Reporting and Rankings

[Jamie]

Where does one notify Yahoo of websites with dishonest SEO methods. Is it under feedback when one does a search?

I dropped off Yahoo for many weeks (6-8) and then yesterday I was ranked very good (many first pages) with many keywords and ranked number one on many relevent keywords. Today for those same keywords which I was number one I am not coming up on the top 100. All this seems very strange any thoughts?

[pne]

Jamie,

There is a thread about this somewhere else (can't remember where). Yahoo still using old caches etc. Early this week they produced new (first time in months) SERPs then went back to old SERPs inside 24 hours. Be patient, expect a "proper" update soon-ish.

pne

[ronniethedodger]

"The Thread?"

Just pick any one of them that were started in the last couple of weeks here. Probably an 80% chance of hitting one that deals with this.

[netmar]

Slurp is crawling my site since a few days and it seems like it is ignoring text in headings <h></h>. Is it possible?

If it's the case with their new algorythm, that would mean you would be forced to either use cloacking techniques in order to rank well in both Google and Yahoo and maybe get caught, or you would have to choose your niche and cut the pie in half.

From an SEO point of view, it would be a disaster. But from Yahoo's point of view, it might be a way to get some users back. What do you think?

[ronniethedodger]

Considering that MSN and Yahoo are sharing the same results pretty much, I would go with MSN over Yahoo. Reason being is that MSN is showing more referrals than Yahoo on the whole.

When MSN drops the Yahoo results and goes it alone .. you will need to concentrate on what you can do to keep those referrals. It just may be that they will be similar to Google (then again, maybe not). Either way I think that MSN will show once more that they can grab a larger chunk of somebody else's pie ... and it won't be the first time.

My preferred order then, will be Google, MSN, then Yahoo last.

[netmar]

I don't know which industry you are working for but I never had visitors coming from MSN even when I used to pay for submission. Maybe MSN is good for the gaming industry but other than that, I don't know. Is it really worth it? Maybe it changed since last year, which is the last time I paid for it since it was only bringing about 5 visitors a week but I was using it with keywords such as "market segmentation" and "geomarketing". hehe

It was nice to comment on this but I'm still wondering about Slurp and its taste for headings. <h></h>

[ronniethedodger]

I am in supplements and personal-care products (Burt's Bees mostly). Some of my products parallel the AsSeenOnTV products ... which I use as bait to get them into my sites. Believe me -- that stuff shows up on Yahoo/MSN like the plague and I will use it to my advantage (I cannot afford radio or TV spots, but they sure can ... evil laugh ... hehehe).

You should really check your stats. Since MSN revamped their Search, prettied it all up and dumped the PPC listings -- referrals have jumped over Yahoo in my case.

Plus I look at MSN as the "green searcher's" search engine. They are usually the first SE that a new computer user is going to use (and for a few months) right out of the chute. I have always gone after them any way that I could. Once you get them in and sell them -- it does not matter what SE they use after that.

So yes --- MSN is a definite go after SE for a number of reasons. I am only screwing with Yahoo because they are dependant upon their index. Once they cut em loose -- so do I to some extent.

As for the <h1> etc. By the time you figure it out (or by the time they figure it out ... which ever comes first) Yahoo will be in third place. Thus my remarks on MSN ... get yourself positioned there and with Google first. Chances are it will be easy to do with very little effort.

[netmar]

Yeah that's what MSN looks like to me, I mean a place for "green searchers". Since I'm more service oriented than you are, I guess it makes the whole difference cause in my case, Yahoo is ahead of MSN.

Although, I wasn't paying attention to MSN since the disappointing results I had with paid listing last year so I'm glad you mentionned it. After verification, MSN is bringing more people to my site than ever but is still behind Yahoo. You gotta consider something though, with the merge between MSN and Sympatico in Canada, it might have made the difference for us.

So anyway, I guess I'll have to live with what Slurp gets from my code cause I won't change everything to make it happy and get penalized by Google in the process. Hell no! ;)

[ronniethedodger]

You are correct, it would depend on the what type of website you have. We should always take that into account. A lot of the time people here are discussing their experiences without taking that into account -- and most of us are in the technical information field.

It is interesting that you brought up Sympatico. I think they are not merged with MSN, but they are just using MSN Services for their user's start pages.

When I noticed the surge in MSN referrals, it was after they prettied up the site and dropped the paid results. Sympatico's move with MSN came later (two or three weeks). To be honest, I did not notice much change but I was not really looking that close during that time period. It would stand to reason that referrals would go up a certain percentage though.

Another thing is since Sympatico's move with MSN, I have heard from a couple of people that did not like it -- subsequently they changed their start pages to My!Yahoo. It would be interesting to see how many people have done that.

And yes ... I would not tweak too much where Slurp is concerned. The jury is still out on what Yahoo's algo is really after. Too many changes going on there, pages disappearing/reappearing, delays in adding crawled pages to the Index ... and the list goes on. Everyone is in the same boat here and I have not seen any good advice on how to handle it either.

[pne]

Guys,

There seems to be another significant move in Yahoo SERPs. A weekend Beta thing I thought, but MSN updated too, so perhaps not.

pne

[netmar]

Something I'm sure of about Slurp, it doesn't like my text between headings. You can look at it and see. Try to search for different keyword combinations. I bet what comes out first will be the keywords you have at the beginning of your first paragraph, if those keywords can also be found later on the page.

I think I'll wait for Google's deep crawl and see. If Google doesn't like one of my pages, I'll just remove the heading and see what Yahoo thinks of it. Better be #1 in Yahoo than on the third page of Google right?