8 replies to this topic

[geoinct]

I’m working on an ecommerce site. The changed their domain name last June.

There are thousands of URL’s indexed in Yahoo under the old domain still, and only two from the new domain, even 6 months having shut down Yahoo Search Submit (They learned their vendor continued to submit the old domain name, but again its been 6 months). Many of the old files listed in Yahoo result in 404’s now

Some facts and things we’ve done -

• A 301 has been working correctly at least since we started working with them in October. It redirects the old domain to the new
• And XML site map has been in place and submitted for the new domain name since at least September
• We submited a request for help via Yahoo’s Site Explorer account.
• There are no other domain names they own that could be inadvertently pointing to the old domain name
• The checked the live site to ensure there are no links using the old domain name
• We’ve had them contact the higher quality web sites that link to the old domain name to update their links (but again there’s been a 301 in place anyway)

Any ideas???

[Jill]

Any ideas???

Keep waiting?

[Randy]

Unfortunately what Yahoo lists is out of your control geoinct. And they're notoriously slow about removing both 404'd and 301'd pages from their index.

[geoinct]

Unfortunately what Yahoo lists is out of your control geoinct. And they're notoriously slow about removing both 404'd and 301'd pages from their index.

I guess there's not much else we can do. Of course by the end of the year it won't matter anymore anyway (Thank God for Search Alliance!)

[geoinct]

I guess there's not much else we can do. Of course by the end of the year it won't matter anymore anyway (Thank God for Search Alliance!)

Well I’ll be… Just heard from the customer. They just got a message from someone at Yahoo! Search Customer Care answering the request we submitted via their Yahoo’s Site Explorer account and offering to help resolve the issues. They asked a few more questions

We’ll see what happens

[geoinct]

Still struggling with this client’s indexing in Yahoo. No improvement since the last time

Now there are 2 pages indexed under the new domain and yahoo shows 25,000 inlinks point to it!

So I used a tool to download info on all these links. Scanning them I see a few problems including…

Many of the incoming links are from off target sites (I’ll need to check with the client to see if these are from affiliates or some link exchange they participated in), but, at least for Google this, in and or itself should not cause a real issue (they won’t help, but they shouldn’t hurt either) and I am assume the same is true in yahoo (?)

However I’ve check a sampling of these incoming links and every one I look at is no longer available, I get either 404’s, 403’s (not authorized) or 500’s (server error)

I’m wondering if all these bad incoming links is a signal to Yahoo that has penalized the site? Of course I also wonder if this could be a signal for Google and Bing that may be hurting them now or in the future

PS - we got waht looks like a standard repsonse from the Yahoo rep "give it more time"

[Michael Martinez]

My Yahoo! referrals have dropped so low (about half what I receive from Bing, now) that I will probably start blocking their crawler around the end of May. I would say you should look at the return on investment.

[geoinct]

My Yahoo! referrals have dropped so low (about half what I receive from Bing, now) that I will probably start blocking their crawler around the end of May. I would say you should look at the return on investment.

I know. I keep telling my client this. But I’m concerned what I see with Yahoo may also be causing issues with Google (e.g. hurting their rankings).

[Michael Martinez]

I am pretty sure I'm not doing anything to violate Yahoo!'s Webmaster guidelines, but even if I am unwittingly doing so, all that becomes irrelevant by the end of the year anyway.

I can't convince your clients to forget about Yahoo!, but they may be chasing ghosts in the data.