Originally Posted by
ckosloff
Regarding this pesky Yahoo thing, I have been giving it some thought.
First, let me say that it is happy for me now, and I have the %s back in there.
So, whether you use the variable or not should not make a difference.
A 403 error means the server is denying access, it is basically saying "forbidden", therefore a full authentication process should fix this, since they want to verify that the owner of the site is pinging and not someone else, possibly to prevent DoS attacks.
Also, you do have to update your sitemap before pinging.
If manually you hit repeatedly step 2 in Tools -> Sitemap XML, Yahoo will throw the damn error, the other SE will not complain.
But, if you hit step 1 first and then step 2, it will be happy.
I have my cron set to do this automatically, according to instructions, so it is happy now.
I think I got the error back because that day I was testing the thing a lot, and missing step 1.
I think Yahoo got burned since the last DoS attack and are now overly cautious.
For the moment, I would say that the fix is authentication + updating.
Hopefully.