Thanks Tim. Is the update ongoing for the next couple of weeks and more sites will be added? My site has been removed from yahoo for months now and I was told by one of your enineering that it will come back and this update it is not. Please help!!!

> so you should be seeing more of your pages in the index

But as of 11:30am EST, I lost about 90% of the indexed pages across multiple sites.

Well, I am showing just my index page when I type mydomain.com but funny thing is that I am not showing for non of my keywords for months now. Who knows. I am hoping this update is ongoing and more to be added. Only Tim can answer that.

Great update Tim. Even though i lost some ranks, i have to admit that the quality of the search results is way up for the most part.

Looks like search is down:

"Alert Oops!"

Is what im seeing 90% of the time...

I am seeing the same results as the last update for my keyword groups I follow.

Why doesn't my website show up even when you type the domains name in the search:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=framesdirect&ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab-web-t-274&fl=0&x=wrt

www.framesdirect.com

It seems I am falling victim to spam from these website listed here. What is going on? I used to appear for many different keywords in Yahoo and now I am no where to be found. My URL's are still in the index but are not ranking for anything.

This has been this way since the update on June 1st, 2005. My website is doing nothing wrong (spammy) and has plenty of great content and backlinks. It just simply disappeared.

Please help Tim.

Riddled with SPAM - worse than before - yeech. An you removed a couple of great sites of mine. My sites are white hat seo'd excellent examples of eCommerce. On the terms we used to show high for we have been bumped for cloaked sites, affiliate trash and 'Made for Adsense' pages.

I recommend a rewind to May's results. The last two rollouts have been a heyday for the SERP Spammers and a disaster for many legit merchants.

I'm not just whining because my site has been hit. It is your searchers that are suffering the most.

I'm also seeing large de-index. Last night several huge sites (like amazon) only had about 20 pages in the index.

Now they are back, but I am not. Very odd, does this update involve a huge drop, then a large gain? =)

Well it did not work out as well as I hoped for. All my doorway pages bumped my main site for top positions that my main site which is 5 years old with 800 BL held on to for the past year. I was expecting my main site to hold it's strong position and my doorways to follow not bump it.

Seems as though there is greater emphasis on link count. Hompe pages seem to get top ranking even when interior pages are more relevant.

I've been a big supporter of Yahoo search but I have to say I'm extremely disappointed with what I've seen so far of this new update. Hopefully the results will improve over the next few weeks. I'd hate to see Yahoo lose the onpage elements in its algorithm in favor of circa 2001 link rankings. The results I see look frightenly like MSN's results when they first launched this year.

Well there goes my livelihood. Yahoo was my main driving force for traffic. From 3000 pages indexed to about 170. I'm done for.

I've lost everything but my index page. What a great update. I'll wait out the server updates, but this doesn't look encouraging, or fair.

Nice update. You guys got rid of lots of spammers with useless content. My site is a couple of notches lower for my main keyword but comes up now in the top 10 under multiple keywords so no complaints. I probably wouldnt complain if you pushed me to page 10. The results would still be greagt and Yahoo doesn't owe me a living anyway.

I did a search for a hard to find book and Yahoo had a few results on it while Google only came up with one. Bigger index?

During Yahoo updates I do informational searches and compare them to Google's results - this time Yahoo has more relevant sites on top. I couldn't say that about the last update.

Overall nice work.

Results look great! I've found alot of my sites that yahoo has ignored for the past 6 months have finally been indexed.

Of course people will complain if they're getting pages dropped. Yahoo is finally catching up with other factors of SERPs, keep up the good work!

I have to agree with TiGG, Brian and Bill. This update is fantastic so far. I'm not seeing the spam that's being reported in these comments either.

IMHO:

What's funny is that all of the spammers and/or those implementing "super gray area seo tactics" are typically the ones complaining.

If you did online monkeys did things the right way, you would not have to constantly waste your time looking for loopholes to trick the spiders/bots.

You get what you deserve for littering the information super highway with your c.r.a.p.

ADIOS!

there are too many pure spam sites with redirects and major blog spam in the top 10 searches I checked
is there a way to report them ?

I would like to ask a simple question: I am a freelance translator, and have a small-scale (only a few pages) website for my translation services.
Due to www and non-www problem, I did a 301 redirection a couple of months before that Google recognized soon.

For months, yahoo crawled my site almost every day, and fetched fresh content frequently, but failed to discard non-www and include www in the indexes. Instead, it first pushed my site down to several pages, then restored its position, but stuck to the non-www form.
I was #1 for certain keyword compinations for months as non-www in yahoo in spite of 301 redirection to www form.

Now, all of a sudden, yahoo decided to discard mydomain.net and added www.mydomain.net to its indexes, but this time again pushing down it in SERPs.

This is not a complaint, because I know that sooner or later it will restore to its former position, but a reminder that yahoo has (or had) a problem with 301 redirection.

If this recognition of 301 redirection is not a coincidence, then we can assume that at last yahoo fixed the problem of permanent redirection.
congratulations!

