Yahoo Penalty

[Webzcas]

My main site Online Casino Reviewer's home page has had imo a penalty from Yahoo pretty much since I launched the site way back in August 2004. When I first registered the domain and before I got any discernable content on the site, I did make the amateur mistake of stuffing the home page ( at the time only page ) with keywords.

I am pretty much convinced that because of doing this, yahoo dumped the home page from the get go.

As I have always concentrated on google for search engine rankings due to it's large share of the search engine marketplace I have never actually spent the time to revisit the issue Yahoo has with my home page.

Over the 5/6 years the site has evolved and gone through several design changes - the most recent one being rolled out at the beginning of 2009. I have for the best part of 5/6 years strived to work on the content on the site so as it does not contain the standard adcopy fare found at many portals. In addition my offsite optimisation strategy has been such that I only link with sites with good rankings and good content - such as casinomeister

Anyhow the yahoo penalty of my home page has been bugging me somewhat. It is severe as such that when searching for online casino reviewer on yahoo.co.uk - two of my inner pages are returned as the top 2 results in yahoo, yet the home page is nowhere to be found.

Yahoo bot continually crawls my site and is pretty much on it constantly 24/7. My inner pages have some very good yahoo.co.uk rankings ( I specifically target the .co.uk search engines ) - such as #2 for Online Slots Guide and top 5 for Online Casino News.

But up until two days ago my home page was only returned when searching for www.onlinecasinoreviewer.com - yep that's right, the complete url with www. at the front

The homepage was not returned for onlinecasinoreviewer ( no spaces ) instead two inner pages of the site get returned.

So three days ago I contacted Yahoo. I thought 'what the hell' I have nothing to lose.

Within 24 hours I got a canned response, with the addition that my homepage is in their index and can be found by searching for www.onlinecasinoreviewer.com

So I fired off another email:

Hi Desmond
>>
>> When searching for 'onlinecasinoreviewer' the home page is not
>> returned, but inner pages are.
>>
>> It seems the home page has been penalized but I can't understand as to
>> why.
>>
>> This has been the case for several years. Yet my sites home page
>> features fine in google and bing. It also is listed in dmoz.
>>
>> Is there any chance you can look into whether a penalty has been
>> applied to the homepage as I have not done anything to warrant a
>> penalty.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Dave

To which I received this reply:

Hello Dave,
>>
>> Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Search.
>>
>> I understand that when you search for your site you are not able to find
>> your sites homepage, but you are able to find inner pages for the site.
>> I'd be happy to assist you with this today.
>>
>> When I search for "www.onlinecasinoreviewer.com" I receive your homepage
>> as number one in the Search Results. Additionally, when I click on it's
>> link I am directed to your homepage. As such, I am not able to reproduce
>> the behavior you are describing and your sites homepage is being
>> indexed.
>>
>> I hope this information helps resolve this issue. If you need additional
>> assistance regarding this matter, please reply to this message and I
>> will gladly assist you.
>>
>> Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Search.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Apollo

So this morning I have sent this back to them:

Hi,
>
> Many thanks for your reply. However you seem to be missing the point of my
> contacting you.
>
> My site www.onlinecasinoreviewer.com is indexed in Yahoo, that I can see.
> The home page is also appearing in Yahoo when searching for the full url -
> www.onlinecasinoreviewer.com from Yahoo. I am already fully aware of
> this.
>
> However as I have stated in my previous correspondence, it appears that
> Yahoo has applied a penalty filter to the home page of
> www.onlinecasinoreviewer.com
>
> My reasoning for this is as follows:
>
> When searching for 'online casino reviewer' Yahoo search does not return
> the home page of my site. Instead it returns as the first two results two
> inner pages of my site. Indeed my homepage is no where to be seen on the
> first three pages of results returned. Seeing as my home page is the
> strongest page of the entire site, this indicates that a manual penalty
> has therefore been applied to it - and this has been the case for five
> years.
>
> Please see here
> http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search;_y...t&fr=yfp-t-702
>
> After performing a lot of research I am of the opinion that the home page
> of Online Casino Reviewer is indeed penalised by Yahoo and would like to
> request that someone manually revisits the page and assess whether it
> still should apply. As I am of the belief that it should not. Indeed
> www.onlinecasinoreviewer.com has been approved for advertising on Yahoo
> Search Marketing, so I am at a loss why Yahoo would penalise the home page
> in it's natural organic results. Especially as the site is clean, is
> nearly six years old, contains unique content, ranks well in google and
> bing, has strong natural backlinks from authority sites in the same sector
> and has been listed in DMOZ.
>
> Please do not reply with a standard response that the home page is
> indexed. As it is not helpful and is not helping me solve the issue as to
> why the homepage of www.onlinecasinoreviewer.com has a very clear penalty
> applied by yahoo.
>
> I would like guidance as to how I can get this penalty removed. However if
> you can confirm there is no penalty applied, I would appreciate if someone
> from yahoo could actually find out as to why my home page is unable to
> rank even when searching for the term 'online casino reviewer' - which it
> should do as it does in all other search engines.
>
> Kind Regards
>
> Dave

Now interestingly enough, when searching for onlinecasinoreviewer ( no spaces ) in yahoo, my home page all of a sudden appears, but there is no cache copy in yahoo. Yet yesterday it did not, and the 5 years prior it did not.

I am therefore even more convinced my homepage is subjected to a manual penalty at yahoo.

It will be very interesting to see what the end result will be. If anyone else has had issues with yahoo, please let me know in this thread.

[Webzcas]

Just heard back from Yahoo:

I would like to assure you that there is no indication that there is a penalty on your site or your homepage.

We have determined that this may be a problem on our end and we are investigating further. We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this for you. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

This is a result! Only wished I contacted them 5 years ago. Incidentally my rankings for my inner pages are moving up as well.

[dominique]

Wow, what a difference between them and google. All you ever get from google is canned responses, and that only when you hit the nail on the head. You keep guessing, and they shroud themselves in silence. When you end up guessing right, you get a canned response.

[Casino Geezer]

What a result Webzcas, nice one. As long as it sorts out the listing for your homepage, who cares if they really did penalise you or not, eh!?

It just goes to show that when you state your case clearly concisely and respectfully, you get results.

A lesson for life if ever there was one.

[Webzcas]

Thanks

So far though my ticket is still open and they have yet to fix the problem their end. But I am very hopeful now that this will be resolved

[AussieDave]

This is a result! Only wished I contacted them 5 years ago. Incidentally my rankings for my inner pages are moving up as well.

Even if Yahoo did manually penalise your home page they're are not going to tell you, are they.

But it's a good result for you Dave


Cheers



Dave

[AussieDave]

Wow, what a difference between them and google.

I don't bother contacting Google in the USA, I've found by contacting the regional office (for me Australia) I don't get the usual canned responses. And I get to talk to a real person too


Cheers



Dave

[aksana]

Interesting story, I even couldn't imagine that such mistakes were possible with Yahoo.

I now see your homepage in Yahoo for 'online casino reviewer'.
Congratulations!

[Webzcas]

Bumping this thread. But looks like Yahoo.co.uk which has not taken on Bing's results yet, is showing my main portal a bit of love after nearly 7 years LOL.

#4 in Yahoo.co.uk for Online Casinos

http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search;_y...8&fr=yfp-t-702