This afternoon, I enjoyed the hilariously disturbing experience of talking to Yahoo!'s Platinum service team about including a site in Sitematch. A consulting client of ours contacted us several months ago about his site's de-listing in Yahoo!'s index. Our strategy was to follow Yahoo!'s quality guidelines list to the T and request inclusion in the paid Sitematch program.
This particular site spent well over $1 million with Yahoo! last year, which, while not wholly significant, is still a sizeable investment in any advertising effort. They've been Yahoo! customers for many years, and until they attempted some over-bearing content spamming strategies last year, had never had a problem with the relationship.
What made this feel like Kafka's "Castle" was the following exchange (which I've paraphrased somewhat liberally):
Me: I'm calling in regards to your email about our being refused entry to the Sitematch program. Can you explain that for me?
Platinum Rep: Sure - the inclusion team says that you don't meet our quality guidelines requirements.
Me: Yes, we had that problem a few months ago and have spent a good deal of time and money getting our site in shape. We believe that we fit not only the letter but the intent behind every one of these guidelines, both the objective and subjective ones and we'd like to know which piece might still be a problem for you.
Platinum Rep: OK, hang on, I'll ask.... (wait for a few minutes)... I'm sorry, they won't tell me that information.
Me: They won't? How about an idea of a few or an area we could think about - the page has almost 30 requirements...
Platinum Rep: I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do.
Me: So let's say that I go back and try to review this again and make some changes. When I re-submit it to you, would you then be able to say which elements might be missing. I certainly don't want to waste both our time for months without the hope of an end.
Platinum Rep: Let me check... (wait)... .No, I'm sorry - apparently they can never reveal any specifics or give any suggestions.
Me: Maybe they could just tell me whether the bottom half of the page or the top half is worth looking at.
Platinum Rep: No, I'm sorry.
Me: Ok, let's look at this in another way. Let's say that you have a site who's reviewed all these elements, made appropriate changes and still can't get included...
Platinum Rep: OK - that sounds like your situation.
Me: What would you advise them would be the next step in this process to move back towards re-inclusion?
Platinum Rep: Well... OK I see where you going - it's a Catch-22. I wish there was something I could do, but there isn't. I'm sorry.
Me: But we both appreciate the absurdity - that's all I need.
Platinum Rep: Absurdity?
Me: Sorry, I don't mean absurd like when a clown does something funny; I mean "absurd" as in the French literary movement - Sartre and Camus, etc.
Platinum Rep: Oh... Yes, in that way, I suppose it is absurd.
Me: OK, so what's our next step?
Platinum Rep: I think we've established that's a question without an answer.
Me: OK (laughing). I suppose we'll have this conversation again soon.
Platinum Rep: Sorry about that.
I don't think Yahoo! meant to create a system like this. And it's clear to see that by saying - "#4 and #6 - those are your problems, get to work," this is an issue that would dissappear. Why they want to make life hard for their advertisers (and people who want to spend money with them) is beyond me. At some point, an executive decision was clearly made by someone wholly out of touch with reality - let's hope they fix it soon.
The biggest issue isn't even the process itself, but the frustration and anger that can be caused. My consulting client was certainly in a state of great fury after this experience, and I can hardly blame him - particularly since their site looks entirely clean to me.
Any similiar experiences out there?
Spending over 1 million dollars in one year with any other business on the planet would surely yield more customer service and enthusiasm than that.
What is going on ?
The guy you were talking to did his job actually. If I had employees who had to keep things quiet, I would be quite proud of that response.
So what was the spamming problem to begin with ?
We had a very similiar situation with Perfume.com. One day I woke up and BLAM - we were out of the index! I never was able to identify exactly why we got the boot from the index in the first place but after months of back and forth it was the SiteMatch program that ultimately got us BACK into the index.
I submitted a dozen URL's which were quickly crawled and slowly they started adding more and more. After a couple of months they had indexed about 500 pages, now we are up to 11000 5 months later. GOOG has about 175000. So we stopped funding the paid inclusion account and everything seems to be in the index. Next to no traffic! But at least it is in the index again.
Your situation is even more absurd. Your are begging to spend more money with them and they don't want it. Which makes more sense in a way. If they didn't want to index me naturally why would they let me in because I'll pay.
Staring at the ceiling. Starting at the Sun. I'm the stranger...
Just HELP US YAHOO! Why is there still this secret wall? We figured your algo out long ago, by telling us where we are over the line is not going cause the moon to crash into the earth.
We had and are still dealing with a similar experience as your client. Our main site which has never done anything to justify a banning or even a penalty was deranked and removed from Yahoo about 4 months ago. Going through an almost identical process as you just did, we got absolutely nothing from overture at all.
Eventually, we submitted our site for re-inclusion and it looks like it is back in the index but no longer ranks for anything at all. We get about 2 yahoo referrals a day, down from several thousand before we were dropped. We still don't rank for our own company name. We don't spend as much as your client, but we are in the overture platinum service. They could give us absolutely no help at all, which is unfortunate. Now we diverted about 30% of our overture spend to other forms of advertising.
I wish I could give any advice on this at all, except keep submitting re-inclusion requests. Yahoo and Overture are absolutely unwilling to give any useful answers.
The only positive experience I have heard about a situation like this was from a stock holder that started complaining way up the Yahoo chain.
The other major problem with Yahoo is that since they are still on their index size power trip, a banned or penalized site will still show up doing a site: search in yahoo. Makes it very hard to tell whether a site is being banned or penalized. The only way we knew originally was that our Yahoo referals went to zero. Yahoo then confirmed that were were penalized or banned when we contacted them about it.
Tim Mayer left this URL at TW https://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_rereview
quoting Tim here: Sorry for the run around with your Search Submit rep. I will discuss this with the Search Submit sales people when I see them next week. You can request a rereview at this URL: https://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_rereview This is completely independent of the Search Submit program and is a free webmaster service. Your site should get reviewed pretty quickly through this channel. If you are still having issues with this site please PM me via TW.
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre, no wait, was it Penal Colony by Kafka that are my favorites?
Anyway, (Minnesota euphemism) isn't this thread of discussion characteristic of the SEO/search engine dichotomy? "We want you to comply but we won't tell you how because it might give away the secret sauce."
I must admit I am impressed with the references to absurdist theatre. This conversation did remind of Samuel Beckett’s play "Waiting for Godot" or Sartre's "No Exit"