Strategy after being Penalized

[2_much]

Here's the scenario I've been hearing from others, and have recently experienced myself:

* Branding domain
* Lots of backlinks
* Great rankings in Google

Then the site gets penalized, or won't get spidered after not paying for Site Match and having paid for Ink PFI.

Say there's little chance of getting the site reinstated into Yahoo as all you get are the useless "read our standards" email from their customer support team.

What to do with this scenario?

Options:

1. Register a brand new URL and spend months working on getting links to it.

a. disallow googlebot so it's not a dupe from the site in google
b. allow googlebot to spider the site and get it to rank in both engines.

2. Beg Yahoo to help get the site back in. Beg and beg and keep begging for months until you get lucky.

3. Pay for Site Match (which is not an option for many people, as with my case)

4. Pay for Site Match, then drop the listing to try and get back into the free spidering queu w/o paying per click.

What do you think? Are these the only options? Any others? Which would you choose?

[Marcia]

I would not pay for Site Match, the clicks would cost too much and there isn't enough of a margin on my sites to warrant it.

I experienced a penalty on a site with a 301, after the original domain was moved and I forgot to put the 301 up - got hit for having the 2 pages.

>>after not paying for Site Match and having paid for Ink PFI.

I had paid for PFI (not Site Match) right around the switchover, it didn't help. The site just came back a few weeks ago, after they finally discovered the 404 at the previous location after many, many months, but the plan was to just do a completely new redesign, set up a new domain, and start from scratch, leaving the old one to keep the Google rankings and let them both get the new.

Not everyone can do that, and not all sites can. If a site of mine had to keep the same content, design and site name I'd do a new one and keep the other engine out to avoid them getting dups.

[soapystar]

its a little confusing because the term penalty is being used for sites both lifetime penalised as well as those algo/filter penalised. I have come to see a ban as those sites that can only be manually reinstated. Plain penalised sites can be reinstated auomtically.

[cleanup]

2_much,
I have opted for 1 and a.

The site has been slurrped so I am waiting to see. Not holding my breath though.

Soapystar,
I know you have been into this for a while but have you actually seen any automatic penalty/reinstate in practice? and if so what was the supposed change that got it back?

[soapystar]

cleanup

the problem here is that the engine is bug riddled so reapearing in the serps may in many cases be simply due to a fix at Yahoo. some sites have played with reducing crosslinking, duplicate content etc and have reapeared. You also have the problem that many of these sites didnt know how to tell if they were really banned to start with but decided they were. For instance we still see posts from people claiming a ban but are simply demoted in the serps but still in the index. Add to this the fact that at any one time many webmasters are trying differrent things and being reincluded can simply be conincidental. However theres no doubt IMHO that some penalties can only be manually removed. Given the problems some people have seen in even having manual bans lifted when yahoo have stated this is their intention it would surely in itself imply a manual/automatic conflict.

btw: i am continually asked for examples. I do not believe it is my place to talk about other peoples sites specifically or what they are doing with those sites.

[cleanup]

Thats is why I have started with a new site from scratch. As much as anything to try to understand Yahoo! from first principles.

With all my sites gone from Y! I can't afford to screw around with the ones that rank well in Google...

I have never seen this situation before with so many webmasters int he dark still after so long...

[2_much]

Soapy, to clarify the ban/penalty question: let's assume it's a ban.

This site in particular, only has the index page in Yahoo Search database. All of the other pages had been paid for in Ink PFI, and none of them have made it into the database. So I'm assuming it's a ban because the site has amazing links and has been around for years and years.

Any other options?

Option 1 is such a waste..especially when you've got a great branding URL.

[Marcia]

>>All of the other pages had been paid for in Ink PFI, and none of them have made it into the database.

I believe the M/O is that if the Ink subscription expires the pages will reappear if they were in the regular index prior to the PFI. Otherwise, I believe the pages have to wait for inclusion 'til found the "regular" way.

>>So I'm assuming it's a ban because the site has amazing links and has been around for years and years.

But does Yahoo ban on a page or site basis? It seems that if the site was banned there would be nothing in the index. And are there links to internal pages on pages that get frequently crawled?

I will say that Yahoo is good about updating pages they already have, and with even a brand new blog they'll eat up the pages like chocolate candy as soon as they get them off the feeds and have them in the index almost immediately. But even though they crawl like mad with regular sites, from what I've seen they are dog slow with putting new pages into the index.

If the pages weren't in prior to PFI, they may be getting treated like new pages. When did the PFI expire?