MeditationMan - 12:49 am on Apr 18, 2003 (gmt 0)

If your site is in the Looksmart directory, then it will show up in the MSN search results before the Inktomi listings.

Ah, so MSN prioritizes Looksmart sites? That's the kind of thing I was wondering.

So, as you might already know, submitting your site to Inktomi won't improve your position in MSN for your main keyword. It might improve your postion for other keywords/key phrases.

Actually, I didn't know that, but it's exactly the information I was after, so thanks! My other main key phrase is a no-go. I'm number 17 and almost all the top 15 places are taken up by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bizrate pages.

You might want to do a MSN search for other possible keywords that you'd like to rank well for. Check to see how many Looksmart directory listings are in the search results. If you find that there are only a few, this is obviously a good sign - assuming that you can optimize your home page (or another page) for that keyword/phrase.

Well, my only other kinda-commercial key phrase has me placed at #4, so unless there's some optimization I can do on my existing pages to bring me higher in MSN it looks like there's no point submitting to Inktomi at all.

Any suggestions for MSN optimization? Google is all I know as far as optimization goes, and even that's a mystery!