On the other hand, I agree with the above posters that yahoo now yields more relevant searches. In my field of interest, there were some spammer sites ranking quite high in SERPs before the last update. Now they all seem had gone!

Things seem to be slowly improving over the past few hours. I agree - Yahoo owes no one a living. But lets look at the top 10 results for a common term in my niche (yes, I USED to be #1 with my real eCommerce site for this term)
"Discount Angel Perfume"
SERPS:
#1 - Affiliate Site
#2 - Affiliate Site
#3 - Made for Google Adsense site
#4 - Domain registration site using Y!SM term suggestion tool.
#5 - Nasty affiliate site with hidden text and other nasty stuff
#6 - Made for Adsense
#7 - Same affiliate site as #1
#8 - Affiliate site
#9 - Affiliate site
#10 - Made for Adsense

So not one legit merchant in an obvious 'shopping/commercial' search term. I wish that the affiliates sites were at least good ones but they are the typical cookie cutter trash we see all over and immediately hit the back button on.

Do the same thing on pretty much any three word search and you get the same sort of trash. The really high volume searches like "perfume" or "discount perfume" seem fine as they get a high enough volume of searches to of warrented hand edits in the past but the algo dependant searches are ultra-trashy.

I hope there is a "Made for adsense"/"Affiliate link" filter yet to run. I could write one for you in about 20 minutes... And site that has more than 75% of it's outgoing links pointed to googlesyndication.com or linksynergy.com get trashed.

Unless you personally own a few google shares and $300 each just isn't enough...

I disagree with some of the posts here. We have a content rich site with many backlinks and internal pages that was doing very well across 100+ keywords/phrases and now Yahoo is showing old indexed pages, from the beginning of the year, that no longer exist. As a result I'm seeing vague, marginal content/value sites placing way ahead of me, if I show up at all. ecommerce is some people's livelihoods and I get really tired of the pendulum swings leaving all of us legitimate long-term businesses guessing what to do next to bring home our next paycheck.

I'm done whining.......

Kinda Spooky if you ask me ! One minute I had few BL , and the next 1200. One minute I had no listings on the first pages, and the next I'm up front. Good on you Yahoo, giving some of us newer websites a chance to be seen and heard ! I always reckoned you as a primary search engine....big hugs !

A lot of highly irrelevat results from this update. This update shows that you seem to love people who stuff their pages with keyword rather than offer quality results

Tim, looks like mixed feelings here. :) I just wanted to say, "hats off" to you guys at Yahoo! Search. Obviously this update is not perfect, but I am impressed with the results for some test terms I threw at you guys today. Stuff that G was unable to find and show, so good job. I am glad to see you guys have started to take organic/natural search seriously and continue to strive to make Y! Search better.

I don't know, I've lost all pages except my home page, but the results seem more relevant. I'm not going to cry about it though. If it serves up better searches then great, but my income does not come from my site either...

I'm seeing negative results here.

Site with less on page optimization and lower links are out ranking better ones. How is that ?

Also many single page sites with least quality are ranking in top 10.

NeonX

I've been real happy with what I've seen so far. Every site I have that was partially indexed, is now completely indexed. I'm glad to see Yahoo is actively searching for content.

Although my websites are ranking high because of this update, i belive the websites do not deserve the rankings. They were made for testing purposes.

I have seen that this yahoo search results has very less relevancy of the results. Shows spam all the way and ofcourse spam = trash results. I dont know where this update will take Yahoo. But definately not to success.

It seem so me that most people hev missed the fact that this update has not yet finished. I too noticed a blatent spammer in one of my niches last night but this morning it has gone. Just hold on to your hats and enjoy the ride (and just watch the spam fall by the way side).

I lost all my web pages too but all my other competitors are still there its the only my URL's whihc move for all of my keywords. All of my lost pages were in number 1.

I was wondering if you guys have implemented something along the same lines as Google's "sandbox." My humble little non-dieting blog was coming up on the first page for a few days last week, and now it's gone completely from search results. What I do see on the first page, unfortunately, are some hits that are really just advertising for products.

The good news is that someone else's legit non-dieting blog does show up on the second page along with the spammy hits. So now I'm wondering if my blog will show up again, but in due time. Perhaps, since mine's fairly new, it's been held back?

I've looked hard at the blog that shows up and compared it to my blog, and just can't see any other reason why one would show up on the second page, and the other not show up at all. So now I can only keep my fingers crossed that mine will show up over time.

When I use the same "non-dieting" keyword in Google, its results don't have the spammy stuff. So far, Google's getting a little bit more reasonable results from this keyword search.

When I type "non-dieting" into msn.com's search engine, I get my blog on the first page. In fact, their search results page looks just like Yahoo's did last week for this query.

Find feet, aim, both barrels.

What, if anything, are you using for Quality Signals? Keyword in domain, keyword in URL, keyword-stuffing on pages, add all three and bingo, you're in. Add the odd redirect or jaw-droppingly obvious gateway, to taste, and you're in all ways.

