What is About.com's relationship to MSN?

[FunnyGirl]

For a number of search terms for our company I find that About.com results are very prevalent in MSN. How does one become included in the About listings to rank highly in MSN?

[johnnydequino]

The only way to get listed on about.com is Sprinks. You can't get a directory listing on there anymore. Sprinks is terrible in my opinion, don't use them.

jd

[martinibuster]

There is no relationship between them, as far as I know. About is owned by Primedia, a company that owns 120 magazines and tons of other assets. They are huge.

[skibum]

There's a "relationship" between LookSmart and About.com.

About feeds LookSmart feeds MSN for now, About listing show up in MSN.

Old Thread [webmasterworld.com]

[martinibuster]

skibum thanks for that link. There are so many threads around here it's hard to keep track of everything so some of us (ok, me) have to rely on the collective community memory sometimes.

[Jon_King]

Are we to expect the About listings to disappear from MSN after Looksmart is dropped?

[skiguide]

>>Are we to expect the About listings to disappear from MSN after Looksmart is dropped?

Highly unlikely. About also has a relationship with Inktomi, and is spidered quite regularly & thoroughly by them.

About pages have also been prevalent in MSN due to listings via Zeal.

it's true that most of About.com is less of a directory now, and more of a 'content' destination. Your best bet to 'get a listing' is to write to the editor of the particular section that covers your industry/topic, and see if you can offer them any guest articles, interview quotes, products to review, etc, in return for a link/byline within the feature.

Sprinks isn't necessarily a bad option. the ad copy usually shows up in Google Serps, and links may even get spidered. Not to mention that if you target your ads well, you can see some positive ROI.

[martinibuster]

Your best bet to 'get a listing' is to write to the editor of the particular section...

You spilled the beans!

So obvious and quite possibly underutilized. About.com has sent me some very good traffic and best of all is that the effects linger. Possibly one of the best links a site can receive.

[martinibuster]

wrong thread.

[Jon_King]

Hey Martinibuster... your sticky box is full. Delete just one so I can send a note!