Is Yahoo Penalizing for Too Many Scraper Backlinks?

Can Massive Scraper IBLs Harm a Site's Ranking in Yahoo?

[crobb305]

Could Yahoo be penalizing for overlinking/too many backlinks?

Everyday, my content is copied/linked to by scraper sites. One site has linked to me on 160,000 pages! Yahoo shows all of these in the link: search. Over 250,000 pages linking to me. I have been worried about this for quite a while, and have tried contacting the respective webmasters.

Granted, the site is 4 years old and has lots of quality links via directories, press releases, etc. But, my site was dropped last week during the update. So heavily penalized that it is listed at the bottom of the serps for its unique name.

Good content sites are being taken away by scrapers/content thieves.

Chris

[edited by: martinibuster at 9:41 pm (utc) on April 8, 2005]

[outland88]

Do you think sandboxing the scrapers based upon age of site would help? Is there a way to distinguish between them and other sites in an algo? They do seem out of hand.

[crobb305]

Well, over the years, I have watched these scrapers/directory-style sites pop up on a daily basis, come along and steal sections of my content, and link to my site in a directory-style format.

Thousands and thousands of these have accumulated over the past 3 years. As I just said, a site with 160,000 pages has linked to me on EVERY page! So, an otherwise excellent content source has been eliminated from the serps because of penalties stemming from something beyond my control. I would love for Tim or Mike to ask me for some specifics. They have a mess on their hands, it seems. Original sites are getting canned because of content theives and scrapers who provide thousands and thousands of spammy/duplicate-anchor links to a page.

You have an excellent thing going, with a great search engine. But for a content site such as mine to be eliminated for these reasons shows a weak link in the process. Content sites are the bread and butter for Yahoo search. Content theives who have stolen from me should NOT outrank me!

Chris

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:23 am (utc) on April 10, 2005]

[soapystar]

this isnt new. As far as i can tell 99% of dropped sites have been on the basis of filtering for algo effects and nothing to do with quality. Algo affects being possible manipulation of their ranking criteria (as though its possible never to do this!). I mean for example heavy filters for inbound links whether or not they are reciprocated. This may be done by quantity triggered by other flags such as sites punching above their weight or simply being on the wrong link page. They seem far more concerned to filter for sites that MAY have aritificially boosted their rankings than anything to do with content. Quality only seems to be a factor when a human is asked specifically to look at your site. Its still something of a mystery to me since many seemingly identical sites in terms of offpage factors are treated different. I would think therefore its only additonal flags that decide if a filter is applied. Just my opinion i have no idea in reality but my views are based on real world examples.

[crobb305]

Soapy,

I know it's not new, but it is a problem. If you have a 4 year old site that is popular among visitors, that has been mentioned in press releases, that is the envy of competetors, you are going to have spammy backlinks. It is inevitable. I am not saying this is the definitive problem, but I am sure that it is. Like I said, one site linked to me on 160,000 pages. Those are indexed and showing in the link: search. That has to raise a red flag, yet it isn't my fault.

I emailed Yahoo for a re-review and they said "we can't give you specific reasons as to why your site was penalized".

A 4 year old content site is gone. Not right.

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:23 am (utc) on April 10, 2005]

[martinibuster]

If you feel that scraper sites are using your content in a manner that does not fall under fair use, and is infringing upon your copyright, you can always file DMCA complaints with Yahoo (as well as with their webhost).

Filing DMCA's is starting to become a one day a week chore for me. Like a gardener pulling out the weeds and going slug-ing at night. Sucks, man.

[soapystar]

crobb
Im agreeing with you. Im just saying this was a problem from day one.