Completely gone from Yahoo

[karadawn]

Sales were very low yesterday, and after checking my stats I saw something all too familiar - a slight decrease in visitors and huge decrease in sales. Only could be one thing - my pages are gone from Yahoo AGAIN. Every single page from my website. The last time I had missing pages was when Yahoo rolled out their own search results.

Anyone else get dropped from Yahoo?

[whipnet]

Yes, 1 of mine did, but not others.
Not only did they drop it, they indexed on of my staging servers instead, Thanks Yahoo..

[jbgilbert]

Hearing this same report from MANY people.

1) Some of the sites disappearing deserve to disappear (cookie cutter type sites built by SEOs purely for affiliate income reasons). A similar thing happened in Google last week. This tells me that the "shared technology agreement" between Google and Yahoo is alive and well. And that the latest algorithmn changes have been tweaked to further reduce what the SEs consider SPAM sites.

2) The problem is that some of the sites getting hit appear to be legitimate business sites. This tells me that the changes are wrongly identifying a few sites as SPAM.

3) Whatever is happening is happening at the Yahoo index and their distributed Inktomi index, because the same thing seems to be happening in Yahoo and MSN at the same time.

4) There is always the possibility that Yahoo is just screwing up. Wouldn't be the first time.

None of what I've said will make you feel better and I can't "prove" any of it with hard facts. Hopefully it will provide you with some insight.

[Pranayoga]

After shucking out the 300 clams to Yahoo, I finally got http://www.Pranayoga-LA.com to 25th on Yahoo and 30th on Google--for one week, until they both virtually disappeared. The key terms are yoga + los angeles + classes.

[urknighterrent]

A bit off topic:

One of my unfinished pages just ranked #9 on Yahoo under "funeral home accounting". I didn't realize it could crawl unlinked pages. Client's thrilled (I don't do SEO, just design, so this was a shot in the dark for me) but I'm a bit embarassed. And so should Yahoo be. The page was a MESS. All fixed up now but JEEZE.

[dpowell70]

My results have actually improved over the last couple of days
DP

[karadawn]

1) Some of the sites disappearing deserve to disappear (cookie cutter type sites built by SEOs purely for affiliate income reasons). A similar thing happened in Google last week. This tells me that the "shared technology agreement" between Google and Yahoo is alive and well. And that the latest algorithmn changes have been tweaked to further reduce what the SEs consider SPAM sites.

Well I will admit, a lot of my pages were affiliate pages designed to make sales. But hello? Isn't that the main point of having a business online? Many of the products I offered didn't have much competition either, so what was the problem with giving visitors what they were looking for? They were buying too, which tells me I was adding value to Yahoo's search since obviously people were finding what they were looking for. But the thing is, the site that got dropped was not entirely one big affiliate site. I have another site like that which was untouched.


4) There is always the possibility that Yahoo is just screwing up. Wouldn't be the first time.

Well that's what it sounds like to me. Or at least I'm hoping. I contacted Yahoo last week, and still waiting for a response.

[karadawn]

Oh and I should also mention that another site of mine that got a complete make-over several weeks ago is indexed twice (one cashe shows the old version, one the new) under the same keyword phrase. That site is currently #5 AND #6. Well, I shouldn't complain because Google has yet to even rank that site properly, but I would gladly hand over my extra listing to get all my other site's pages indexed again :(

[ronniethedodger]

1) ... This tells me that the "shared technology agreement" between Google and Yahoo is alive and well. And that the latest algorithmn changes have been tweaked to further reduce what the SEs consider SPAM sites.


Wouldn't it stand to reason then that if they disappeared from Yahoo, that they would also disappear from Google?

Actually that may be happening to some extent, except I think Googlebot just does not crawl those pages to begin with ... better advanced warning radar so to speak. Slurp crawls then ignores.

I am noticing this on some pages that I created for ... ahem ... archival purposes. ;0)

Still there is a lot of legit pages too ... and the site in question was completely dropped from the Yahoo index except for the Home page and one main landing page. 200+ pages are now missing.


3) Whatever is happening is happening at the Yahoo index and their distributed Inktomi index, because the same thing seems to be happening in Yahoo and MSN at the same time.

Confirmed. I am seeing the same thing. This is a given.


4) There is always the possibility that Yahoo is just screwing up. Wouldn't be the first time.

No comment. hehehehe. We will let this one stand on it's own.


None of what I've said will make you feel better and I can't "prove" any of it with hard facts. Hopefully it will provide you with some insight.

Actually it is quite refreshing around here to hear that! Since nobody really has a clue as to what Yahoo is up to, this is all we are left with to discuss. Although I like to discuss Google in this manner also.


A bit off topic:

One of my unfinished pages just ranked #9 on Yahoo under "funeral home accounting". I didn't realize it could crawl unlinked pages. Client's thrilled (I don't do SEO, just design, so this was a shot in the dark for me) but I'm a bit embarassed. And so should Yahoo be. The page was a MESS. All fixed up now but JEEZE.

I would not consider it off-topic at all. The fact that it showed up gives us more insight into how Yahoo works (or doesn't work in this case). Each little tidbit is valuable information.

I do however think there has to be a link to the page somewhere, Slurp did not make it manifest out of thin air. You might want to check into that. Something leaked that link. (Linkgate ... hehehe)

That said, it is not too often you hear about these kinds of un-success stories. ;0) Thank you for sharing it. This has been a good day for reading.