A few weeks ago I checked Yahoo site explorer and it showed all 19 pages of my website as indexed. On November 29th in the afternoon it showed 3 pages indexed, in the evening of the 29th it showed 8 pages indexed. On November 30th in the afternoon it showed 6 pages indexed, in the evening of the 30th it showed 5 pages indexed. Only 3 pages have a cached view. My home page is still ranked #1 for a niche keyword.
What the heck is going on?
Any one else having a similar problem with Yahoo?

David

If your site is somewhat new - less than a year, then it is pretty normal.
Just keep working at it, create new pages with unique content.
With Yahoo! it is very important to use accurate, unique and very descriptive title and description tags for each page.
Hope this helps.
Dan

Thanks Dan,

I can stop sweating bullets now.

David

David22, I know you were not looking for a review but you really should capitalize on your USP, make the “All work is guaranteed” logo clickable and take the user to a page that headlines your USP followed by your phone number.

"All work is guaranteed, so if we don't solve your computer problem, you don't pay"

Hi waveshoppe,

Thank you for the excellent suggestion.
I have been so obsessed with SEO that I have neglected SEM.
I have been adding content to my site but it has been geared mostly towards SEO.
As far as conversion rate, my site really sucks; I am getting some hits, just not getting very many phone calls. Looks like its time to switch gears.
Thanks for pointing out USP (Had to look up the definition), if not for your post I would be submitting my site to directories right now instead of doing what really needs to be done, tweaking my site to increase the conversion rate.
Some times you need to take a time out to reevaluate your goals and priorities, something I haven’t done until just now.
Well, I am off to do research into USP and other marketing techniques.
Thanks for taking the time to look at my site and make some suggestions.

David

I've never been able to fathom Yahoo.

We have a 4500 page website - hard content, mostly reference stuff. Yahoo only lists just over 20 pages which could not be more randomly selected if it tried. I can find no pattern which links these pages.

Yahoo used to list most of our pages until about a year ago. At that point I tidied up the sitemap by creating two columns (using a table) - surely that is not the connection?

Anyone else have such experiences?

Et cetera wrote:

I've never been able to fathom Yahoo.

We have a 4500 page website - hard content, mostly reference stuff. Yahoo only lists just over 20 pages which could not be more randomly selected if it tried. I can find no pattern which links these pages.

Yahoo used to list most of our pages until about a year ago. At that point I tidied up the sitemap by creating two columns (using a table) - surely that is not the connection?

Anyone else have such experiences?

Is this the same site U are having G problems with? I am starting to wonder about it.. What's the URL?

Hello Gypsy - like your comments, would appreciate some ideas here.

Yes, it's our main company website - www.anysubject.com. I'd be very grateful if you could give me an idea what it is that Yahoo hates so much about it.

The site consists of two halves (if you like). The first half is long-established - a tuition business which we have just sold although part of our service contract is to continue the tuition site and refer bookings to the new owner.

This is new information and has not yet been fully-released to the known universe (although it's no secret). As it stands we are one of only two national agencies doing what we do (the others are very small and likewise with their websites) yet we just don't figure on Yahoo. It's not even vaguely logical. Millions of people a year want private tuition and, if you lived in the UK, you would want to find us - at least for a price and information.

The other part is a directory of articles which earn money - the 'home' page for this is www.anysubject.com/helpful-guides.asp These article pages are extremely targetted for high ranking and do very well on Google as a result.

One thing just crossed my mind - these pages also do very well with scraper sites too (not that I will have anything to do with them - I'm VERY fussy about who we exchange links with). I don't suppose that's a penalty somewhere, is it?

Generally speaking we figure highly on Google and our pages rank well. Yahoo .... well that's another matter. About 18 months ago (and before the article directory started) we had about 3500 pages most of which appeared on Yahoo, too although its never 'liked' us. At the same time I tidied up our sitemap by introducing a simple table so I could display the pages in two columns. As a result (?) or coincidentally (?) our presence on Yahoo went from 3,000 ish to around 20! The pages it has found now include some of the new directory and some old ones. There is no logic whatsoever in what it has chosen. The pages it lists could not be more random.

