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Well, the affiliate links are gone, nevertheless. Yet, they ignore my requests for reinclusion, and steal my money when they reject me for Search Submit. You think I am giving them my new credit card number? Not a chance.
Yet another pissed off webmaster pulling money from Yahoo, just like stock holders.
Y! didn't get rich by being generous. Read the TOS.
Being a category sponsor does not give you "walk-on-water" rights.
[edited by: Quadrille at 10:16 pm (utc) on Aug. 2, 2006]
However, its a bit stupid of Yahoo to drop the guys site from the serps when hes a paying customer and supporting their business. First rule of business, kept your customers happy!
Meanwhile one of the sites we work on recently signed up with Overture as a partner and within a week of this his site was dropped from the yahoo serps, they were supplying him with about 30,000 users a month free via the serps plus about 20,000 from their adwords due to him spending £5000 a month with them. Following the drop he stopped buying from them.
I think its fair to say that if a company treats you badly in business why should you support them? The poster makes a very valid point imo and Yahoo should wake up to this issue
one of the sites we work on recently signed up with Overture as a partner and within a week of this his site was dropped from the yahoo serps...
So you believe the only answer is that within a few days of signing up with YSM, someone from YSM called an engineer in Search and asked them to penalize your client's site?
Is it possible that this is a coincidence?
Yahoo Search in the United States is located in Northern California. I have been there. I've seen the cubicles. YSM is located in Southern California. From my conversations with Yahoo-ers, it's pretty apparent that the YSM side doesn't really collaborate with the Search Side.
My impression is that Yahoo is a company with many divisions working exclusively within their compartmentalized spaces, sometimes in competition. From my conversations with Yahoo employees on either side, it's pretty apparent that there's a wall between them.
That isn't surprising. If you read Matt Cutt's blog and his recollection of the birth of AdWords, it's pretty apparent that there's a wall between the PPC and Search sides over there, too.
As far as getting demoted because you've been a five year category sponsor, I don't see how the two could be connected. No offense, but I'd consider the algo change, and maybe SEO and related factors first.
Y! didn't get rich by being generous. Read the TOS.
Being a category sponsor does not give you "walk-on-water" rights.
Quadrille,
Give me a break, no one is suggesting that. LOL. It comes down to being treated fairly. If you reread my post with due diligence, you will notice my main problem is their greed, lack of fairness, and lack of customer service; not necessarily the absence of my website from the serps.
Furthermore, "getting rich" is not the only goal here. We are looking at their business model, their stock performance, the way they treat their advertisers (who make them money), and their long-term success up against Google and up-and-coming MSN.
Consider this: the site was also selected for YPN. Now, if they were smart, they would take my category-sponsorship, take 1/2 of the YPN clicks I send them, and take a full $.30 per click for my site to appear in the serps via Search Submit. Thinking in those terms is how you "get rich". Rather, they banned my site, reject me from Search Submit, and now they are losing my sponsorship. Real smart.
As far as getting demoted because you've been a five year category sponsor, I don't see how the two could be connected. No offense, but I'd consider the algo change, and maybe SEO and related factors first.
Again, it's about fairness and communication.
[edited by: crobb305 at 2:40 pm (utc) on Aug. 3, 2006]
So I decided to submit it through Yahoo's Search Submit Express and within a couple days the url was approved and is now ranking in Yahoo. So it appears they have a double standard going here because in some situations it looks like you can buy your way back into their results and in other cases it does not matter how much you spend they will not let you back in.
[edited by: martinibuster at 4:02 pm (utc) on Aug. 3, 2006]
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[1][edit reason] Removed URL. [/edit] [/edit][/1]
I guess their logic is that if you have a commercial site, and they are sending you traffic, then they should make some money off of it. Not necessarily that you are "buying" your way back in. Sure, if you are not in compliance with their TOS, then you maybe shouldn't be in the serps. But to "ban" an 80 page site because it happens to be monetized with 4 affiliate links rather than Google Adsense or YPN, then that is a double standard. In my case, I even changed out the affiliate links with YPN. Still banned.