I know, with all SE's, that we're only one algo tweak away from a sea-change, so hopefully this stuff isn't hard-wired, but it really is depressing, this relentless slide into mediocrity.

Hi ,

In last two weeks , i have lost complete positions for my site, where we on top in yahoo search results for 20 keywords from last one year. Today i have observed that i lost even the 40,000 indexed pages in yahoo , please help me out what is going on with yahoo search , can i regain my listing and pages indexed in yahoo.

Awaiting for response.

Thanks
jose

My site is not included, but the sites that link to mine show up when I type in my domain. I submitted my site - http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request - and I will never do it again. I suspect someone checks those urls, and automatically holds it up so the web publisher will use the search marketing services. it's a trap, imo. However, I know my sites not coming up in the results even when I type in just the domain.

Fix it Till it is BROKEN..............NICE JOB!!

"The changes will be a little more intense than the second weather"

For the SEOs in the crowd - could you expand on what is about to happen

Are you changing your ALGOs
- is more emphasis being placed on Keyworded-Link Popularity?

Body Text? - Title?

How much more can the ALGOs be tweaked!!!

The relevancy does not seem to change - just the ALGOs.

BTW: the Relevancy IS good - in some ways, superior to Google

"Algos"? "relevancy"? How about, "we announced this whole thing to get some feedback because, like Google, we are trying to purposefully exclude certain marketing sites so we can force them to pay for advertising through our search marketing". this really sucks

Thanks....Hope my website get indexed.

We saw some spectacular results this morning/afternoon but they have now vanished. It looks like what we are seeing has reverted to the same old stuff.

Major spamfest under several top terms for one of my sites. Unreal. Top three - four are all redirects from the same spammer, using several subdomains with machine generated gibberish descriptions.
I keep my SEO black hat in the closet. If this is the "new Yahoo" - to survive, I may have to break it out.
A sad day for Yahoo users.

Charles wrote: "I submitted my site - http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request - and I will never do it again. I suspect someone checks those urls, and automatically holds it up so the web publisher will use the search marketing services. it's a trap, imo."
You actually think Yahoo put up a free submission page, then takes those submissions and penalizes them on purpose?

Charles wrote later: How about, "we announced this whole thing to get some feedback because, like Google, we are trying to purposefully exclude certain marketing sites so we can force them to pay for advertising through our search marketing".

Might I suggest a simpler explanation: You are frustrated by performance changes you are seeing with your site, and not understanding much about SEO you are blaming Yahoo instead.

Do you realize what you are suggesting? That Yahoo is hoisting a fraud on searchers across the US. Making a claim like that with no evidence other than your poor performing site could be considered a crime. You might want to be be careful about reacting to these changes on just an emotional standpoint.

Tim Mayer said it would be a week or two for the changes to be complete. Why not wait till the changes are complete and see how your site is doing before making wild claims? Then after that, analyze your site to see if there are changes you can make to help your site even more. SEO is an ongoing effort that never truly ends.

Great update!

I think that with any update, you will find those that benefit and those that do not.

It is refreshing for some of the other sites to get their chance in the spotlight.

As for what is and is not legitimate...well now that is a good one!

There are many SEO tools that people employ for their sites, and it is up to the individual to use tools that enhance their rankings.

I am quite sure that the major corporations do!

It would be nice for the little entrepeneur to have a shot on the net.

Hey, in this update, I had sites that were now recognized and quite a few that did not get included...that is the way it goes.

BTW, how much longer will the update last and how long before the next major update?

J.

Yep. it is frustrating.

No idea why everyone is complaining or cheering. It has been stated that the update is going to last another couple of weeks. At least wait until it is all over. Blimey :)

Prime example is amazon having only 70 pages indexed at one point, its because the changes made to such a large section of data take lots of time to "push" in correctly. :)

TTFN
Dave
http://www.searchgrub.com

My comments above, concerning the search marketing and deliberate exclusion of sites, is unfounded based on fact, and was made more in a sarcastic way than anything else. I offer my apologies. However, everytime one of these search engine companies starts trying new stuff they hack everyone off! BTW, I have NEVER had a site that was not optimized. However, there is no optimizing one can do when algos or whatever are changed, especially if there are some kinks, or hiccups to overcome.

The biggest problem, IN MY OPINION, is when humans go messing around with pure, UNBIASED math/science. Of course, we humans have to get our hands in it once in awhile - lol. Yahoo, imo, has always been GREAT! It is just a bit frustrating when you can't even get your domain to come back in a search result when YOU KNOW it was there before.

People throughout the country are seeing different results. There are updates to the database of all URLS at this moment. I don't think anyone can say that the changes are good or bad at this point. There just is no telling. As another has suggested, give it a couple more weeks to sort out.

I am not seeing favoritism of domain home page vs back pages across the board. Many newer sites seem to be out of the SERPS right now as well. This algo may actually be forcing out newer sites and making them wait 6-9 months before being allowed into SERPS. At this point, most everything is speculation.

