the users, it's a different story. Either way, I say let the algo and the end user figure it out. Maybe you linked or got linked from a bad site...they checked it and decided that because of the affiliate links the ban was still warranted.

[helenp]

well I just deleated my linkpage,
just donīt know what to do, I havnīt got any answer from yahoo yet.

Donīt think it did me much favour anyway,
howcome that I am in top in google and "was" in yahoo.com with only a handful of links, when one site with 2000 are in the top as well as me, with a lot higher ranking.

[DaveN]

I have seen a lot of aff sites been cut for the index,

warning if your site is there just to pass traffic on to another site Y! will catch you and demote you, sad but true for the affiliate guys

DaveN

[Gavstar]

I have absolutely no relations to any form of link farming or any linking software. I have a link directory that I made my self in order to keep the links to other sites relative. About 90% of the links on my site are relative to my site. If you post your email in your profile I will send you my url and you can give your opinion.

[textex]

Tim,
I have a site that has been demoted in Yahoo!. The site is squeaky clean.
Should I send an email to the address you provided or wait till that review thing is introduced?

[walkman]

"warning if your site is there just to pass traffic on to another site Y! will catch you and demote you, sad but true for the affiliate guys "
you mean, if you have a domain name with 6 dashes, five pages and 200 affiliate links :)? I think they evaluate if the site is off any use to the average Joe. Can they do this for all these sites though? People will just keep changing domains every 6 months.

[TravelMan]

I can confirm the afiliate thing too.

If you are a traffic passer, or have heavy affiliate content then your entire domain will be blocked from their index.

I think this is an awful decision and isnt being applied fairly either.

There isnt a route back via pfi either, so dont waste your time or money. Ive tried and failed.

I think Y! should in the least give webmasters the option to exclude aspects of their domain that are perhaps heavily affiliated.

A domain I run has lots of unique content, but because it also has a lot of affiliate content it has been blocked. Whilst its a tragedy for me, it is also a tragedy for Y! visitors as they wont ever get to see my other useful stuff.

IMO,Y! is using sledgehammers to crack nuts. There is a better, fairer way.

[walkman]

so if you have an online shopping directory you shouldn't even bother? The funny part is that I see tons of them in the index.

[TravelMan]

There needs to be some balance here, surely the Y! people can see this?

Could someone from Y! give us the company line on this?

This has pretty major implications for the shape of the web and internet marketing in general. CJ, Tradedoubler, Befree, etc generate millions of dollars of income and business for a multitude of organisations the world over.

Affiliate marketing has been a massive contributer to the growth and development of the internet.

I think its pretty arrogant for Y! to take such a unilateral decision, literally ripping the ground from beneath 1000's of people.

There should at the very least be a PFI route back. Y! are effectively restricting trade.

Search itself is currently more or less duopolistic, why should my business or anyone else for that matter be excluded from 50% of the marketplace? Is Y! going to drop all Brokerage firms, Travel agents, Insurance agents too?

Sure, there are strong arguments on either side of this divide, but please, lets have a little commonsense here, a little fairness and equal access too.

[walkman]

"Could someone from Y! give us the company line on this?"
I think we should hold our fire until then, because we're not sure. Trying to guess, doesn't always work. I was reading from a while back, someone had his site banned because he used a dash to link to another site. He was told that by an Ink employee.

[TravelMan]

It is no guess, its from the horses mouth.

If I get an email from an employee of a company telling me that a site has been removed because of the use of affiliate content then its fair to deduce that this is as a result of a company policy.

<added> When I ask for the company line on this, I'm not asking them to say "yeah, we block affiliate content" what I am requesting, is a justification for this position and a recognition that it has pretty far reaching implications for the lives of 1000's of people, who have built their businesses around driving traffic to other people and being paid a commission for doing so. </added>

[edited by: TravelMan at 7:13 am (utc) on Mar. 10, 2004]

[Workin]

I Think An Affiliate The Compare Prices From The Top Suppliers Is Very Useful To a Searcher.

Removing Affiliate Sites?. Sounds like Something Overture Would Do.

I Guess Now Your Going To Tell Me They Will Apply The Overture Pay Per Click Guidelines To The SERPS.

[eyeinthesky]

TravelMan,

I got a reply from Y! that they don't oppose affiliate sites but they don't want their index to be full of the same stuffs from affiliate.

They want good, unique content that has value for the searchers. I'm quite sure my content is unique but maybe not good enough?

Anyone out has great, unique content and STILL got the penalty?

[helenp]

eyeinthesky:
Yes I do think I have that.
The design I donīt know, but visitors loves my site, itīs comercial, but with a lot of local information in it. In fact I have more visitors from google searching for information about my city, that people searching what I am selling.
And I donīt have any afiliate sites.

[TravelMan]

I got a reply from Y! that they don't oppose affiliate sites but they don't want their index to be full of the same stuffs from affiliate.

Hi

I agree completely, and recognise fully that the last thing they want is an index full of duplicate content. However, there any many ways of presenting things and adding value to the user overall, some affiliates do this very well, I actually think I am one of them, someone at Y! didnt share this opinion :(

My point is, that for the serp to which I am concerned with, it is still full of content, the majority of which is affiliate, that, (IMO of course), is of inferior quality to that of my own. Yeah, yeah I would say that of course, but it is, at least in the sense of the majority of what is displayed actually comes from a 3rd party provider.

There are 26 letters in our alphabet, we all mix them up in one way or another ;)

Seriously, think on it like this. If you were selectively dismissed, without recourse to appeal or explanation, you would feel unfairly treated as being singled out for punishment.

I dont think that it is such an unreasonable position to adopt.

[Abigail]

You don't suppose that, at this point anyway, you are getting "canned" responses? Perhaps the spin of the wheel and out your answer goes? Let's hope that this thing is still evolving and come mid April everything will be a little more clear and good!