Furthermore, that "ban" carries over to Search Submit now. A site with a manual judgement against it will be rejected from Search Submit. They lead you to believe that if you make modifications, you can resubmit. But no. They just steal your $29 each time you submit. That is wrong, and that is what has happened to me. Now, they email me wanting me to renew my sponsorship. No ma'am.
Furthermore, that "ban" carries over to Search Submit now. A site with a manual judgement against it will be rejected from Search Submit. They lead you to believe that if you make modifications, you can resubmit. But no. They just steal your $29 each time you submit. That is wrong, and that is what has happened to me. Now, they email me wanting me to renew my sponsorship. No ma'am.I have seen that for the most part the ban carries over to Search Submit, but in my case it did NOT. I submitted a url to Yahoo Search Submit Express 3 days ago from the domain that is currently banned in Yahoo and they approved this url and it now ranks in Yahoo.
Meanwhile one of the sites we work on recently signed up with Overture as a partner and within a week of this his site was dropped from the yahoo serps,
This is exactly what happened to me. Within one week, my site vanished for the main keyword of my industry.
At the same time, I was testing YPN on my site and had a support guy that I could call. I asked him why my site would be NOWHERE for the main keyword. His reply was that he asked around and everyone agreed that it SHOULD, but wasn't. HOWEVER, if I wanted to pay for inclusion....
As if.
EVO
But to "ban" an 80 page site because it happens to be monetized with 4 affiliate links rather than Google Adsense or YPN, then that is a double standard.
Yeah, I know, a lot of folks have talked about Y! banning affiliate sites, but as I have a few that perform quite well in Y! it hasn't been proven to me yet. Have you looked at other possible reasons for a ban?
I think perhaps I gave too much weight to the thread title: "Banned from Search, but have been a Category Sponsor 5 years" - I think the discussion might have got off better if the issus had not been joined!
Have you looked at other possible reasons for a ban?I was outright told by a rep in a non-generic email that the problem was affiliate links. I was further told that the problem was affiliate links when I questioned my site's rejection from Search Submit. So, that is proof enough that they do ban/refect "affiliate" sites, and that is even in their Quality Guidelines.
Unfortunately, the way they phrase it is "sites consisting largely of affiliate content". This implies that the content is generic, duplicated, and provided by the affiliate program. I run a website that has MY OWN content and research, which just happened to have 4 affiliate links in various places throughout the 80 page site. Banned. And outright told I was banned because of it. That is not fair. It is MY content. Not "affiliate content". And, an affiliate "link" is NOT the same thing as "affiliate content". I think they have a lot of narrow minded, and poorly-trained people making life or death decisions. There should be more of a peer-review program in place where a 3 or 4 person committee could evaluate a site's worthiness.
Glancing at 3 or 4 pages and then closing the browser upon seeing an affiliate link is insufficient and lazy.
Regardless, the point is moot. They have lost me as an advertiser/sponsor. I am not giving them my credit card to pay $100 per month, for a measly 5 clicks a week out of the directory which is hardly ever used.
Chris
Or is it sales copy or a product description?
Is this content useful, would a university professor find it so useful for her class she'd give it a link? Is this content so useful that, to your knowledge, it's being cited on forums (by strangers ;)) with a link?
Are you suggesting the reason Yahoo is penalizing sites is because their of, “low quality”?
Who really knows why they penalize sites; it's their business and it’s their search engine so they can do what they want. The real mystery here is the almost complete inability to gain re-inclusion. If you fix what the problem was, why don’t they let the site back in? Redemption is a universal value they don’t seem to share and it makes you wonder why.
A good search engine should be about inclusion, which ultimately provides the user with the largest array of sites from which to satisfy his search. The penalties and the subsequent lack of potential for re-inclusion are very much encroaching on the user experience. Everyone concerned about this issue has to admit that there are "quality" and "low quality" sites that have been penalized, that subsequently have been fixed so that they do meet the guidelines, but continue to be excluded from the index.
