Workaround for a Site Banned in Yahoo

Will Duplicating Site on New URL Work?

[lizardlips]

My site has been banned for over three years now and I thinking of a work around. I don't know if this has been tried and tested so please give me any advice you can. Here is my idea.

Create an exact replica of the site except different url and block Yahoo slurp from the old site and all the rest from the new. Can this be done without any duplicate content penalty?

[Quadrille]

Probably, yes; though you are dividing your incoming links and creating visitor confusion.

But if you've failed to fix the problem, how long before Yahoo! bans the new site for the same cause?

A much better solution would be to identify the cause of the penalty and fix it; any penalty with one SE is likely - sooner or later - to be picked up by other SEs (obviously depending what the problem is!).

[lizardlips]

Quadrille,

I agree, but there lies the problem. I have no idea why we would have a penalty. I have asked for help on forums, wrote Yahoo over five times and nobody can tell me what the problem is. If I knew I would be more than happy to fix it. Anybody out there want to take a look?

[Quadrille]

If it's the one in your profile, it is in Yahoo.

[lizardlips]

It is, but only my index page shows. Before all my pages were indexed and ranked in the top 10 for all 50 State pages and the index ranked #1 for my top keywords. Then one day I received a call from Yahoo and was told they wanted to refund my Yahoo directory money. Then did and within a few weeks all my pages but index were dropped from Yahoo. This was over three years ago.

On the good side my site rocks in Google and MSN, but I do miss the Yahoo traffic:(

[skweb]

Lizardlips one of my websites was banned in Yahoo in 2004 and after several requests to them (to which I only received canned responses) to review it (the website is totally white hat and gets 10K visitors daily from Yahoo and MSN), I basically gave up on Yahoo and started praying that they go out of business (LOL).

In any case, I then made a copy of my website and made changes from .com to .net, banned Live and Google in the robots.txt, and published it. Obviously it does not have the thousands of links that my original website has but it started to get a few hundred visitors daily. But here is the fun part. Now I am not a very technical person but it seems that G will still index the URL of a page that someone links to and that is why now hundreds of .net pages are in the Google index, and this is the fun part I was talking about, Google still sends me more visitors than Yahoo through the indexed URLs.

Lesson: Go ahead and do it if your ad revenue will cover the hosting fees. You can always pull the plug. I have decided to keep it after one year.

[lizardlips]

There should be a better way to find out why you are banned or penalized. We cant learn from our mistakes if we don't know what they are. Great Yahoo wizard please come out from behind the curtain!

[silver4dracs]

I am in the exact same boat. I was banned in Dec 2004, site has changed servers, whole new platform, all new pages and is still banned. I have tried doing anything and everything to no avail. Sure would be nice to get more than a canned message.

[fargo1999]

I am sure it has something (if not everything) to do with Yahoo directory. I'm in the same situation. I see your site is listed in Yahoo directory, correct? Then you didn't renew (or they didn't renew it - it doesn't matter probably) and the site is now gone from web search results, even though it's still listed in the directory. It looks like their algorithm says:

"OK, you didn't renew the directory listing. However, (for whatever reason) we'll not remove you from directory -- but we'll remove you from our search engine."

I will NEVER buy Yahoo directory listing for that reason any more. Is there a service to remove sites from the directory, I would even pay for that. It is not ethical from that to do that, to say at least.

[silver4dracs]

I was actually banned then started to pay for the directory inclusion for several years and was never included in the search results. I have discontinued paying for the inclusion and nothing has changed. I have even done several ppc campaigns to try and get re included, still nothing.

[robzilla]

Your listing in the Yahoo! Directory has absolutely nothing to do with the indexing of your site in Yahoo! Search, fargo1999. With all due respect, your theory holds no ground. The same goes for Yahoo! Search Marketing, silver4dracs. Sites not indexed or ranking in their search engine are simply deemed low-quality or unimportant in the eyes of their algorithm and strict content guidelines. The only other service you could consider to get your site indexed, if you're convinced that your site meets their quality guidelines and should be indexed, is Yahoo! Search Submit Basic.

[silver4dracs]

Robzilla, I was aware, but as a last ditch effort before I gave up and to test the quality of Yahoo's PPC campaign's I tried it.

We were included in Yahoo search results for over a 1.5 years and overnight in Dec 2004 we were kicked.

I am convinced that this is a Yahoo problem, whether we created it is another discussion as we have not done anything different prior to being kicked and since being kicked. Yahoo at the time was out largest traffic and conversion provider so it was a big hit.

Currently we receive plenty of great organic traffic from all other search engines with our unique content and regular seo.

I have asked others and Yahoo to review the site and cannot get any explanation as to what the problem might be. I want nothing more than to be re-included and have not and will not resort to unethical practices to get there. I just want a simple explanation, if re-inclusion is not an option, as it appears it is not, then so be it.

[lizardlips]

silver4dracs,

My thoughts exactly:) I also ranked number one for my keywords and received a ton of traffic from Yahoo. At the time was using Yahoo hosting and also had a listing in the Yahoo Directory. As my site evolved I had to switch hosting companies and stopped renewing my Yahoo Directory listing. Within days I was out:(

I really don't understand this. I miss Yahoo but they don't miss me:(

[JS_Harris]

A switch in hosting can cause temporary removal from listings, in some cases it can cause permanent removal apparently since you changed nothing else.

I'm not sold on the idea of creating a duplicate site with duplicate content to try and avoid a duplicate content penalty and get re-listed. I'd rather just renew the directory listing honestly.