We've noticed some changes too over the past two weeks regarding Yahoo's results, which have been fluctuating from more recent caches to those of 1+ month ago.

Some of our corporate pages have time stamps on them so when we view Yahoo's cache, we see the date and take notice of when Yahoo updates or reverts back to older caches.

My corporate sites were ranked #1 #2 out of 17M+ results. Now, we'm at #4,#5 which is still in the top 10 (not affiliate nor spam).

Many webmasters will be unhappy with diminished rankings.

In this industry, and for that matter in any industry, to survive, you must adapt to changes.

More spammer for a given query, less for an other one - I cannot really say whether it has improved relevancy or not :-o.

I would be more interested to see what you have actually changed in your algo guys.

Last three updates have unfairly banned legitimate sites from the index. It appears that some of the filters applied are overly harsh requiring manual overrides. It also appears that the Yahoo Staff are overworked trying to handle requests for reinclusion, and can not respond in a timely basis. Further, apparantly the Yahoo legal team won't allow the Yahoo staff to actually respond to webmasters with reasons for the ban -so everyone is running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to figure out the cause for the bans.

Meanwhile, search results can still be disappointing as noted in a number of entries above.

Our key term is sisal rugs.
Of the top 10 results:
One url is listed three times. Twice for the index page, and once for an inner page. Another site is listed twice. These multiple results are also served up as separate results- rather than indented parent-child relationships. When I'm searching unfamiliar terms, I generally don't look at the url, but at the title and description. I would visit each of these sites multiple times as by the result structure, I wouldn't know that they were the same site.

Continuing with the top 10- the #2 and the #9 results are sites that purportedly offer sisal rugs for sale, but doesn't actually have any sisal products - it is clearly a page designed for the search engines and not users (a violation of Yahoo contnet guidelines).

The #8 result is clearly a page designed to sell ads by google, and links.

I know that serving up meaningful results to the myriad of search terms out there is a gargantuan task, but Yahoo could at least start having some meaningful discourse with webmasters.

Results in yahoo are definately dis-appointing with Affiliates and Redirect websites coming on top of rankings, sites that didn't even exist in the top 50 before. Type "printer ink" in yahoo and see for yourself.

1st site - Redirect site
2nd site - Redirect/Affiliate/Adsense site

What I don't understand is how are Google's results so stable and non-affected by spamming whereas Yahoo has been trying to come up with results in the last 5 months and still spammers are being listed on top. No wonder Google's shares are rising unlike Yahoo. I hope Yahoo maintains its integrity through the search and come up with better results.

Here's how rediculous this is at the moment. We have 100+ keywords that all ranked within the top 20 positions. Many in the top 10. Now we only have 9 keywords that rank in the top 1000, period, and they are awful. We don't spam with blogs. We have a lot of quality backlinks (PR5-8), hand-managed (no link-farms), and our content is deep, rich, meaningful, and changes weekly. Now we have rediculous, non-customer serving sites, ranking ahead of us, which isn't hard at the moment. I know everyone has to tweak their product to make it better but I would love for someone from Yahoo to sit down with me and explain how my particular niche is not better served. I certainly hope Yahoo gets their act back together over the next couple of weeks.

Silliness abounds - for keywords/phrases in my main area I've been removed or dumped 10 to 15 places Whereas in secondary areas (same product different description) I've remained untouched. Well odd.

Wow, practically overnight Yahoo has gone from being one of the top 2 search engines to being complete trash. This is horrible, it's all affiliate and Adsense related crap now. Somebody has screwed up royally and will probably end up getting canned for it.

Hi, on the whole the update has been good. I have a number of careers related sites which have maintained positions within the top 30. These sites have lots of original content and provide online tools for career development. There was a lot of spammy sites that appear to have been reduced. All I can say is well done to Yahoo. Seems to be a good update. I've also noticed increased indexing for major portions of content.

I'm guessing the only people that are posting are people that are having trouble. So don't take all the negative posts as the law of the land.

Again, the best advice is to let the indexing complete then see where you stand.

A site I know that has been using gateway pages for a while to spam Yahoo! has actually gotten better rankings (company owns hundreds of domains all leading to its main site - domains are all extremely similar in content - have keyword rich text that is hidden from the user).
For terms important for its industry it now has more first page listings from.
For the keyphrase most relevant to its site (gets medium traffic) it now has 9/10 of the first page listings.

Scrub my last comment - after rechecking all my pages have dissappeared apart from my ToC and an old redirect page.

I checked who has taken over my, and my competition, places - it's spam sites for dental plaque. I sell military wall plaques

All of the big companies I compete with use footer links on all their web pages, of all their web sites. One of my competitors has no less than 16 web sites that they interlink. I use the exact same technique for my 5 very distict web site services and get penalized for it. The only tactics I use are the ones my competitors excel with. These companies are multi-million $ companies so I guess that solves the mystery. Talk about unfair!

With this latest string of changes, my inbounds went from over 150,000 to under 25,000 and my traffic dropped like a rock.

