MSN Switches Back to Partial Matching

1st MSN used partial, then exact, now partial again..

[egomaniac]

Recently I noticed a huge drop in the number of "directory results" for MSN searches. Many of us may have assumed that this was due to L$ listings being pulled. What actually happened was that MSN changed its use of L$ data to exact matching on searches.

Read more on that here: Looksmart Algo Changes & MSN Results [webmasterworld.com]

Now today I ran a search on MSN and saw a huge number of directory results (i.e. L$ results). I ran a couple of searches and sure enough MSN is doing partial matching again.

Crazy.

[skibum]

That looks to be the case. Under partial matching they want 30K+/month from us. Under exact matching they wanted about 5-6k. With partial matching, lots of that traffic is garbage.

[egomaniac]

With the combination of people not paying for or pulling L$ listings and MSN going to exact matching, the MSN results were very thin on decent content. Now there's more content (not necessarily better, but more). That's my guess as to why they may have done this.

[tedster]

> With partial matching, lots of that traffic is garbage.

I'm running into the same thing. It looks to me like it's opportunistic rather than helpful.

[egomaniac]

MSN is using exact matching in searches again.

Do a search today on MSN, and you'll get a small number of L$ directory results because MSN is using Exact matching again.

I wonder what is up with this switching back and forth?

[skibum]

It seems like it's going back and forth. I"m seeing partial again at the moment. Tough to make a recomendation on what exactly to do. One minute a site will show up high in the directory results, the next it won't show up cause it seems to go back to partial, and the usual fluctuations in Ink are bumping some sites all over the place.

[Laisha]

Tough to make a recomendation on what exactly to do.

You know, it's difficult not to believe that is by design...

[skibum]

Exactly. Every time it would be a good time for a client to modify a description and change keywords, the ranking algo changes in such a way the change would do no good.