Platinum Account Holders Influence Yahoo! [Archive]

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clasione

10-02-2005, 05:27 AM

Please read and comment on your thoughts of Yahoo Platinum Account Holders Influencing Natural Search Engine Results via complaints...

Recently I have had a HUGE site removed from the Yahoo index...

For the last few months our site "Long Island Exchange" (http://www.longislandexchange.com/) has out ranked every single newspaper, media outlet, and/or company on Long Island New York.

A simple search for the keywords "Long Island" would return Long Island Exchange in the number 1 position out of about 162,000,000 on Yahoo along with other keywords like "Long Island News" "Long Island Classifieds" "Long Island Personals" - Basically, anything you typed into a search box containing the words "Long Island" we were #1...We were stuck in the number one position. This even surprised me, but since I have been marketing the site for three years, it was a great accomplishment....

We have been building the site for years and it is one of the largest Long Island sites that exist...

So now we're removed/sandboxed/penilized from the Yahoo index. I wrote them and explained that this tremendous site is Long Island's largest site which still offers a completely free web experience, along with real writers, real photographer shots of the Island, completely free classifieds, and many other services that are in most cases a pay service elsewhere... We are no doubt, one of Long Island's best.

They are not offering to remedy the situation.

What I believe happened:

YSM ADVERTISER
Asks: Hey MR Yahoo Inc., why is it that my company XYZ INC spends $30,000 per month for these Long Island keyword spots on a pay-per-click basis and this Long Island Exchange guy gets to rank #1 for free? Why is it that every time I search for something with the words "Long Island" I get this Long Island Exchange site? Why is that? How is this possible?

YAHOO THINKS TO THEMSELVES:
Geez, why is that happening? Well, you know what, we're not sure but until we figure it out, lets just pull this Long Island Exchange site out completely because we don't want to aggravate MR XYZ INC because he spends alot of money on advertising every month.... Tell the algorithm department to ban LongIslandExchange.com
Any hows, Long Island Exchange looks like a BIG SITE.... Lets get them into the YSM program as well!

LongIslandExchange.com writes into Yahoo to find out why this has happened and Yahoo explains that we seem to have violated their quality guidelines, but do to the sites size, they will review my site individually - something they do not do often...

Yahoo answers with three generic messages with no details to why this has heppened.

-- So much for our individual review!

After repeated empty explanations, Long Island Exchange submits to YSM ADVERTISING and gets excepted on the first try with a keyword phrase of "Long Island" with a average potential click thru rate of $150 per day based on one keyword phrase.....

bottom line:

LongIslandExchange.com is high quality and meets all necessary guidelines to be in Yahoo Directory.

LongIslandExchange.com is high quality and meets all necessary guidelines to be in pay-per-click program.

LongIslandExchange.com does NOT meet quality guidelines to be included in natural search results.....

End result.

Yahoo deliberately removes our site in a sophisticated attempt to manipulate our company into a paid client model......

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/2602/428/1600/newpaper.jpg

Marcia

10-05-2005, 01:34 AM

>>pay-per-click program

Are you talking being included in the straight pay-per-click like Overture was, in the places for the paid adverts, or the paid inclusion with a PPC component that's for the regular SERPs?

After repeated empty explanations, Long Island Exchange submits to YSM ADVERTISING and gets excepted on the first try with a keyword phrase of "Long Island" with a average potential click thru rate of $150 per day based on one keyword phrase.....YSM Advertising - not the regular organic SERPs, right?

My best "blind guess" without looking is that if you weren't using hidden text or anything similar, they may well have gotten you on some kind of linking issues. I've seen it happen to some sites recently.

projectphp

10-05-2005, 02:43 AM

Do you know this happenned? Seems to me you made a few jumps of logic there without showing your working...

clasione

10-05-2005, 04:40 AM

I have done two things so far just recently after the confirmed ban...

They are:

1 - Signup for Overture style sponsored ads. SITE EXCEPTED

2 - Signup for new Search Submit Express including a PPC effect in the algorithimic results.... (positiontech) UNEXPLAINED LONG DELAY - NOT YET EXCEPTED OR DECLINED BUT MANY APPOLOGIES FOR THE UNEXPECTED WAIT PERIOD.

Marcia

10-06-2005, 12:20 AM

1 - Signup for Overture style sponsored ads. SITE EXCEPTEDSo that is paid advertising and not subject to algorithmically determined rankings for placement. It isn't that kind of program - it's not ranking, it's advertising.

2 - Signup for new Search Submit Express including a PPC effect in the algorithimic results.... (positiontech) While this pay-for-inclusion program (not advertising, there's a difference) has a PPC component to it, it IS affected and subject to algorithmically determined placement. AND as such, is subject to the same guidelines as all sites in the organic search results. Listed right here - same as the regular webmaster guideliness for free inclusion.

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/sse_gl.php

UNEXPLAINED LONG DELAY - NOT YET EXCEPTED OR DECLINED BUT MANY APPOLOGIES FOR THE UNEXPECTED WAIT PERIOD. No, in view of the site having been banned, according to your own account, it isn't really unexpected. See the fine print at the bottom:

*Content that does not meet the Content Quality Guidelines will not be accepted into the program.Sites are subject to Yahoo's guidelines with either free submit or pay for inclusion, so it's probably safe to assume that if PositionTech found that a site submitted to them had been excluded from the index, that they'd be likely to double-check and find out of it had indeed been excluded or if there was possibly an error. It's unlikely that they're able to accept and include a site in the index that's already been removed by Yahoo.

I think we can assume that that's the reason for the delay.

clasione

10-06-2005, 02:57 AM

Well thank you for explaining why you feel it may be taking so long... I agree to the fact that it is unlikely to be excepted. To be honest, it really wouldn't make sence if it got in. But at this point a simple denial responce would be appropriate.

