Yahoo Ranking Dropped

[flashaltman]

My site http://www.soundsleeping.com was near the top of the yahoo search rankings for the phrase "free relaxing music" for about three months now. But, for the last 3 weeks I don't show up at all for that phase. Has anybody else had a drop in ranking? I'm sure I didn't do anything to jeopardize my ranking, the only changes I made was adding photos to my posts in the blog section.

I've been searching to see if others have had changes in their yahoo rankings, but nobody has been posting about it. Does anyone know if there is anything that can be done. If I've been penalized, does anyone know how long this kind of thing lasts? About 3 months ago I joined a site called web traffic genie, where people come and click one each others sites. It is the only time I've ever done anything like this, and I haven't received much traffic from them, maybe a hit every couple of days. Could this be the cause?

[flashaltman]

Nobody seems to want to comment on this. I saw another forum where someone said their ranking in Yahoo dropped as it rose in MSN and Google. It seems this isn't uncommon. These people are suggesting that Yahoo may look at your ranking in MSN and Google and penalize you if you're high in those engines. Could this be true, or just paranoia?

These people had the same situation as me: relatively new website ranked well on Yahoo after only being out there for about a month, then all of a sudden dropped a few months later.

Nobody out there knows anything about this, hey?

[dazzlindonna]

Yahoo recently had an algo update (seems like it was around the same timeframe as you mentioned, but my memory is poor). It is FAR more likely that some tweak to the Yahoo algo resulted in your rankings loss than the reasoning that Yahoo lowers sites that rank well in MSN and Google. I do believe that is paranoia...or at least just trying to find a cause where none exists.

[flashaltman]

Would their new algorithm drop me this much so suddenly? That's from as high as #4 to less than 50. I'm not even sure if I'm on their charts anymore, my program only shows the top 50.
http://www.soundsleeping.com/soundsleeping.jpg

Meanwhile, msn has always had me at #1, and for some reason I've never gotten into the top 50 with google. I wish I understood the difference between how these 3 work.
http://www.soundsleeping.com/soundsleeping2.jpg

[dazzlindonna]

Sure. Probably everyone here has had a site dropped that much or more in every search engine at one point or another. It's the nature of the beast. That's when the webmaster knuckles down, does some research, and tries to figure out why. Once they determine why (or at least a good guess as to why), they make the necessary changes.

[flashaltman]

Thanks Dazzlindonna. I'm relatively new to the seo stuff. It's reassuring to know that this kind of thing isn't uncommon.

[gabs]

As you may well know, backlinks count for a lot.. SE are always re-calculating the value of a page and a link thus if one for your bl make you top 10 then yahoo devalue that link you can see your ranking disapear..

One thing to remeber is that it not always you and your site but external sites the have a major effect on your ranking..


Hope that helps :)

[cachemony]

Yahoo has been in a flux for the last month or so. Just give it time. I can't even get pages indexed in Yahoo right now.

[seolaw]

Would their new algorithm drop me this much so suddenly? That's from as high as #4 to less than 50. I'm not even sure if I'm on their charts anymore, my program only shows the top 50.
http://www.soundsleeping.com/soundsleeping.jpg

Meanwhile, msn has always had me at #1, and for some reason I've never gotten into the top 50 with google. I wish I understood the difference between how these 3 work.
http://www.soundsleeping.com/soundsleeping2.jpg


Hi flashaltman. What tool are you using to generate the site ranking charts above?

thanks.

[Athuro]

These people are suggesting that Yahoo may look at your ranking in MSN and Google and penalize you if you're high in those engines. Could this be true, or just paranoia?

My Opinion - of course just paranoia

[Steve Thomas]

Sometimes external site have an effect of lowering your ranking on a search engine. I does not necessarily means that you are being penalised.

[www.wintechmedia.com]

Yes! It seems true as our site was ranked 3rd on yahoo with a keyword and as soon as we get an PR update with Google the ranking goes down and we are now on page 4 :( with the same keyword.