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Is optimization of these sites required for better listings (my best listing thus far is a #12 for a 3 word query). If so, any ideas on optimization techniques? All sites are keyword friendly, have tons of backlinks, show a PR of 5+ (two of them are 7s), contain sufficient meta info, etc...
Trying to pay for play, but no luck yet.
Well, what more did you expect?
This is the hard facts. That's the way it has been with Inktomi. Your payment gets you included.
By working at optimizing your page, you can hopefully draw some traffic.
With Inktomi, I was successful at optimizing my site to draw traffic, until, it appeared, a human editor decided I over-optimized and banned my site, whereupon I went back to getting no traffic. Still, though, Inktomi included me in their data base. I could do a search for my page and find it. So I still got what I paid for. They simply excluded me from traffic by ranking me so low I would not be found in a normal search.
What was really ugly, though, was that they banned my whole site without looking past the single page they didn't like. I lost all the free traffic I was getting as well.
Paying to get included was an expensive lesson. My advice ... "look before you leap".
[edited by: walkman at 7:31 am (utc) on Mar. 9, 2004]
yes I can feel your pain since that's exactly what I've been going through. My sites are there, but they're down below sweeping the bottom of the barrel.
But I'd like to ask, since I know so little about this part. Is 'Banning' an actual term used with Yahoo and Ink? And if one is banned and yet still paid, then how long is it before they'll actually look at your page again?
I'm familiar with that post TIM put out regarding how they will be offering a "FORMAL Approach to getting penalised site reviewed and such"" or something to that effect.
But I still wonder how much good it'll do? Do you? Any inkling?
Of particular danger is that you may be able to rank with the spammers, but the editors may not get around to zapping the spammers in your category for a few months, leading you to believe that YOUR optimization techniques are acceptable.
cyberfyber, I believe I've seen the word "ban" used by a Yahoo spokesperson, but I can't find where. Maybe some other people can point us to it. But if not, let me define site banning in Inktomi to be having your PFI pages indexed but ranking too low to draw more than a couple visitors a day, if that, while having your non-pfi pages removed (assuming they were previously in the free index) from the Inktomi index. Now, all this is changing with the new Yahoo, since it may no longer be possible to accurately determine if your non-pfi pages are ndexed or not, other than by whether or not they draw traffic.
I've never had a site banned in Inktomi according to my definition ever see the light of day again as far as Inktomi traffic goes. When I use the word "banned", I mean forever.
Maybe Yahoo will offer reprieve for banned sites but I sincerely doubt it, because that will allow people to "game" the system and learn where the line is drawn. Then pretty soon there will be tons of sites bellying up to the line and defeating their algo and, worse yet, using what they have learned by gaming the PFI system to spam the free index where the eyes of editors may be more sparse.
