Forum Moderators: open
<sidebar>
Alarm bells went off at first, I thought I had lost rank in Google. I check... No, everything is still there. (This travel-related page I'm watching has held slot 2 on MSN forever and has slot 4 on Google since the last update, so I'm going to pronounce them as roughly equivalent for comparison.)
</sidebar>
Usually, this kind of uptick is due to some mass media marketing OR a change on the desktop or browser defaults. I can't find a thing out there, but the recent roll-out of IE6 picques my interest. Has MS pulled a slick move somewhere?
I guess Ink is holding out for me to cough up the cash to get the new pages indexed. Well, we're not making much money on our traffic these days, thanks to the not-com bust, so the Ink index fee is a little hard to justify. If Ink would come up with a big back-to-school 50% discount sale or something like that I might spring for some paid indexing.
"The Web's once common "page not found" errors are themselves going missing, stripped from recent versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer in favor of a search tool provided by--you guessed it--Microsoft."
"But some critics say the feature could be likened to a
land grab on territory that has otherwise been the Antarctica of the Internet. Error pages are called up more than 14 million times a day worldwide via Internet Explorer, according to Microsoft."
"Because Internet Explorer is the most widely used Web browser, critics say the change could unfairly influence competition among search engines on the Internet."
[zdnet.com...]
Maybe. I've had a few of those referrals, but the referral was pretty distinctive, I'm just getting more regular referrals on the key phrase.
Example:
http://auto.search.msn.com/results.asp?cfg=DNSERROR&FORM=DNSERR&v=1&q=www%2Ebad+domain%2Ecom
Still, that might be part (or all) of the boost depending upon what MSN is doing with the suggested links.
<added>
BTW, whether or not this accounts for my increase, that "Page Not Found" maneuver is still a BIG deal. Any publisher who has played with their 404s will confirm the traffic-managing potential there.
Yeah it would be interesting to see a break down of how many people go to the different areas of the new MS404 page. "similar Web addresses" looks like free listings (probably what you saw in your logs) "related Web sites" (aka featured listings) seem to be paid listings. And then there are several links to MSN that probably just add to MSN's overall traffic.....
"that "Page Not Found" maneuver is still a BIG deal"
especially when your talking 14 million times a day...
Just goes to show the power of the dominant web browser.
All you folks that have been keeping an eye on Washington for Big Brother better watch your backside in Redmond.
In its first week on the market, from August 27 to September 3, IE 6 picked up 2.4 percent of global browser user share, exceeding global usage of Netscape 6, which was released late last year...
WebSideStory via PCworld [pcworld.com]
Not me. But, it doesn't hurt that my main site now has the #1 spot if someone has a typo in the url. Truthfully, I think MS would be wasting their edge if they didn't take advantage of it, just as every publisher should work his 404s to his advantage.
>why such partiality
Part of the anti-MS attitude (found just about everywhere) is the converse of the "root for the underdog" mindset. But I think the recent smart tags brouhaha has helped galvanize and sharpen a lot of this resentment by giving everyone, even small developers and publishers, a taste of what's to come.
Although this move by M$ doesn't upset me one bit, I think the opportunity to show MSN paid listings an extra 14 million times a day probably carried as much weight in their decision as making our "browsing experience "more friendly"".
The main difference is that the use of AOL is a drop in the bucket compared to the use of IE.
Agreed, but with the release of WinXP and the beginning of .Net entrenchment there will be a turnaround of another kind. At present there are 30 million paying AOL subscribers versus zippo paying MSN subscribers. In the near future, 100 million corporate IE end users will be locked in to paying MSN for as yet nebulous Web services on a subscription basis. AOL will find itself high and dry with a fast-dwindling subscriber base and no hope of the tide turning in its favor.
My log files show a significant increase in MSN AutoSearch traffic going back to the release of IE5.5's 'Search from the Address Bar' function. This latest tweak might make only a small difference to my traffic but, if there are 14 million 404s out there and MSN snaps them up, they increase their share by that much and other engines and directories lose that much. As in politics and as rc points out, the turnaround is, in fact, 28 million potential searches a day. In other words, it is BIG deal.
The point to this instance of audacity is that Microsoft is covering all its bases (in Redmond and in Washington). It's using others to front its scumware tags and is fast moving in on AOL's media turf. The PC sales slump could worsen but I'll bet Schrodinger’s cat on Microsoft using what should be a bad situation to their advantage and a stranglehold on both subscription computing and Search.
The fact is that Redmond has been surging for several months. Forget the spin doctoring of a couple of vote-seeking congressmen and a senator or two - they know the rules. Microsoft has bludgeoned the developers into submission, it's established the .Net CLR and the use of C#, and it's called in a few favors on Capitol Hill. Win XP will give it the critical mass it needs to roll over whatever opposition is left.
IBM were wise to invest in the grid. At least it's designed to serve Microsoft's long-term interests. They probably figured it made more sense to lick Bill's boots than eat dirt.
The MS-AOL battle is all but over and there'll be no prizes for guessing who's won the war. I see Redmond making merry by Christmas while its competitors sell boxes of matches out in the snow. MS-Yahoogle will be the next round in what is turning out to be a pretty mismatched bout of free-market thuggery. Where the hell is Don King? His hair must be curling at the sight of such potential for carnage and profit.
My concern is that, without competition, we're all fair game. Big Brother is about to turn his eye onto the rest of us...
PostScript, a PageCount FootNote.
Welcome to WMW and the ink forum - and thank you for a very interesting and informative take on what's going to be a touchy subject before too long...
-s-
