Ban lifted, but poor rankings!

[sachac]

An inherited ban from the Inktomi days, has finally been lifted and my site now appears in Yahoo search results. However, for almost every search term, for which we have good rankings in Google and MSN, we are nowhere in Yahoo. It almost appears that we are on some sort of probation. Can anyone share any light on this?

[BillyS]

Wait until the next update and see what happens. With Yahoo it's a time game.

[pageoneresults]

An inherited ban from the Inktomi days, has finally been lifted and my site now appears in Yahoo search results.

Was this confirmed in writing somehow?

[sachac]

Yes, this was confirmed by one of the Yahoo posters, several months ago. Basically, he emailed saying that there was a ban on the site, on file. I know that this was inherited, since the site had earlier disappeared from the Ink results.

[cyberfyber]

sachac, I too have had a ban lifted but I'm treading carefully since you'll never know with Yahoo. 'and yup, this is something which began two years ago?

BTW, so when Would the next Yahoo update be?

[sachac]

It will be interesting to know if other people have had bans lifted recently. In my case, I sent off several emails to them and when nothing was done, I had practically given up. This development is therefore an unexpected surprise. I wonder if this is a policy decision on their part to lift the ban on sites that are clean, but still sufferred from an inherited ban.

[pageoneresults]

How severe was the ban? I mean, how far into the cookie jar were the hands of the owner?

And, are you sure that you've removed all instances of whatever it was that got the site banned?

I know I've read topics here where sites come out of ban only to find themselves in some sort of purgatory. And then slowly, but surely, they come out of that purgatory as times goes on. I have no idea how long purgatory might be in your case.

[Go60Guy]

I'll take purgatory over a ban any day, not that I would like it. I have an old site that's been banned for years. I've done everything I can think of to make it squeaky clean. I've emailed a number of times asking for the ban to be lifted and all I get is an almost immediate automated response referring me to the Yahoo webmaster guidelines. I have given up.

I'm curious, was the ban lifted in response to some action on your part with Yahoo?

[cyberfyber]

Well for me the ban was as bad as it could be. Meaning that the only search which could bring up my domain was a search for the exact domain itself. Searching for my site's name brought up everyone else.

Did I remove anything that could've caused me to be banned in the first place? I plead the fifth on that one. There are other things I've done lately but again, I'm sorry for being so very vague. I'll just have to wait and see what happens I guess and improve what I can from this point on as I've been doing.

[sachac]

This is our company's website. We first built the site in 1998 and hired different web people to manage and maintain it. Any one of them could have done some crap to trigger the ban in Inktomi (but thankfully not in Google and MSN). I have no doubt however, that whatever was done was through ignorance and inexperience and nothing more. It nevertheless had to be something very bad since the site could not even be found when we searched for the actual domain. We later hired a very knowlegable webmaster who assured us a few years ago that the site is squeaky clean. This is when we started communicating with Yahoo. But, frustrated by their refusal to acknowledge our emails, we stopped doing so at least a year ago. We viewed their modus operandi as characteristic of their legendary arrogance. What prompted me to do the latest search for our domain was when I read of Yahoo's poor financial results. My years of experience in business have taught me that no organization could achieve its full potential, without catering to and listening to, its customers. I felt, maybe, just maybe, the chickens had come home to roost. So I did, and sure enough, there we were. Maybe this is just a coincidence. Maybe not!

[BillyS]

>>BTW, so when Would the next Yahoo update be?

There was an update in mid-January and early-April. So we might see another around the middle to end of May. Obviously this a guess.

[cyberfyber]

Thanks BillyS.

But I guess their updating of individual pages have nothing to do with major updates? Since I see now that their cached version of my homepage reflects the exact changes I made earlier today.

[walkman]

how long did it take between emails and ban removal?

[BillyS]

>>But I guess their updating of individual pages have nothing to do with major updates?

So some extent I agree. Still Yahoo has more of the update feel to it then Google's everflux.

[sachac]

Walkman

We sent them emails regularly for several months but stopped doing so for at around 14-18 months.

[microlinx]

who did you write to?

