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I wouldn't want to abandon this domain because I have too much time and work invested in and it's a great domain that applies 100% to what my site is about. Somebody once recommended I consider copying all my content over to a clean domain, specifically for Yahoo but exclude googlebot and msn from there to prevent duplicate content troubles, but I think this idea is too risky. Coming up with totally different content for a second sister site would take too much time, as it is coming up with fresh new content for one site is already hard enough.
I wouldn't be as concerned about being out of Yahoo, if Google was producing decent traffic. Google is currently producing none.
1. the top ten is filled with sites and directories that are made up of affiliate links and/or pointing to other sites with the original content... and the sites with the original content are down in page 3 or worse.
2. many people who get good traffic from G! don't understand that NOT ALL websites enjoy the same. there are many for whom Y! provides really targetted traffic... (that speaks volumes for Y!'s quality when they're not screwed up!).
And as I say that, once again, my site and a whole bunch in the top ten have gone missing... with the serps only returning 1 million results when the normal would be 39 million. go figger!
They mention having pages consisting of mostly affiliate links, which my site is not. I keep these down to a bare minumum, maybe in fact too few to effectively sell product.
Unfornuately, the people who review the sites do not know how to objectively evaluate the content. They click through the pages, and see the valuable content, and as soon as they see an affiliate link, they close the browswer and click "ban". They are very uninformed, poorly trained, and narrowminded, it seems.
A child can detect "good" content better than Yahoo. A site with 75 unique article pages, and a single affiliate link on 3 of them, should NOT be banned. But, unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening.
C
http://www.example.com/&y=0286936E06E3F7D4&i=51&c=4901&q=02^SSHPM[L7wprz?znjvkf?sp~ql?zgos~vqz{6&e=utf8&r=4&d=www-en-us&n=E9545H3FNA9K2CML&s=
What is this? The real pages that are indexed are shown as url only. Why does Yahoo want to do this? Very unprofessional to associate every single IBL with a site simply because it links to the page. Not all links to a page are correct or even exist.
If that's true what you say, I guess my only alternative is to move on with a fresh domain that hasn't experienced any of these troubles. It's hard enough to come up with unique content for one site, so it will be doubly hard to do it for 2.
I'm about ready to throw in the towel on Google, at least for a while.
Coincidence? I doubt it.
A different affiliate site of mine was getting up to 2500 hits/day from Yahoo before it got banned. If I can do that well or better on Google with a content site, I wouldn't be as concerned about losing Yahoo, but Google is proving a hard nut to crack.
I may try to start advertising via Yahoo Search to see if it makes a difference.
I like to think that there is more than just "I" ignoring Y and that makes life easier. (The numbers prove that the SERPs are weak.. a new front page won't make up that difference in lost revenue to Y.)
MSN is currently the only one bringing my site visitors.
numbers = Yahoo's continuing decline in users.
I host several clients, and for the first year, I'm all over Yahoo and MSN search with their sites - easy ranks I call these SE's. After I get my numbers on Google and out of the dreaded sandbox, I ignore optimization for Yahoo and MSN and concentrate on what Google wants.
For example, if I spent the last 2 years doing what everyone was doing and cross linking everywhere, I would have lost in google this past update. Instead, all the cautious linking I've done has moved my sites up to #1 #2 and #3 or have kept them at the same top 5 rankings. If I had done all that cross linking, I would benefit MSN and Yahoo but not Google which delivers the largest number of visitors to my sites. Why would I worry about such a small amount of return at the risk of hurting the larger percentage?
I wouldn't be so concerned about losing Yahoo if Google was making up for the loss, except I am getting zippo from G. I will have to ask about this in the Google Forum.
When you say crosslinking, do you mean crosslinking domains? That can be risky if done excessively.
I am keeping my site strictly whitehat, adding only real original content.
I removed all my Google Ads from my site, then sent off another message to Yahoo.
Some people claim Yahoo is more likely to lift a penalty of somebody who's spending money on overture, than somebody who isn't.
If you think you fixed the problem, try to forget about it and move on to something else, checking back every month or so.
I got a couple human responses, but the first one told me she sees no indication my site has been blocked from the yahoo index, then after I persisted, a later human response from somebody else confirmed that there was indeed a penalty.
Yahoo's Content Guidelines mention nothing against affiliate sites specifically, but they do clearly state they do not want pages that are dedicated to directing a user to another page. This I guess would be a doorway page, except I got rid of all mine long ago before the penalty began. They are very secretive and love to keep us in suspense.
Do they excommunicate people whom they scheduled a re-review. Last message from Yahoo told me the "re-review process takes several weeks to complete" and "You will not be receiving further notification from Yahoo."
and that be bout it....
don't lose any sleep over waiting for action, if you
compete in any way...fugetaboutit
Maybe enough website owners could file a class-action lawsuit against Yahoo.
For many years, I have been using simple redirects to affiliate links, by adding something like Redirect /affiliatelink https:...affiliate link... to my .htaccess file, instead of using a direct affiliate link. A redirected link can be changed in an instant for the entire site, instead of having to be updated individually, as affiliate links do change. I experimented with hosting a copy of the affiliate sales page on my site which I am authorized to do (with a robots.txt exclusion) as an alternative to this technique, but maybe this is a bad idea. I guess it's a question of which technique is more ok with Yahoo.
The last time I submitted my 35 page site for reinclusion, I actually saw someone from Yahoo look through the site (from their IP). They looked at three pages, then left as soon as they hit the third page which contained a single affiliate link.
The site has never returned to the serps, and it is rejected from SiteMatch and mails go unanswered.
This tells me that they have a zero policy when it comes to AFF links, regardless of those affiliate sites which are doing well in the serps right now; a manual review might get them zapped in a heart beat, and you will not get back in.
This policy is a double standard since thousands of sites run Adsense or YPN. I see no harm in monetizing a site as long as the content provided is useful.
Historically, my visitors have conducted 2.3 page views on my site, on average. 83% of them go beyond the homepage, and my sales conversions (which Yahoo does not get to see) exceeds 12% on average. That tells me that they (the user) found my site useful enough to continue on past the homepage. Yet, Yahoo has "banned" it. Incidentally, out of the 35 pages of my site, only 3 of them have 2 affiliate links (total of 6 links sitewide).
I think Yahoo should let the users decide, based on these types of data, to the best of their ability.