Personally I couldn't give 2 hoots for Yahoo - I think it's childishly-designed and returns lousy results but I do care about the loss of traffic and revenue that is a direct consequence of not being listed. I'm not looking for the sympathy vote here but I'm disabled and need to earn a living someway so I've got to make this work for me.

Your considered comments on Yahoo's partisanship would be appreciated.

Et cetera,

Y is great at finding mini-networks.  Do you by chance have other domains you own, linking to your main domain?

Regarding Yahoo dropping pages, I recently noticed that some of my pages that had previously been ranked at average positions in their search results are now in something like "omitted results" or so, just similar to what Google has. Looking at what these pages have in common is, that they had been mainly article directory fed with content.

My pages with original hard written content on the other hand did not suffer. It seems to me they have a dupe content filter up and running now, just like Google.

Duplicate content has not been an issue with sites listed at Yahoo so far, at least not as much as with Google. At least in the past. So I suspect Yahoo has now their own duplicate content filter up and running and is filtering results out more strictly now on whatever basis? I mean, they did this before, but never that strict, I guess.

If my observation is true, this could also be a reason lots of your pages got droped. On the other hand you mentioned your site is mainly made of "hard content", means unique original content if I understand this correct?

Anyone else noticed Yahoo is more after dupe content today compared to the past?

Hello Incrediblehelp

I only have 2 other domains which link to the main site which has been operational now for over 8 years. The two domains are my wife's private site which, because we got lumbered with a lousy ISP who refuses to respond to any emails and which has a phone number we cannot dial from Italy, only stands at one page and another site which is our personal one (non-commercial so I'll give it to you here) - www.italyhouse.co.uk

Both domains came on air after Yahoo dropped us and, in any case, it is perfectly reasonable to put in a simple link to these sites because they relate to the directors of the agency which own the main site. It tells people about us and explains what we are doing in Italy.

No, Torsten, this is not duplicate content although we are the victim of other agencies ripping us off. I even wrote a letter to one site commending them on their content and to congratulate their copywriter for me. I also asked them if I should do it myself and save them the trouble? It's quite nauseating how some people are physically incapable of having an original thought.

As I said, the pages which do appear could not be more random. For example, we have a booking form for online tuition. There are 4 fee bands. One of the 21 pages which Yahoo has found is the form which people fill in when booking online elocution (Fee Band 4). It contains very little content - it's just a booking form after all. Why not the other 3 forms? Why not the pages inviting people to book the lessons? I spent ages writing that and it got us to No1 on Google for Elocution.

I do have an article directory but Yahoo has picked up on some of those. 75% of our pages are not from any source other than myself or my partner. They should be original and valid (from a content point of view). They were written to persuade people to choose our service - not for any search engine therefore they needed to be to the point and not just spammy waffle. Please note I am not querying our position for searches on Yahoo, I am objecting to having only 21 pages found out of 4500.

Did you read my comment about when I 'tidied up' our sitemap by putting the pages into two columns? It was about the same time that Yahoo dropped us although you will not find any logic whatsoever in the few pages they do deign to list from our site.

Thank you for your comments.

Please, this is not duplicate content - it is very odd.

david22 wrote:

Hi waveshoppe,

Thank you for the excellent suggestion.
I have been so obsessed with SEO that I have neglected SEM.
I have been adding content to my site but it has been geared mostly towards SEO.
As far as conversion rate, my site really sucks; I am getting some hits, just not getting very many phone calls. Looks like its time to switch gears.

Thanks for pointing out USP (Had to look up the definition),

if not for your post I would be submitting my site to directories right now instead of doing what really needs to be done, tweaking my site to increase the conversion rate.
Some times you need to take a time out to reevaluate your goals and priorities, something I haven’t done until just now.
Well, I am off to do research into USP and other marketing techniques.
Thanks for taking the time to look at my site and make some suggestions.

David

David: that was my fault; a USP is your Unique Selling Proposition. I know of more than a few people that are in the computer repair business and they can tell you that it is a great idea to have computer repair web, but is does you little good if their computer is in dire need of repair or broken, how would they find you then? If they can boot up and surf the web they may not be thinking about needing repairs.

