Microsoft Search Live

...but from a user perspective (which is how an engine needs to see it) Geotargeting as standard makes real sense I think

I agree, but as an opt-in

If I use: http://search.msn.co.uk

and do a search for:

"university research on cancer"

the first 20 results are all UK sites..

if I do the same in: http://www.google.co.uk

I get a mix of UK, US and CA sites, with the opt-in of "pages from the UK"

I think the latter makes more sense for the user.

It would be interesting to hear what members think of other non-UK regional MSN SERPS.

It makes no sense from a user perspective, and the sooner people get that into their heads, the sooner the challenges of dealing with an engine that chooses to serve up results based on a criteria other than quality can be addressed.

Currently quality of results is an afterthought at MSN, something in the backseat while behind the wheel is the lithium-addicted driver of "where a server is located". This is not just aggressively anti-user, it could even be prima facie evidence that MSN shouldn't be called an Internet "search engine". It doesn't "search". It doesn't look beyond a restricted pool.

In a way it is like AOL. You aren't on the Internet. In MSN's case, you are restricted to what MSN decides the Internet is for you. That's offensive big-brotherish, but more of concern here is it contributes to results that would embarrass a child, let alone a megabillion corporation.

If they weren't inept at figuring out what sites qualify as as a "uk" one for example, then having a radio button to restrict searches would make some sense, but as it is their flat out horrible location discernment would make even that a joke.

I've had a real hard time with MSN over the past year. Really, really hard time.

I've been doing this forever, use only white hat techniques on very spider-friendly pages, yet since MSN Search launched as a separate engine, I haven't been able to get past #40.

Until now. For one EXTREMELY competitive term for which index.html ranks in the top ten on Google I am now in the top ten on MSN. Seemingly overnight. Hurray!

Internal pages are not performing as well, but I've seen improvement across the board, just not quite as dramatic. At the very least, they're now all in the index, most at #5 or higher for specific 2-3 word phrases.

And to those who complain about the quality of the serps: I am talking about a high-quality-content driven site. So some kudos to MSN along with all the whining. (Though I do not envy those who find themselves pushed out by scrapers and link spammers and other such miscreants).

Steve Jobs will always be the smarter one:-)

All of the other sites/pages on the 1st and 2nd page results do not have fresh tags. Fresh tags seem to have an oppisite effect if you are already ranking well which does not make sense to me.

I have seen this happen today with one of my sites, but put it down to changes I made on-page.

Did you make any changes to the site you are talking about?

Surely excluding UK hosted .com domains can't be a satisfactory way of implementing geo-targeted results for the UK.

I added one internal Javascript link from the home page from the last cache of 6/14 to the current 6/28.

This can not be the reason I would drop in rank 28 places.

This is the same behavior they were doing in the last algo to several other sites as well as mine in my nich. Only in the last algo after the first two weeks at ranking in the top five for my major keywords I dropped to page 3 and stayed threre for about 3 months then droped to page 5 and 6 until this update. Other sites would drop to page 2 and 3 but recover to page 1 within a couple of weeks.

I am just hoping that the freshness of the cache has not allowed the page process through the algo fully yet. So either I will come back to the first page or I have lost rank like the first time.

They should call this yo yo ranking -either yo in or yo out-

I just took a look at my keyword tag (something I haven't paid much attention to for a while). I will shorten it to just a very few select words.

Is your site a .com or country domain?

i wouldn't worry much if that type of shuffle is happening. just keep building your site and do some related partnering. i'm sure there's some techs at msnnnn working on spam filters right now? they're pretty new still for sure.

My site is .com.

This is a very clean site with all-white seo, clean title / meta tags and lots of content already indexed. It had been doing very well until yesterday.

If I can recall this happened some time last month, then the MSN SERPs changed and we were listed top 10 again.

Do you guys think this is just some tinkering?

I hope that things with MSN do settle down ... I guess the best thing to do is take SuddenlySara's advice and knuckle down to some more hard work with an eye to the mid / long term.

Sticking to Google and if im still struggling for what i want will use Yahoo.

Cant see any point in using MSN now the results are messed up. Im just amazed that they cant see how bad the results are themselves.

They even think they have improved the search! - Amazing.

Some of this MSN bashing is going a little far.

Overall it is a very useful engine and it shows great recent sites/content.

There is hardly any pretense even to value anuthing except blog links and keyword domain or subdomain.

Pathetic.

It's all MSN now and Inktomi is gone.
And it's all bad.

Vin