There should be more of a peer-review program in place where a 3 or 4 person committee could evaluate a site's worthiness.
Certainly sounds like there should be a review of the reviewer somewhere along the line.
Is this content useful, would a university professor find it so useful for her class she'd give it a link? Is this content so useful that, to your knowledge, it's being cited on forums (by strangers ;)) with a link?
Not all pages/sites are going to get sited by university professors. That notion is absurd. Perhaps with "fewer" links, a page won't rank as high one sited by universities. But, we are talking about a complete BAN because of a silly affiliate link or two. And I don't know if my site has been sited on Forums. I don't think that should be the basis for ranking sites. Forums are abused and should be largely discounted. But that is a different issue from the one at hand.
The Yahoo editors, supposedly trained and/or educated are banning sites because they are confusing the concept of "affiliate content" (generated by merchants for duplication by the affiliate) with "affiliate links" (used on many legitimate sites with original and unduplicated content). Just because a site has one or more affiliate links does NOT mean the site uses "affiliate content", is junk, is spammy, or unworthy of being included in the search results. It is no different than Adsense or YPN.
In their narrow-minded approach, the reviewer rapidly clicks through pages on your site, sees an affiliate link, closes browser, and clicks "ban". It reminds me of my dog, when he see's a treat in my hand he automatically sits, even before I tell him to.
They need to create a better review process and provide better training.
C
I don't know if my site has been sited on Forums. I don't think that should be the basis for ranking sites.
Of course not, I never suggested that.
However, citations from forums is common for content that is high quality. Same with citations from a university.
One of the qualities of affiliate sites (and I'm definitely not saying this is the case with your site) is that the content is thin. For some, the phrase Affiliate Site is used loosely to describe thin content sites. It's not generally true that all affiliate sites are thin on content, though.
I have a site with affiliate links on every single page and it ranks so well in Yahoo it's even pulling traffic for one word phrases. But then, this site has many valuable backlinks, including non-solicited citations from across the web.
I'm not saying that alone is what's needed to rank with Yahoo. But it sure seems to help to have good content which attracts inbound links.
I'm not saying I'm entirely satisfied with Yahoo's SERPs either, but they have been improving.
So what's the point of all this talk of content and links?
My point is that in one of the above cited cases, imo the banning and joining the YSM program were very likely coincidences in timing.
As far as reinclusions, they happen all the time. But passing a hand check isn't easy.
As far as reinclusions, they happen all the time.
Given the amount of penalized sites I suppose you could say "all the time" but our experience has been that the number of sites that actually do get reincluded into the index, after being penalized, is under 5%.
Since they have been unable to use my credit card for my monthly category sponsorship, they sent me another email this morning that said "this is your final warning" in the first line! The first and only other email I have seen about this came one week ago. Hardly enough time to warrant such rude wording. Again, it reflects on their horrible customer support, and is no surprise to me that they are going down hill as a company.
I think they could be a little more patient and friendly, in the event it is an oversight on the part of the advertiser, especially after 5 years.
Also when you look at there ranking it looks like 1999 so forget it and focus on MSN and google.
However, once you incur the penalty the rules definitely change. The re-inclusion process is a hand review system and that person will hold you to a higher standard than a non-penalized site. (sounds a little strange but that’s the fact, there are plenty of sites in Yahoo that offend more than sites that have been penalized and fixed)
If you are monetizing your traffic in an obvious fashion; affiliate links, lead forms, ect. your chances of then being re-included by the person reviewing your site is slim at best.
Why sites that have been brought up to an acceptable standard are not re-included is hard to understand and a bit vindictive.
Human nature being what it is they may suspect that once the site is re-included the affiliate links etc would sneak back in. Not that any of us would do that, of course. No, never. On a similar note: I run a dating site and I used to let people back in after they broke the rules. Inevitably the majority broke them again so now it's one strike and they're out permanently. Pity it's necessary but that's life.
Why sites that have been brought up to an acceptable standard are not re-included is hard to understand and a bit vindictive.
It is hard to understand given that you can duplicate the very same site and get back in with no trouble at all.