I'm still waiting for suggestions as to why Yahoo don't want to know us.

If you’re having problems with Yahoo, so many times the answer is you have been penalized.  If you search for your site by domain name, and the number of pages is shrinking, and then what’s left goes URL only, and eventually just the home page is left; you've been zapped.  Typically the first thing you notice is a dramtaic drop in ranking, say 30 to 40 positions.

Search for your site by entering "www.mydomain.com" -- when your home page appears, click "more from this site".

Now you should see a list of the pages Yahoo has indexed for your site; do this once per day for about a week -- if the total number of pages is dropping, its possible your penalized.

If you begin to see a serious drop over that time, say 1/3 of your pages, that's not good; if you begin to see some pages start to go URL only, that's not good either ... if after 3 or 4 weeks you're down to the home page only, you have been penalized -- that's proof positive.

If you've been banned, you can send them a message

They'll respond with a canned message and after you figure out what you did wrong, you can resubmit your site for review by requesting a Second Review Request

Lastly; here's an interesting, but brief website about Optimizing For Yahoo

Thank you Travelagent - the article's very useful and I will heed its contents.

Sadly this does not explain our situation.

As I said the pages it has found are just plain weird and unrepresentative of our site (have a look if you can spare a moment). There is no connection between the few pages they do list and, in fact, the ones that do appear are not our most informative (why on Earth would one part of one of our booking forms merit inclusion when so much else doesn't?).

We are not 'dropping' we have dropped from thousands to just over 20 and there it remains.

The only conversation I have ever had with them was about 5 years ago when they gave our main competitor a free listing and then sent us a communication saying we would have to pay to get listed. This received a very short reply from me.

They didn't list us for a long time after that but, in our small universe, leaving our company out would be like refusing to include Macdonalds in a Fast Food Directory. Thus we appeared with a presence befitting our status. As I said, I then tidied up the sitemap (related event?) and we all but disappeared overnight (a year ago). We have been steady with about 25 pages listed ever since.

We do not figure in any of Yahoo's searches for anything remotely useful. They prefer to list US agencies for UK tuition searches in favour of us - quite ridiculous and utterly pointless for any customer who won't want to be ringing San Diego or Chicago to get a GCSE Maths tutor in Carlisle (not that a US agency would be of any help anyway). Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face - this is just plain silly.

Then again I don't mind the silliness (I expect that from such a puerile site which is clearly geared towards the no-brain, Great Unwashed), it's the loss of business I object to.

Your Yahoo links relate to 'your side of the pond' - I presume such facilities exist for those who have not taken to the Great Ocean?

Many thanks.

Where is the site hosted if I may ask?

Did U ever rank for anything usefull? If so what?

The site is hosted with Catalyst2 who are based in Ireland. We need a UK Windows host as the dot-com domain would seriously hamper business otherwise. I find them to be pretty reliable and have other sites with them too.

Did U ever rank for anything usefull? If so what?

Not if you place no value on education!

Historically our key words are 'Tuition', 'Tutoring', 'Tutor' and 'Tutors' plus 'Private Tutor' and so on. There are two national UK tuition agencies - Anysubject Ltd has been one of them for some 10 years now. Our competitor has a seemingly limitless advertising budget and gets everywhere by splashing dosh around.

We have got to the top (in Google) by sweat and sheer volume of hard content while they just write out a cheque to get the 'Sponsored Site' place. Yahoo loves them and loathes us (so it seems).

You asked me for more info before and I sent you a PM - did you not get it, Gypsy?

Our URL is www.anysubject.com in answer to Gypsy's earlier question.

You know .. I wonder.. U have an bunch of affiliate stuff anywhere? Yahoo often gives grief to sites with affiliate shite...

What made you suggest we had affiliate stuff? Was it something you saw on the site? If so, what?

We have about 3 active outworking sites which provide us with tutors. They have 4 pages in common with us (from a 4500 page site, don't forget). The pages in common relate to contractual terms therefore cannot be modified. I struggle to see that that is the root cause. Each of these agents (as we call them) have extensive sites of their own, unrelated domain names and individual content - no-one could suggest that they are mirrors of our own in any way.

Looks like the question has beaten you all.