Inktomi results turning up in MSN Japan?

Large jump in MSN Japan traffic appears to...

[whats up skip]

In the last few days we have seen a 5 fold jump in our traffic coming from MSN Japan to our Japanese language site.

Around nine months ago we paid for a submission to Looksmart Japan. We were only ever receiving 5 or so referrals per day. (Major waste of money!)

Two months ago I submitted the same page and one other to the Inktomi. At first the submission system kept reporting errors. Clearly it did not like Japanese, then around a month ago it switched to saying a successful submission. Both pages are in the MSN Japan system, but the second page we submitted does not have a great position.

Any thoughts about what is going on here?

If this is working then it has to be the cheapest way by far to get into MSN Japan.

[bill]

whats up skip you're saying that you paid for pages to get into Inktomi and now those pages are showing up in MSN? Are these pages showing up in goo and TOCC as well?

I was under the impression that MSN uses slightly dated results from goo's Inktomi results. TOCC doesn't take submissions and spiders on its own, but I get the impression its results are more of a 'pure Inktomi SERP' for Japanese results.

If PFI Inktomi results are making it through to MSN that would be good news for a lot of people.

[whats up skip]

Hi Bill,
We are not receiving any traffic from Goo. We just don't seem to be able to get into this one.

Sorry I don't know what TOCC is?

I used "I need hits" to do the submission.

Have a look at "ozlifestyle" and see how it comes up.

It would be interesting to see how a properly optimised page would go in MSN Japan. This could have a major impact on Looksmart in Japan. For around 10% of the price you may recieve 50% or more of the traffic.

We have just made a paid submission to Yahoo Japan for our site, so it will be interesting to see how that goes in comparison.

[whats up skip]

I have been looking into this further. The inktomi submitted page does show up if you search for "ozlifestyle", but if you type in the page title or one of the words from the description it does not come up in the MSN Japan results.

Other pages from our site do show up in the additional results, including pages that have never had a paid submission. Do you know where these addition results in MSN Japan search are coming from?

[bill]

This is odd...you show up #1 with a fresh tag in the TOCC [tocc.co.jp], but don't even show up on goo. TOCC doesn't take submissions, but they do spider on their own. Either the TOCC spider found you, or they got you from the Inktomi feed. I'd tend to lean towards the latter.

So you say it only took two months for this to show up in MSN?

Do you know where these addition results in MSN Japan search are coming from?

Other than Inktomi results, MSN gets LookSmart data as well. Maybe you're seeing some of your old submissions there? Could it be possible that LookSmart is feeding MSN some WiseNut backfill? Interesting...

[daikon]

MSN.co.jp also has in-house editors that compile directory listings. Perhaps one of them might have picked up your site?

[bill]

Would those directory listings show up in the regular MSN SERPs? I thought you had to browse through the directory itself to see those results. I know that related directory categories will show up at the top of searches...

I haven't really bothered with the MSN directory since they stopped taking submissions. I assumed it was a combination of LookSmart/MSN editor work.

whats up skip are your LookSmart listings showing in MSN's directory? If so, are the descriptions you're seeing in the SERPS the same?

[whats up skip]

If you do a search for "ozlifestyle" in MSN Japan we do show up.

The first is the Looksmart listing. This has been there for 8 or 9 months.

The second listing is one from Inktomi (through "I need hits" you can change the URL within the first couple of weeks, I tried this and what do know, multiple listings go in, but only the final page keeps updating.) Now the interesting thing is, this "Melbourne" page does not show up in the MSN Japan results when you do a search for メルボルン - (Melbourne in Japanese) and the title of the page. It does however show up in the additional listing, but it is several pages back.

Conclusion - Inktomi is not supplying the additional traffic.

The key to the increase in the traffic seems to be the results that come after MSN Japan results. I did submit many pages to "Hotbot" and if you check the number of listings for the site in Hotbot (English) it has around 91 of the 160+ pages.

Now I did not submit 90 pages so it must have gone on and indexed the rest of them.

Theory - Hotbot is supplying the additional search results that appear after the MSN Japan results.

[bill]

Conclusion - Inktomi is not supplying the additional traffic.

I'm not sure I agree with that conclusion. Inktomi does supply results for MSN. According to what you've said before, this page was submitted to Inktomi's PFI program and now it shows up in the MSN SERPS. I just don't think the page is optimized enough for it to rank highly for a relatively competitive KW like 'Melbourne'.

Theory - Hotbot is supplying the additional search results that appear after the MSN Japan results.

It may be the case that submissions to HotBot or Goo may have triggered Slurp to eventually get around to your site and get you into the Inktomi index. However, the HotBot AddURL has been gone since earlier this year (see Hotbot AddUrl = 404 [webmasterworld.com]) so I don't think this will be of much use for getting in any longer.

<added>You're probably referring to HotBot UK [hotbot.lycos.co.uk], but again that will just get some form of Slurp to visit you, which is still Inktomi.</added>

[whats up skip]

This time I think I have it!

I happened to re-read today that Wisenut had been bought by Looksmart and they had relaunched the search engine.

This relaunch was due to happen on the 1st of October. The increase in traffic started around 25th of September.

Now I checked how many pages were in the Wisenut index - 51. I then found a couple of pages that were in Hotbot and not in Wisenut. I then did a search on MSN Japan for the keyword for a page and ozlifestyle. Example (アリス・スプリングス ozlifestyle ) or what it would be in English (Alice Springs Ozlifestyle).

NO MATCH - Thus Wisenut is supplying additional results to MSN Japan.

Simply from a business point of view it makes sense. MSN Japan and Looksmart have a relationship. If there were any new relationships then I am sure we would have heard about. Also the timing of the increase in traffic all seems to line up.

[bill]

Thus Wisenut is supplying additional results to MSN Japan.

See message #5 above ;)
That sounds a bit more reasonable.

Now, I'm a bit confused here...you do still have an Inktomi PFI page here in MSN as well, correct? I wasn't looking at an old LookSmart submission was I?

[whats up skip]

I had forgotten about submitting to Wisenut, so I didn't make the initial connnection sorry.

The Inktomi related listing only shows up in the MSN Japan results when you enter "ozlifestyle". When you search it is coming up with the Wisenut results. Only the Looksmart submission can be found in MSN Japan via a search.

Bill you did not end up telling me what TOCC is?

Now, how do we optimise for the "new" Wisenut?

[bill]

OK, so essentially our conclusion here is:
PFI Inktomi results still don't show up in MSN Japan

Bill you did not end up telling me what TOCC is?

TOCC [tocc.co.jp] is Traffic One Communications Corporation, they are the other big search company in Japan that use Inktomi results. They now supply results to FreshEye [fresheye.com] who in turn provide some results to a couple of the bigger portal sites.

TOCC has it's own spider, but does not have an Add URL anywhere. Their spider is a Slurp variant with a UA like:
Mozilla/3.0 (Slurp-TOCC/si; [e-mail];
http://www.inktomi.com/slurp.html)

When I'm looking for a clean Japanese Inktomi result (non-goo), then TOCC is what I generally use.

Now, how do we optimize for the "new" Wisenut?

They probably haven't changed all that much since being purchased by LookSmart. I'd do a search here for some of the old WiseNut threads to get a better idea. Also remember that Lycos Japan is using WiseNut results primarily, so if you have pages ranking well there, you'll also have a chance at doing better on MSN Japan.