makemetop - 4:35 pm on Oct 9, 2003 (gmt 0)

>The more I research, the more clear it becomes that the change is based on time of inclusion in MSN...

Trying to find certainties is extremely difficult and I don't doubt your observations at all. However, I submit pages on an almost daily basis and have noticed no drops on any pages (and I've checked most of my many sites for referral drops), free or PFI, on pure INK or regional MSNs and Hotbots - only on MSN.com and Hotbot.com - apart from where the sites are .coms - they have remained pretty rock-solid in the US but have disappeared over here!

Unfortunately, INK does drop pages regularly and can penalize PFI pages so you drop to the bottom. Trying to sort instances of normal INK shuffling from the overall strategy while trying to understand what is now happening can make the whole process extremely difficult.

Apart from the geo-targetting (for which INK do have a States side algo apparently) for every statement by one observer there is a different observation by others. Something has happened - that is certain. What combination of things has made them happen is slightly more uncertain.