Out of the sandbox!

**judyo** · 06-09-2005, 04:42 PM

Holy shish ka bobs! I was reading frobn's post about weird Google behavior and went to the McDar tools because he mentioned it, just to fool around a bit.

My first site ever, a standard template Point2 Agent site, is #2 in Google for my main keywords! It was never in the top 100 before. I realize that I only checked one datacenter (I guess) & that I could be gone again tomorrow, but I nearly fell out of my chair.

If I had known about this yesterday when I was dining out with friends I would have had another pina colada!

**Real Estate Forum** · 06-09-2005, 04:56 PM

You broke the filter, girl! Congrats

**HMiller** · 06-15-2005, 02:04 PM

Congratulations Judy!!!!

**HMiller** · 06-15-2005, 06:56 PM

My own sandbox related note, while on a 9 day vacation of not working on or checking the rankings of my website and believe it or not not even checking my email daily, I returned to find the G update settled down and I broke out of the sandbox and onto the 3rd page of G serps. I suppose I should take a long vacation more often

**justicewhite** · 06-17-2005, 06:09 AM

Well done guys, I'm still nowhere after the recent update and can't figure out what the h.ll is going on.

**HHI Golf Guy** · 06-17-2005, 10:31 AM

The bigger question now is what is going on with Yahoo? Tens of thousands of web sites and millions of pages are getting dumped.

Rumor has it that Yahoo is testing a major algo update - along the lines of Google's old Florida update that shook up the internet. For example, take a look at these stats from forum members:

1. dutchesscountyhomesales.com - only one page in the Yahoo index
2. hiltonheadfsbo.net - only one page in the Yahoo index
3. cook-county-real-estate.net - only one page in the Yahoo index
4. scottsdaleazliving.com - oly one page in the Yahoo index
5. professional-website-content.com - only one page in the Yahoo index
6. www.relv.com - only 2 pages in the Yahoo index
7. missourirealestate.ws - only one page in the Yahoo index

I don't care what others say - Yahoo is still a major source of traffic. I have analyzed a lot of sites that have this problem in Yahoo, and for the life of me I have no idea what new filter has been triggered.

**HMiller** · 06-17-2005, 11:04 AM

HHI,

I've been banging my head against the wall trying to figure out what happened to my dutchesscountyhomesales.com site on Yahoo. My other site was at #1 and my homesales site was bouncing between pages 2 & 3, then I signed up for the Overture PPC and I think that is where the problem started. Not long after doing that, my site was nowhere to be found in the Yahoo serps. I completed one of their forms to find out why and a couple of weeks later they responded by saying that my site may not comply with their standards and gave me a general list of possible reasons. I think it's safe to assume that Yahoo has issued some type of judgement against my site but I have no idea why. I dont use hidden text or links, don't stuff keywords, don't cloak (not even able to do that if I wanted to), don't link to link farms, etc. Of late, I've been noticing similar stories posted on various forums so I'm sure Yahoo is up to something big. I just wish they offered a little more in the way of specifics as to why a site is penalized.

**HHI Golf Guy** · 06-17-2005, 12:05 PM

Originally Posted by HMiller

...then I signed up for the Overture PPC and I think that is where the problem started. Not long after doing that, my site was nowhere to be found in the Yahoo serps.

That's coincidental. Theoretically, since Yahoo owns Overture they should love your site even more

The one thing that may be leading to the dropped pages is that some sites have accumulated links too fast. Call it the Yahoo Sandbox, if you will. Why do I think that it may be related to links? I have seen huge inconsistencies in the amount of links that Yahoo is reporting from one day to the next.

I also wouldn't jump to the conclusion that they site has some sort of penalty against it. The reply that you received is just a standard memo. I received one of those as well. When I followed up with Yahoo again, this time they gave me some spiel about making sure that my robits.txt file was valid. Of course it was!

As I said earlier, I would wait about a month before making any drastic changes - unless you find that you did violate the TOS. I have seen a ton of strange SERP's on Yahoo lately, mostly late at night. This leads me to believe that they are experimenting with new filters and variations of new filters.

Don't panic - yet!

**KeysToFlorida** · 06-18-2005, 07:55 AM

Congrats JudyO!

Think how much control they have on internet commerce

**frobn** · 06-18-2005, 09:31 AM

I have been considering an alternate hypothesis that Google and possibly yahoo have so convoluted their algos that they are now at a point where results are erratic. Think about it, the more variables you add the more likely one of them will result in unintended behavior. The sad part about it is that if it is true we will never know because they will never admit it. It is also possible that they don't give a damn about which "commercial" sites have top ratings. They certainly don't have to explain it to anyone.