This doesn't give my company much of a chance for survival. I guess $$$$ talks.

Homepage has gone up. 800 spam free forum pages still indexed but don´t rank anymore.

Traffic down 90%

I´m waiting for the next update can´t say I like this one.

We were wondering why orders stopped coming after 7/21...

We've made it through other Yahoo updates over the last 2 years just fine - moving a spot or two up or down but never COMPLETELY DISAPPEARING as we have in this latest update!

We even did some SEO work on the site about 6-8 months ago and had been moving up nicely in several of our keywords. Guess that was money wasted now...

So this is the second of 3 updates? Made it through the first one OK, got tanked in this second one... can only cross our fingers that the 3rd one restores our rankings...

This is our livelihood here Yahoo!!

New update wiped out our site we had more 1000 pages of totally unique content now Yahoo lists 5 pages. No spam no duplicate content, 2 publishers working full time on content.

Back to a 2 horse race again I guess where SEs are concerned.

Agree with some of the other posters. Our website went from 300 pages indexed to about 2. It disappeared completely off the map!

Why can't we get some simple feedback from Yahoo which explains what happened and whether this will be resolved soon? There is only 1 week of the 2 week update left...

This last update has destroyed years of work. We have researched and obeyed all the rules, follow only 'white hat' forms of SEO and invested countless thousands of dollars to finally reap a little reward. Now Yahoo has pulled the rug out from under us, traffic is down 75% and our income has followed along the same lines. When you add up all the firms that are losing from this, do I smell class action?

Well not sure whether changes are still ongoing or completed, but it seems that new changes are giving importance to ranking of domain name (not to the individual page) and the number of keyword repeated on web page.

Here is a good example, if you search for any of following keyword

punjabi matrimony
gujarati matrimony
telugu matrimony

on first page results you will see number of links from geocities having thousands of keywords as hidden text on the page.

www . geocities . com/Sanskrit_matrimony/

The are many keywords for you will get the same url on first page result

Again not sure, it is due to ongoing changes or a quick action taken on my above comments, but the URL mentioned in my previous post is not showing any more on first page results.

Yahoo does not owe me nothing, but....

My site is coded in php, it used to be on first place on yahoo Mexico for "autos usados".

Now most of the pages are gone, and the one that it is showing is from my submission to the yahoo directory.

Also: my site is hosted in the USA does that affect my ranking in yahoo Mexico? is there a way to tell yahoo that my site is intended for Mexico?

Regards,

http://www.mexautos.com

about the worst SPAM infestation I have ever seen on Y. incredible! safe to say now: Y! = SpamFest

With this new update, a lot of my pages have been indexed but I'm not receiving any traffic from Yahoo across all of my sites. This applies to "obscure" keywords as well.

Terrible update. Our company, a small company depends on yahoo.com and our organic/natural ranking. We spend about $150.00 per day, thats right on yahoo search marketing. We used to be in the top 5, page 1 results for all of our keywords. Now the sites that come up are horrible, not even legitimate business's that do what we do.

Why can't yahoo leave well enough alone? Its hard enough to figure out what you want us to have on our site, we construct it to make you happy and then an update like this happens and we are gone.

All of our efforts to optimize for what? Nice that for the $4500 per month I spend with yahoo search, formerlly overture I get slammed by the same company. You'd think there would be some appreciation somewhere for those of us who depend on you and appreciate you. Thanks yahoo, for nothing.

Spam sites taking over now...Nicely done yahOO.

The update before this recent update made perfect sense. However, this recent one is SOOOOOOOOO far off from reality that it is hard to believe what Yahoo is doing. I hope they are listening - a total diappointing update = sites that deserve to be up are gone - some old sites with bogus content are on top - my guess is that some of those site owners do not even know that they are up -

Yahoo - please wake up

How does this make sense:

On 7/26, 7/29, 7/31 we're #2 for one of our keywords.

On 7/27, 7/28, 8/1 we're #21 for the same keyword?

This is happening with almost all of our keywords... moving back and forth daily!!

Another keyword where we ranked #2 for over 8 mos before this ridiculous update is now not even in the first 100 listings.

Again... this is our livelihood you're playing with here Yahoo!!!

Well, my site is in the results when I type in the domain, finally. Most of my pages come back but still no traffic as seen from my stats. So... maybe a little while longer.

Yahoo's ongoing update is far worse than previous ones. For 2 or 3 word searches yahoo doesn't even yield the authority site and it's the same even if you search by business name or trade name.

Man! Now it's back to the same rubbishy results as before!

For a while it seemed as if the index was beginning to clean up and return relevant results - i.e. mine. White hat. Nice and clean.

Now I've lost two sites from #1 page. Not dropped. Gone! Nadda in the index.

Please go switch the uk broadband listings back a few days. Get rid of all the multiple results from the same sites. Thanks.

well yahoo has now successfully given msn the #2 spot with this latest update.

most of my search results are filled with directory/spam pages in the top positions. They dont even come close to the traffic we receive and we are no where to be found. This is an unbelievably bad update.