But this is not the bulk of my beef with Yahoo. The main problem here is the fact that my site was human selected to be removed from the algorithmic search results....

Yahoo has already admitted to me within an email message that the site was removed due to not conforming to their quality guidelines, but after repeated requests, even after them telling me that they would review my site individually (something they do not do often), they will not identify or communicate what areas of improvement are necessary.

This only increases my suspicions that a bit of funny business is in the works. Especially when my sites removal happened on or around the day of this press release: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/9/prweb286261.htm

The real problem here is Yahoo's silence, and unwillingness to help us fix the problem. I'm really not to concerned about their company TOS here, but more influenced about California Business Laws. The more I research and investigate, the more difficult it becomes for me to sweep this under rug.

The bottom line, is that I feel I was singled out and wronged.
It's that my site was singled out specifically by a human at a company I do business with, and is being penilized. Because of this along with the fact that I am a paying customer, (directory,PPC, search submit, or what have you) as a company, they are required to be honest with me about all aspects that will directly or indirectly effect which of these services, which I pay for, that they will deliver........

I require an answer...
So would you, if and when your time comes.

CALIFORNIA CODES
BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONS CODE
SECTION 13741

13741. It is unlawful for any person or other legal entity to make
any deceptive, false, or misleading statement by any means whatever
regarding quality, quantity, performance, price, discount, or saving
in the sale or selling of any commodity regulated pursuant to this
chapter.

17001. The Legislature declares that the purpose of this chapter is
to safeguard the public against the creation or perpetuation of
monopolies and to foster and encourage competition, by prohibiting
unfair, dishonest, deceptive, destructive, fraudulent and
discriminatory practices by which fair and honest competition is
destroyed or prevented.

Yahoo is only a company, just like my company.... They are just people who must answer to things that require answers...

There own silience will come back to bite them.

projectphp

10-06-2005, 03:24 AM

clasione

10-06-2005, 03:48 AM

OK, several questions and issues:

1. Signup for Overture style sponsored ads. SITE EXCEPTED
Accepted or excepted (http://www.answers.com/excepted&r=67)? So you weren't allowed to advertise. Surely that deserves a reason why!!!

2. Are you banned or penalised in some way: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&p=http://www.longislandexchange.com&bwm=p&bwms=p&searchbwm=Explore+URL

3. Neither of those excerpts from the law works IMHO. No one is forcing you to use Yahoo search (monoloy), nor are they making misleading statements... in the sale or selling of any commodity. highlighting quality because they used that word doesn't mean that section applies.

4. So you release a press release boasting how you use SEO to grow your business and you think they then banned you? Taht seems a bit cause and effect mixed up to me!

I looked at your site and, to be honest, it looked good to me. Perhaps you have some issue with links?

1 - Sorry about that:
Accepted - (I was aloud to enter into the program to advertise)

2 - Definetly "penilized" - Over 900 pagas, (leaving 7 which only appear using the following command) have been removed from the algorithmic results: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=http://www.longislandexchange.com/&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt

3 - To be argued

4 - Only "Possible" complaint origination from competitors/platinum account holders/or otherwise competitor complaint to Yahoo

Thanks for the compliment on the site..... It's very orginal and an enourmous amount of work has been preformed in creating it.

Marcia

10-06-2005, 04:36 AM

There are over 500 searched this way

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Alongislandexchange.com&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt

But some appear not to be properly indexed and are only partial, much like Google's URL_only listings.

projectphp

10-06-2005, 07:52 AM

2 - Definetly "penilized" - Over 900 pagas,
Are you 100% sure there wasn't a server issue? http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Awww.longislandexchange.com&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt shows 536 pages. If pages dropped and then rebounded, maybe there was an issue either for you, for Yahoo or somewhere inbetween.

3 - To be argued
You wanna be careful about that. I am sure all the SEs want to protect their rights to do whatever, and they have far more money than you, I am 99.9% sure.

Realistically, you are more likely to win on Advertising laws than on the two you listed. As google are far more massive than YAhoo, they are no monopoly so 17001 is out. And 13741 seems to apply specifically to selling stuff. What misleading statement did they make about what product they sold you? Dumping your non-paying site, assumming this has happenned, has no selling involved. They didn't sell you anything, and you never paid them, therefore the quoted 13741 is just not relevant.

If you are serious, look for something better, and more relevant, because although I aint a lawyer and aint even in the USA, I can see holes so big in those two quoted bits of law and your particular circumstance. For your own sake, you need to find something better.

clasione

10-06-2005, 10:58 AM

Are you 100% sure there wasn't a server issue? http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Awww.longislandexchange.com&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt shows 536 pages. If pages dropped and then rebounded, maybe there was an issue either for you, for Yahoo or somewhere inbetween.

There is no server issues that I am aware of....

I have been working in this field for years, which in relation to many other fields, probably translates to decades of knowledge and experience...

I cannot figure out for the life of me how a web site can perform in this way without being a direct target...

Through all of this mess - Just think of it like this:

The site in question is a great site, there is no doubt about that, so if this is the types of sites that Yahoo is going to penilize and remove from rankings, it's a sad day for anyone.... Otherwise, there is some other reason why they have decided that my site shouldn't be found within their index...

I was very repectful when asking them to look into this... After explaining many many details to them, I simply asked them "Please continue to help Long Islanders find us online". -

As far as the laws, ofcource, I can be wrong about those statutes.. I'm a professional, but I'm not a lawyer, so that is for my attorney to figure out......

Anyway --- I appreciate everyones comments and thank you for trying to help me figure out what pages are where and why or why not they are appearing.... I really do appreciate your help....

I have to end this thread at this point....
I will not be able to publicly respond..... If you would like to speak in more detail with me, please send me a Private Message....

Thank again