Thursday, December 16, 2004

A problem with Yahoo search

This was pointed out by the webmaster for New York City Real Estate:
"Way back in March I warned Yahoo that there was a serious problem with their robots ability to understand redirecting or cgi scripted links. These types of links are used commonly on directories especially those that show exit traffic. Yahoo was interrupting these links as duplicate web sites. And strangely Yahoo not only dropped the "duplicate" page but dropped the whole site as well. The result would be only the redirect link appearing in the serps and since won't have any links it would have terrible rankings.

Here is how you find out if your site has be affected. Do the following search: "your meta title"
If you see another URL listed instead of your site which redirects to your site then you know that you have a problem. Then check to see if your site is still listed. If it is still listed you might be able to save it. Contact the company that links to you using a redirect, then get them to point the link to a empty page. Submit the link to yahoo so their bot knows that it is now different then your site. If they drop the link all together it doesn't solve the problem as quickly. If your site is no longer listed it will take 4-5 months to resolve because Yahoo will treat it like a new site. It is a slow annoying process once banned."