I would certainly hope Yahoo keeps am eye on these conversations.
Wouldn't it be nice for some communication from them to let us know where things stand? They are working on it? This is as good as it gets? They are trying to find the Ctrl+Z key to put things back before the big oops sh*t?
Yahoo, throw us a bone!
Please!

Slightly cheesed off that since the update all my pages have dissapeared after enjoying excellent rankings ,and totally relevant.

Is this the end of the update? Will my pages return? Or are they gone for good?

This last update will allow Google to put more distance between itself and yahoo in terms of relavent searches. It seems that is counterproductive to an update, isn't it?

You need to go back to the old ways and re-engineer this one some more before you release it.

Results are king when your searching, and other search engines are only a bookmark away.

Dear Yahoo,

Can you help me find some great search results on time machines?

If I knew 1 year ago that a well constructed web site in every sense of the word (100% white hat) -- along with substantial and relevant, quality backlinks would qualify as one of the biggest penalties ever seen in Yahoo Search (7/20/2005 - 8/7/2005*), then I would have created a spam site in order to see victory in these past few weeks!

(Congradulations to all spammers... You are not just king of MSN anymore!)

Looks like I will focus all my attention now on Google. Then again, I am not a masochist...

Hello? Is anybody in there?

Tomorrow night marks the 3 week anniversary of the 'new and improved' Yahoo!, and I for one am extremely dissapointed with the ineptitude that seems to be behind this update.

Most new Yahoo searches return spam mixed with vaguely relevant websites sprinkled in. While monitoring my websites link popularity as well as some spam sites, the Yahoo and Alltheweb links have jumped tens of thousands overnight for the spam sites (false backlink scams, etc)and dropped significantly for legitimate sites.

We have been nice, we have been patient, and we would like our traffic back now please. Tens of thousands of dollars have been lost (if not more) by all of us who follow the rules and run legitimate websites. Either change it back, or let us know what we need to do to get indexed again, so we don't have to keep guessing at what your new systems wants. -please

As a Systems Administrator, as an IT Consultant, and as a Webmaster, opinion really can matter when clients depend on what you think and what you provide. The majority of clients don't care if I deploy all their new systems with default search page Yahoo!, MSN, or Google on the desktops. I do care, because I'm always looking to provide them with the search engine default that I THINK provides the most relevant results. I've been recommending/deploying Yahoo! (last 14 months), because I was happy with past results. I've noticed something's gone wrong, since mid-July, at Yahoo! THE BIGGEST FAULT I've found is the loss of all but home pages of sites that used to have several pages indexed. Conversely, I've seen significant improvements at Google in the same time period, and MSN is really showing improvement. Yahoo!... I gotta' reconsider setting you up as my client's default :-( You need to track/research why some long term sites have suddenly dissappeared or have dropped down to one indexed page. If you're trying to get site owner's attention and force them into paid placement arrangements, then shame on you.

Have to agree with the last poster, the results in our sector look just awfull. I was amazed at such a massive change in the index. It was such a dam good search engine before and now its become a junk farm - im amazed that Yahoo have not pulled these results its clear that they are no longer producing relevent results.
Lets hope they do something about it, it would be a shame if search engine users are left without any decent alternative to google.

Our keywords do not show either. We performed well, obeyed the rules, never spammed, no doorway pages, no tricks, only one site with a lot of good content. Disappeared. Is it because Yahoo is promoting "search submit"? Shouldn't these sites paying for clickthroughs be listed as sponsored results?

That's an interesting thought Rick. My site and my dad's site have disappeared completely from the Yahoo search and i have no idea why, they are both good honest businesses. My dad tried contacting Yahoo and felt he was losing business so he signed up for that Yahoo paid submit and now he is back up in Yahoo's natural search but he has to pay 30 cents per click. I wish there was an easy way to contact them, or do they want us to pay to be in their results? Not sure yet, but I would love to know what to do about my site.

Mystery Solved: Yahoo says that natural results include sites that are paying for inclusion. (99% of web results are free) That means that 1% have to pay. Wouldn't that be the top 10-20 results? http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/basics/basics-03.html Basically, Yahoo is shaking down top performing sites to prod them into the "search submit" program. But that means that the "natural results" are really not natural anymore. They really should disclose this to consumers in the results, not in a small disclaimer in upper right -(about this page) Personally, i don't trust Yahoo's results anymore.

An email I sent to Tim 8-11-05:

Hi Tim, I am sure you're receiving lots of email these days, so I will be brief.

I have posted a few times on the Third Weather Report blog and have followed all the opinions, facts and of course, the traffic I monitor for numerous clients websites and my own (200 total).

What in the world are you guys doing over there?

Paid 'Search Submit' Results: If 1% - 2% of your results are paid 'search submit' sites, then that can take up 250 to 500 of the top ranking positions for 1 keyword term that gets 25,000 results! So the 99% of sites trying to get the 'free listings' Yahoo always promised would be there are now on the 100th page, not the top ten. How is this fair to all of us that have worked so hard to get to the top of Yahoo legally? By the way, that 1% - 2% figure is direct from the folks at Yahoo!

