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I posted a similar question in the cloaking forum but maybe it is more appropriate here.
What effect does cloaking have on a sites ranking in yahoo. This doesn't mean when you drill down and go to a specific category. What I mean is the sites that appear on the first page when you perform a keyword search.
Sooo.....A site is cloaked.
Yahoo editors, when reviewing a site, see the "human" version. Site gets listed. Then it is ranked (when it comes to a keyword search and what appears on the first page) according to yahoo's ranking algo (when you get TO the category it is in alphabetical order, but not when it comes to the top sites returned on a keyword search).
My guess is that for its ranking algo, yahoo has a spider that checks the site and ranks it???? (speculating). Is this how it works? If this is the case, unless there is a special "yahoo" page for "yahoo's ranking spider" the spider is getting the human page that has no spider food...so the site will not get well ranked. I haven't come accross a list of "yahoo spiders" anywhere. Is there such a thing? Does anyone have any info. on this?
Thanks,
2Much
In brief, Yahoo does not have a spider that I know of that ranks. The ranking is purely on keywords in site title, description, the category it is in, and now click popularity I believe (currently working on this one). Your best rank will come from keyword in site title if you are not competing with a category, the category will usually show up before a site.
I believe it depends on the category James. This is usually the case, with non-competitive categories and with keyword phrases. But competitive, one word keywords are more intricate and there's a lot more that goes into those rankings.
It doesn't seem to be mere coincidence that a site that was on the first page of the search results got dropped after we cloaked it.
Yahoo can be so simple yet so difficult sometimes!
Did you see anything odd in your access logs right before the drop?
From my experience they're heavily using click popularity. I've been able to move sites up 300+ positions by putting them on a good "click thru program" (without making any changes to the source code).
Pray tell, how would that work?
set up a network of people on different machines using different Ip's and have them all go to yahoo and search for specified keywords, find my clients site, click on the link and then not return to yahoo.....
Perhaps at some point, someone WILL figure out how to automate a click pop booster, and the SEs will abandon click pop as a factor in ranking...
If yahoo's system is anything like directhit's their tracking the length of time that people are staying on your site, which could explain why a listing could move without a change in the amount of click thrus.
Does anyone think that your listing in Google, not Yahoo Google, has any effect on where your sites is listed in Yahoo websites results?
Not that I've seen so far, Yahoo recently seems to have made an algo adjustment (within the last few weeks). From initial observations it looks like they're going back to stressing keyword placement over click pop...... still waiting for some more sites to be excepted for further testing.....
"From initial observations it looks like they're going back to stressing keyword placement over click pop"
I have recently dissappeared off the first page of Yahoo for my first keyword phrase, and my second. When first listed I was fortunate enough to have both my first and second keyword phrases in my url, title and description. For my second phrase I was number one....overnight nowhere :( . I was receiving 1500 to 2000 hits a day from yahoo and it was by far my biggest traffic driver. This leads me to believe that something else other than keyword placememnt has brought about the demise of my listings.
One thought was the click thru quality as my site was UK based I may have had a lot of people leaving the site straight away.
Another was that the site is cloaked although I never thought that this would be a problem with a human edited directory.
While writing this post I have just done a search on my whole four word title and I am not even on the first page although a site with a similar title desrciption is there(three words the same).
As I look more and more at this I am getting the feeling that my site has been penalised in some fashion.
Has anyone had any similar experiences of going from very good listings to extremely bad listings? If so what is the best course of action ? Is it even worth contacting Yahoo about the problems?
Any help greatly appreciated
Arachnid
Make yourself sound all innocent... ;)
Now for the stupid questions....how do I contact a specific editor? telephone or email ,and as I submitted my site through yahoo.com should I contact them or Yahoo UK as that is where the site is based. I hope you can help on this.
I have also sent you something in stickymail I would like your opinion on if you have the time.
Was there very much difference in the cloaked version from the viewable version?
Arachnid