[sachac]

[add.yahoo.com...]

[cleanup]

OK, I am curious about this. I have a site which I always considered banned since Inktomi. The site has been around for ten years and does well on Google MSN etc and used to on Yahoo too before Inktomi. Anyway, I consider it banned since it is off the radar in Y! and I could only find it in Directory searches.

I went to the review page mentioned in the previous post where Yahoo! suggest that you take a unique piece of text from your site put it in quotes and see if the site is returned.

So I tried it and it does indeed come back in the results, also the front page is cached.

I am surprised. It seems that by Yahoos definition the site is not banned, however it does not come up for any reasonable searches (apart form the unique text in quotes case).

I too sent emails to Yahoo! for months and months and had no reply.

So my question; Is this site really, banned or in purgatory? or penalised?

[nomis5]

Good post for me, I just realised that one of my sites appears nowhere in Yahoo but it's doing well in Google and MSN! In my opinion only, it's not worth expending any effort on Yahoo because of its low usage by people as a search engine. And yes, I agree with a previous post that the total arrogance of Yahoo is their downfall and will wipe them off the map totally in the not too distant future.

[jam2005]

I really hope Yahoo starts taking these reinclusion requests seriously someday. There is a certain arrogance in how they deal with webmasters on this issue. Personally, I quit trying to get our site reincluded in Yahoo and have started working on creating a website on a different domain - just for Yahoo. It's a pain in the neck, but it's less work than getting Yahoo to try and pay attention to reinclusion emails.

[marketingmagic]

We've had our ban lifted early last year and we're still nowhere for terms we're ranking 1-10 in Google and MSN.

Yahoo somehow hangs on to these bans, despite telling webmaster's the ban has been lifted. And while it's true your site might start ranking for some obscure terms, it's my experience that you won't be seeing rankings for anything important for quite some time, if ever.

That's been my experience with these situations in Yahoo. I tell clients that if you're not married to the domain name, it's easier to ditch it and start new.

[cleanup]

I have a question for those here who have had a ban lifted.

Can someone please test to see if internal pages are also indexed and findable? (albeit using "quoted text")?

[skweb]

I also have a website that is way too popular in every search engine except Yahoo due to a ban. Wrote several times to them and without anyone visiting the website (and noticing the changes), all I get is an identical canned response every single time. Yahoo is so broken, it is incredible. No wonder they are losing the race to Google.

[maximillianos]

We had some trouble a little over a year ago. We went through the re-inclusion process (a few times!). We finally got confirmation from a rep that our site "may" be re-included but no guarantees... and it might take a few months.

A few months went by and eventually our site re-surfaced in the SERPs.

So the moral of the story... if you have cleaned your site up and our in their good graces.. it will come back but you just need to give it A LOT of time... =)

[marketingmagic]

Re the testing of internal pages - yes this produces the pages in question - however a more important test no one's talking about here is does your site rank well for your main terms after the ban lifting? After over a year we're still not ranking for our most important terms, only obscure versions of them. And oddly we rank better in Yahoo.ca.

[cleanup]

Thanks for checking marketingmagic.

I only see the index page for my site cached, no internal pages at all.

The index page ranks for nothing of any use. Even though it apears in the index I still consider it banned, contrarary to Yahoo!s own statment/test in the resubmisison page..ie..

"To see if your site is in the Index, enter a phrase (5-10 words) unique to the page into the yahoo.com search box. Remember to place the phrase in quotation marks.

If your site does not appear, then most likely your site does not comply with the Content Quality Guidelines. "

:(

[Good_Vibes]

I have had a site ranked #1 on Google (and MSN) for over 3 years, and I never broke the top 300 on Yahoo (the keyword is a person's name).

I doubt there was ever a ban on the site, there is no reason for there to be one.

What can I do to get listed higher in Yahoo without affecting my Google rankings?

[LifeinAsia]

If you do a site: search, how many pages does Yahoo have indexed (and has this number changed since your ban)? Are you getting Yahoo spider traffic?

[crobb305]

sachac, not sure if you got my sticky a few days back, but interested in hearing back from you for an update on how things are going.