If this index is determined by those figures, then this obvious bullying tactic Yahoo is employing is disgusting, To date, I have received numerous phone calls from Yahoo trying to get me to sign up for your new search submit program for myself and my clients, to ensure they stay in the top 30. I don't think so.

I must say that if this is the permanent change to yahoo's index, I will have to start referring all of my clients to Google or MSN. I understand Yahoo is trying to generate revenue to make money but this is not the way to go. It will be only a matter of time until searchers get fed up with the paid spam they are now receiving for the top keyword searches on Yahoo.

You can already hear the mouse clicks as they all download the Google toolbar and stay away from the Yahoo spam fest.

If I am mistaken about the situation, I apologize. If I am not, then shame on all of you, taking advantage of companies that are already struggling in this economy. With Oil Barrels at 65 bucks, and gas at an all time high, the Internet is the only medium we have to reach our clientele, as they are driving to our stores less and less. Now we have to pay 30 cents per click to just get a visitor? That's just crazy. Please take heed; this will end up badly in the long run for Yahoo.
Sincerely
Charles Trig
CEO
Trig Enterprises, Inc.
727-548-7998
My direct line: 877-401-6600 (toll free) Feel free to call me on my dime

My web sites are gone, but I didn't write to complain about it. What I would suggest, is that you change your search algoritms (sic) every week or two weeks so that everyone has a chance to get near the top of the search results. I would also suggest a default search of 100 results.

I would like to add to the above, like everyone else posting here, that I do find your search results seem less relevant than in the past.

Best of luck in kicking Google's butt!

i AGREE W/MOST COMMENTS HERE. i HAD A LEGITIMATE SITE, NO SPAMMIMG, ETC AND HAVE BEEN REMOVED. i HELD TOP POSITION ON MY KEYWORDS. NOW IT APPEARS THAT SITES FROM YESTERYEAR HAVE REAPPEARED AND ALOT OF NOT SO RELEVANT DATA APPEARS IN A SEARCH WORD. THAT MUCH MORE CREDIBILITY TO OTHER SEARCH ENGINES WHICH WILL GLADLY GRAB THE SLACK CREATED BY THE IRRELEVANT SEARCHES OF YAHOO. TIME TO INCREASE MY PARTICIPATION IN OTHER SEACRH ENGINES

I, like most people in this thread, are seeing poor results but if Yahoo wants to change their algos, great, that's their business. I will focus my attention on Google. But for crying out loud at least use our most current pages. Yahoo is now using a URL convention for me that hasn't existed in almost a year. Probably explains why their backlink count is so completely out of proportion. So I spent the vast part of this year organizing my site to be user and SEO friendly for what again?

if (ALGOS==WHIM) {
screw_SERPS = 1;
screw_company = 1;
screw_end_user = 1;
advantage_Google = 1;
}

This thread amuses me (not that I'm happy, I'm furious like most)

Firstly we have those few posts that seem to claim that "nothing is wrong, all is ok, the sky is blue, and things are just getting better"!

Well obviously, someone has to be no.1 in results, so from the perspective of those that over the past few months have miraculously jumped to no.1 out of nowhere, I guess everything is coming up roses and all of us "complainers" have just been sucking sow grapes.

It seems to me though that the positive posts have diminished and those with real issues continue to exist. Anyone that is objective, regardless of where their site appears, would have to consider that the number of posts reflects the fact a REAL issue exists with a great number of people.

My site too has gone from HUNDREDS of top 10 results to NOWHERE. NOT EVEN my URL is listed anymore. Yahoo did reply saying yes my site has been penalized, but will not say specifically why.

That's like being put in prison, or at least being sent a traffic fine in the mail from DMV "for 1 of the 10 following reasons.. we just won't say which one it is!"

I don't have any money for marketing, which FORCES me to MAKE SURE my site adheres to all of the guidelines both Yahoo & Google state, as well as all good behavior conduct we know about.

Luckily I have a full time job and I don't rely on the income from my site, so my heart goes out to all of you that mention this was your livelihood. I believe you, and am just glad at this point I have my wages to fall back on.

Sure Yahoo/google didn't promise you anything.. but the law is not that simple, and PRESIDENCE is something the US law does recognize. So for someone to benefit you one way for months or years and then kill it is in my mind a cause for a law suit in my mind. This and a dozen other issues I won’t mention.

BUT MAYBE SOMEONE NEEDS TO CAPTURE THIS THREAD if they ever did want to use it, or those involved above as part of any such claim, if in the unlikely event it could be used. I can just see this website thread mysteriously disappearing.

I have worked TIRELESSLY for 5 YEARS to get my site http://www.2become1weddings.com from NOTHING to the 6 million hits a year it was getting until recently, now my traffic has gone to 5% of that. If this was my only source of income, like many I would be doomed.

Imagine of you spent 5 years building a business, following all the laws of your local area. Then they changed the law and your business disappeared overnight.

