Yahoo Rankings

[Shawn]

First off, Ive been reading this site and John's tutorials for a couple months now, and this is the #1 place I go now for info.


Here is my situation. I have one 'directory' website and then I have:

widgetsphonebook.com
nationwidewidgets.com
atlantawidgets.com
chicagowidgets.com
etc, for 12 major cities, of which I have real staff (offices) in those cities.

All of these website are on different servers, different IP c blocks, all
have close to the same content, minus a few details for the location name ie Atlanta instead of Miami. I have links going to all of them from different places, some bought...some natural, some have more backlinks than others. But all of them have between a pr5 and pr7. Most of the backlinks have the city name + widgets in the anchor text.

The Problem
2 months ago and for the past 2 years before that, I maintained a #1 spot for these websites in their given area for the corresponding search term in yahoo and msn. When google did its updates and lost me at positions in the 400's, all I had was Yahoo. Then I started the linking campaign and now I starting to see good results on 'some' of the sites on google. My widget phonebook maintains the best positions at #3 for a search of 3.5 million. Whereas, my citywidets.com sites are still stuck at 300 out of only 100,000 results.

But even worse..in the past 3 weeks, I have lost all of my positions in yahoo, despite having a directory listing for each one of them. Mind you, they are not dropped from the index, as shown when I search for www.chicagowidgets.com all my pages are still indexed..just not ranking. When I say not ranking, I mean I cant even find them in the first 300 results...but I see TONS of spam instead. My on page seo is good, internal linking structure is almost perfect. What do you suggest, besides paying $500/day on overture? Thanks for your help and sorry if my sentances ramble... it's 4:30am

[John Scott]

I really can't advise without seeing the sites - would you like to PM me the URLs?

[4limo]

I haven't used a forum in years, I had to sign up just to reply! So please bare with me! My site is in yahoo directory, (I think this is part of the problem) I have been number one for 5 years for the search term Denver and any form of words limousine. Now my index page doesn't rank in the top 100 for my domain name. My site is http://www.limousine-denver.com I check both yahoo and google at least 2 times a day. I have been noticing that yahoo has been going up and down like a yo-yo over the last month. Here's what I do know, alot of my sub pages are still doing well. I can't find any of the other sites that are usually there that are also in yahoo directory. All the rankings are very different. This site was never in the top 10 www.sunsetlimo.com now it's 1st in a lot of terms. Wait hold the phone, I just checked yahoo again because I was going to show an example and my index page is back near the top.
here is a very strange example if you type in denver limousines you get one set of sites but if you add two spaces (between the key words) denver limousines you get a totally different list. this leads to a very strange thing. the #1 listing title reads
"Sunset Luxury Limousines (Westminster, CO)" no where on the site is it listed like this. the description "Chauffeured limousine service; stretch limos, luxury SUVs, town cars, limo buses; special event transportation- wedding, prom, executive, and anniversaries. Serving Westminster, CO" again no where on the site. How did they do this, and why is it number 1. If you search around and find them listed for other search terms it is the real way they have the title and description tags, and it is in 10th spot or worse. Why would two spaces change the rankings, I have never seen this before.
I'm sure yahoo is experimenting again using some kind of filter, mostly changing the rankings for the sites in their directory, or at least that's the only way I can explain it, any thoughts?

[4limo]

After looking even closer, if you add a extra space sunset limousine moves up from #20 to #1 all others just seem to move down one spot
I also tried this with just denver limousine (no S) sunset is ranked #32 if you add a space they are #1 with a differant title and description!
As this is important in general, this company is the last one I'd like to see number one. I must find an answer
signed very worried

[marthrock]

I think we're all expereincing the same things in yahoo to a certain extent. The problem is balancing between what is good for Google and Yahoo. It seems that Yahoo in its haste to pull away from the similarity between Google algorithams and their own is penalizing everyone who is trying to walk the line between the 2. I have not seen anything yet in regards to a true formula for a top 3 natural ranking in yahoo as of this writing. Im also betting that if you are #1 or were, in Yahoo, you could not tell me why beyond the obvious SEO techniques.

[Johan007]

Not related to Yahoo but Hosting on deferent class C may me unless in Google if all the domains are registered to the same person… but I am guessing here and its no big deal in ranking and total inbound IP count.