Banned For Being #1

They sometimes say that #1 isn't always the best place to be, and I have a great example for you...

Recently I have had a HUGE site removed from the Yahoo index for what I believe is being too good....

For the last few months our site "Long Island Exchange" (www.longislandexchange.com) has out ranked every single newspaper, media outlet, and/or company on Long Island New York.

A simple search for the keywords "Long Island" would return Long Island Exchange in the number 1 position out of about 162,000,000 on Yahoo along with other keywords like "Long Island News" Long Island Classifieds" "Long Island Personals"

Basically, anything you typed into a search box containing the words "Long Island" we were #1...

We were stuck in the number one position.

This even surprised me, but since I have been marketing the site for three years, it was a great accomplishment....

We have been building the site for years and it is one of the largest Long Island sites that exist...

So now we're removed from the Yahoo index completely. I have no idea how Yahoo can remove such a large veteran site with absolutely no care in the word...

I wrote them and explained that this tremendous site is Long Island's largest site which still offers a completely free web experience, along with real writers, real photographer shots of the Island, completely free classifieds, and many other services that are in most cases a pay service elsewhere...

We are no doubt, one of Long Island's best.

They are not offering to remedy the situation.

_____

What I believe happened:

YSM ADVERTISER Asks: Hey MR Yahoo Inc., why is it that my company XYZ INC spends $30,000 per month for that Long Island spot on a pay-per-click basis and this Long Island Exchange guy gets to rank #1 for free?

Why is it that every time I search for something with the words "Long Island" I get this Long Island Exchange site? Why is that? How is this possible?

YAHOO THINKS TO THEMSELVES:

Geez, why is that happening? Well, you know what, we're not sure but until we figure it out, lets just pull this Long Island Exchange site out completely because we don't want to aggravate MR XYZ INC because he spends alot of money on advertising every month....

Tell the algorithm department to ban LongIslandExchange.com
Any hows, Long Island Exchange looks like a BIG SITE.... Lets get them into the YSM program as well.....

__________________________________________

LongIslandExchange.com writes into Yahoo to find out why this has happened and Yahoo explains that we seem to have violated their quality guidelines, but do to the sites size, they will review my site individually - something they do not do often...

Long Island Exchange submits to YSM ADVERTISING and gets excepted on the first try with a keyword phrase of "Long Island" with a potential click thru rate of $150 per day.....

bottom line:

• 
  LongIslandExchange.com is high quality and meets all necessary guidelines to be in Yahoo Directory.
  
  LongIslandExchange.com is high quality and meets all necessary guidelines to be in pay-per-click program.
  
  LongIslandExchange.com does NOT meet quality guidelines to be included in natural search results.....
  

End result.

Yahoo bans site for being too good and shacking up advertisers. Yahoo deliberately and without just cause removes our site completely in a sophisticated attempt to manipulate our company into a paid client model......

I'm not happy at all, and every reasonable attempt at getting some sort of adequate communication from them has gotten me nowhere....

Wow.

So. Um.

Stop taking it personal. And disengage your ego. I know that this is a very frustrating experience but your feelings and your ego will do you more harm than good right now. Y! is a business. They sell advertising.

One thing I noticed is a javascript that comes after the </html>. What is this for?

Your home page is also 90% links. I don't know what Y! thinks of this, but G doesn't like it and even states you should have less than 100 links on any one page.



There really is little value on your home page which exists solely to send people to other pages. And even when you get to those pages, there is little if any content and even more links.



There really isn't any unique content that I came accross. The site is very well SEOed - maybe too well. And the third point is so wide open to interpretation I'm not sure how you fit in since its the basis of your site.

I think the filters just finally caught up to you. If you want back in, write articles and present them on the home page. Set the site up more like a newspaper. What you have now is pretty spammish.

Take a look at some of this content:

http://www.longislandexchange.com/towns.html

http://www.longislandexchange.com/stateparks.html

http://www.longislandexchange.com/press-release/index.html

http://www.longislandexchange.com/advice/index.html

http://www.longislandexchange.com/Real-Estate.html

http://www.longislandexchange.com/longisland.html

http://www.longislandexchange.com/features.html

ouch... that hurts.

looks like you are still in the y! index from what i can see though.

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=longislandexchange.com&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&fr=sfp&fl=0&x=wrt

not many pages - but still something.

Hey, I appreciate that link, I hadn't seen that.....

I was reffering to your home page specifically. And every link I clicked brought content I could have got somewhere else. Don't get me wrong - I think you made the diffinitive Long Island web site. I'm reffering to how you are presenting the content.

Most of what you have on your site is also on the very commercial local major newspaper for my hometown - sacbee.com But notice they start with stories and go from there. You start with a page of links.

MHO

Well I see what your saying, but we're trying to make it easy to find all areas right from the home page....

It would be a shame to get this type of site banned, for to many links of our own.....

If we had excessive external links, I could see it....

Anyway, I told Yahoo that I bet if those Google ads were YSM ads, they would be giving me another look....

Hi John,

I just hope this is not the reason they dumped you. What would stop any SE from doing the same to any of us? Hopefully its resolved and you are back on top.

Banned for being #1? Now there's an interesting thought! Imagine, your site gets banned for being number one and, thus, gets repalced by another. I assume, then, that the replacing site will get banned - because it's at #1. Where could it end?

It wouldn't be difficult to write such an algo - but how long would it take for the index to be empty?

It's an interesting project for anybody who has nothing to do - set up a model based on the Y index, work out the average time between updates and the average percentage increase in new sites.

Each time there is an update, ban the first site returned for all searches.

I imagine that the index would soon be fairly empty - imagine the reduction in costs for Yahoo!

Yeah, Classione, the site(s) was(were) banned for being #1...


Just my T

MCS
x

That's the ego thing I was talking about. It probably isn't helping your case.

I have been out ranking a few major newspaper sites similar to the size of the New York Times....

To have major newspapers out ranked for "Long Island News" has got to hurt..... Especially when you have a base publication and major media presence on Long Island.

have you thought about sabatoge yet?

i hear it's really easy to kick a site out of yahoo's index just by filing a DMCA complaint ...

also, where do most of your BL's come from?

I heard about that DMCA thing, but all my content is written by writers.... I also do a copyscape check on anything they turn in.....

I heard they do not investigate it much though.,...