Can they do that? Sure
Is it legal? Maybe
Would those businesses take the council to court? You bet.
Would they win? Good chance
Would the council have to reimburse owners for lost revenues? I wager there would be a substantial settlement!

Sure yahoo & google can do what they like. Doesn't necessarily mean they'll get away with it without cost in the end if a case exists. And from what I read above, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS has just vanished from all you guys. And they're not responsible in ANY WAY? ... you have to be kidding!

By the way, I say yahoo & Google, because like most above over the past few months google continued my excellent results, even though yahoo had killed me. But this week I disappeared from google too.. but maybe that is a technical glitch, I still have faith in google, but it's just a word of warning for those that say they will just jump from yahoo to only use google. Could be gong from the fire to the frying pan!

Regards
Anthony Johnson
2become1weddings

Anthony, I am sorry to see this happen. I visited your site, and it appears to have value. I do see some similarities with Yahoo serps, and Google serps. It appears that "thin affiliates" have been cut out. I don't know why your site would have been penalized, but like you, I have been in that frustrating situation as well. Even though I got chastized earlier in this thread by a Yahoo-ite, I know that the likes of Yahoo and Google will gladly have those of us who can't be found pay for their search marketing services. I am getting good traffic from MSN, but even after I have found my site indexed in Yahoo, and Google, I am getting no traffic. oops, I did get traffic from yahoo and google both for some long type in, and that was like on the twentieth page of the results - lol!

I find this attitude toward affiliates to be somewhat discouraging. The same entity (internet marketing companies) that lured us in with "click here to earn money with your website" is the same entity that screws us. There is a great paradox within. I only hope to see the leaders of these great internet marketing empires to be standing in the food stamp line one day. It is so unfortunate that it is often us "little people" who get the shaft in all this.

This blog, like wmw, and other forums, has it's share of elitists snobs - the types who actually report spam 'cause they got bumped from decent serps. Ingenuity, and creativity get penalized unless you are a big company. then it is ok to steal affiliate earnings with "technology"... let me get off my soap box.

If you want your position back, sign up for "Yahoo search submit", pay 30 cents per click and you'll be restored immediatley. I know of a top site that was removed, was told they "may" have violated Yahoo's guidelines, signed up for "search submit", and was back to #1 that week. This is a shakedown. Yahoo wants those top ten positions to be paid for, but they should indicate that to the public, because these results are no longer natural algorithmic results.

Soooo - NATURAL SEARCH is supposed to mean that the search engines really went out and crawled those sites right? Hmmmm, so if we pay $49/year and either 30 or 60 cents a click then we can all just pretend that the robots crawled our site and we are the best right? GREAT SOLUTION YAHOO!!! I hope you at least get the balls to tell the public that what they are searching is not really "Natural Search" because right now you're basically lying to them.

So when is the next update? It has been months since the last weahter report.

Does anyone know of any good blogs for Google SEO?

I also lost 5 top 10 spots on Yahoo when they did their re-index. It is very upsetting that Yahoo does not seem to have any structure to it's new placement strategy.

Doing SEO as a professional can be lucrative, but when these engines change everything; then it *ucks up our lives. I tried making a living on it for a while, but you can lose all your income overnight if you depend on it.

Plus all of your clients get ticked off and expect to be on top forever.

There has to be some place that we can complain to Yahoo or some forum that we know they read and watch. Anybody have any suggestions?

One more thing. I hear that Yahoo may buy MSN.

If that happens then all of the good MSN traffic is gone too.

I think we need to definetely complain to Yahoo.

Any ideas on when the next weather report will be?

Can anyone help? Does anyone from Yahoo really read this and reply? I too am having difficulty getting Yahoo to list my site which was redesigned and resubmitted (free listing) in August 05. Today, I used the "Site Explorer" tool and saw the index of my site's pages. There were 92 pages indexed and only 7 of the URLs were current "live" pages. The rest of the 85 URLs were for old pages from the old web site that of course say "page cannot be found". Is there anything I can do? Should I just resubmit my site and hope that they pick up the current pages and drop the old ones? My site is being picked up actively by Google and MSN, but with Yahoo, users have to search for my company by name to find us. I appreciate any help or information that can be provided.

the new update seems to be producing much better results.

removing the spam is the only way to reach the truly good sites.

my site: http://eyeglassdirect.com is finally where people can find it.

can't wait for the next update and get rid of those spammy sites once and for all

Have all the changes finished now? and are you now adding new data back into the index. We noticed that whilst Yahoo was crawling it seems very slow at adding new sites to the index. I also note that lots of backlinks seem to have vanished, have you penalized inbound links to webmaster sites?
I can't say if your update is good or bad yet. But I think it is unfair to affect sites that are white hat and have previously good positions in the index. Some could say you are deliberately forcing customers to go down the PPC root? Surely Yahoo must have a tangible reason for the update and an end goal. It would be nice to know the truth.

Given that the public has put Yahoo where it is today it will also be the public that ultimately destroy Yahoo.