Houdinni site - appears and disappears?

[visionwind]

I have a site that I had put the main index home page into the lycos/insite/inktomi paid submission a long time ago and worked on building linkshare and optimizing and the site reached #1 in yahoo. After the 15th it stayed at #1 for the main search term and then then now sometimes it appears at #1 in yahoo and then sometimes it doesn't show up anywhere at all in the results, I can't tell if the site is banned, or? All the subdirectories show up still on a consitent basis, so I'm wondering if I should just wait and see what happens, try and change the home page or? Thanks for your input.

[helenp]

Seems to be an dancing going on,
I seen diferents results this morning.

[Meta_Vision]

Same thing is happening to mine.
(for the past few weeks)

One surprising fact I've learned recently is
that Yahoo is using DMOZ/ODP data.

SOURCE OF INFORMATION:
[content.overture.com...]

Yahoo! leverages the Open Directory Project
(ODP) to further improve the user experience
on distribution partner sites. ODP title,
description and category meta data is
used to enhance Yahoo!'s relevant search results.

The reason I bring this up is that fairly recently
my main site dropped in all the search engines
that are NOW using yahoo/inktomi results:
e.g., msn, altavista, alltheweb, lycos, hotbot, ...

AND ... since this site is NOT listed in DMOZ/ODP
(in fact, I have specifically made it clear that
my site is NEVER to be listed there) I am
not surprised by the drop.

HOWEVER {smile} I was surprised to see
Yahoo depending on ODP in its algorithm.

BOTTOM LINE - when the dust settles
I will not be surprised to be gone.

AT THE MOMENT ... I'm fluxuating
in and out of "Yahoo existence" . . .
like you described. . .

. . . Just like my respect for
The Evil Search Axis. {smile?}

MV

FOOTNOTE: Given the chaos/complexity
of search ... the above speculation may
be completely distinct from reality. {grin}

FOOTNOTE 2: I hereby "posit" the
following theory: As Google
phases OUT the use of ODP ...
... Yahoo is phasing it IN.
(See FOOTNOTE 1) {smile}
This relieves one of the greatest
tensions in my "Religion of Search."
DMOZ is Evil. Google is Good.
But if Google uses DMOZ....
{smile}
Tension all better, now:
Google is Good. The Evil Search Axis is, um , Evil.
{serious grin}
(Oh yeah, and see FOOTNOTE 1)

[visionwind]

I'm wondering now if there is anyway to determine if a site is in fact banned or penalized or is it just jumping in and out until things get settled down over at yahoo?