Yahoo says my site doesn't comply with Content Policy Guidelines

[andrewshim]

First, here's the background. My site used to rank #1 for major key phrases. Then over the course of time, I failed to keep track of how Yahoo! was indexing my site and since Yahoo's serps kept changing, I never bothered that my site had gone down to #88. Recently while trying to clean up my duplicates in Google, I thought to do the same for Yahoo!.

What I noticed was there were many duplicate redundant URLs and also almost every URL had a www and non-www version listed. So I did a 301 redirect for my homepage in the .htaccess file.

Now, going to Yahoo Site Explorer, I tried to delete the URLs of non-www pages. When a page is added to the "delete URL" page, I then notice that the URL appears AS www. This is utterly confusing. IN other words, in the Site Explorer listing, pages that have a non-www URL appear as www in the "delete URL" page.

Okay, now the headache gets worse. When I asked Yahoo! why these URLs are appearing this way and what to do about them, they email back that they have "determined that your site may not comply with Yahoo!'s Content Policy Guidelines located at:
[help.yahoo.com...]

Now, if I read that page correctly, I am know I am clean except that I maintain less than a hundred reciprocal links (out of courtesy) that are administered by a link exchange program. Is this considered linking to a link-farm?

And if I am correct, the fact that I DO appear in the serps, albeit at #88 means that I am not banned. But does that mean that I have been penalized and dropped in ranking as the penalty?

How do I correct something when I don't know what it is I have done wrong?

[martinibuster]

Could it be that yes, you're not banned, and that someone was just trying to be helpful in telling you there's something they don't like on your site?

What do you mean by administered by a link exchange program?

[andrewshim]

Yep, thinking through my post, I guess you're right. I think I know what they don't like. Just thought of it after posting. It's the duplicate pages. I have duplicate pages because :

- Yahoo has indexed www and non-www versions of my pages.
- After I added a variable to the URL of my busiest page a year ago, I have both old URL and new URLs indexed both pointing to the same page.

I should have taken the time to implement the 301 redirect earlier. The 301 for the first was easy. The second (old url/new url) was difficult but finally done a couple of days ago.

I use an online link managing program (linkmachine) to handle the recip link requests and display them. However, I stopped recip linking more than a year ago. The recip links (less than a hundred) are links I have kept simply as a courtesy to other sites who have kept their links to me.

I'm giving it some time before I pull the plug on the recip links. I feel there are just too many question marks about recip linking, but I'll wait to see if my 301 gets rid of the duplicate problem (if that was the problem in the first place).

I remember that Yahoo! used to give me very targetted traffic, but because it's very little compared to G! I just kinda slacked in keeping up to date. I suppose I've implemented stuff due to ignorance.