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My email to Inktomi:
I discovered today that on the MSN directory (USA version) there is only one option for submitting a site into their directory... which was LookSmart.
It appears MSN is looking for more cash flow. No mention of hint of Inktomi appears anywhere....
If this is just a "test marketing" of something new... I guess we will see what happens. If not.. it would be misleading for your website to reflect that paid inclusion through Inktomi results in a paid inclusion into MSN.. at least in the USA.
This was the response I received:
MSN currently uses Looksmart for listings under "Web Directories". MSN uses Inktomi for listings under "Web Pages" which follows "Web Directories" in a search result.
-----end
Boy, what a terrific, revealing response from the friendly folks at Inktomi. I guess there is no reason to keep submitting sites to Inktomi. Ironically, Inktomi is behaving "LookSmart-ish" in that they are not announcing anything... just keep collecting fees... until "much later."
>>>>>I guess this means their spider is ready<<<<<<<
Maybe this is the answer.
(re: 10-14 day refresh cycle)...do you have a URL for this, please?
From the Inktomi web site [inktomi.com].
Freshness
Index freshness is a reflection of the frequency of updates to the search index. Fresher results mean more effective searches, reflecting the most recent changes, and fewer dead links. Inktomi Web Search refreshes the entire index every 10-14 days and paid inclusion content every 48 hours.
I submitted a page to inktomi through PT in the middle of September. Shortly after I was receiving traffic from MSN until then end of the month and then it all vanished at the start of October (no msn referrals as of 10/1).
Before October started, my rankings on MSN and pure inktomi were the same and then the MSN ones just dropped (i.e. for one keyword I went from #1 down to #60 and now down to #120) but my rankings are basically still the same on pure inktomi (i.e. still #1 for that one keyword). The listings below me on pure inktomi still match up with MSN . . . except for me:(. I think it might be that I recently submitted. (Note: my pure inktomi results also match up with MSN India.)
Meanwhile, it looks like the MSN index got bigger, too... most searches today look to return about 15% to 20% more pages than they did five months ago.
My newer sites are sure missing that MSN traffic... Unless Yahoo starts using Ink soon, this may be painful.
ranking well in Pure Search
the URLs are included in MSN (tested using advanced search on my domain only searching for *).
but NO rankings to be seen.
Will be waiting to see what happens here before I submit any more.
It could be that you have an editorial action against your domain at Inktomi. Keyword stuffing, doorway pages, link farms, and other things of that nature cause editorial actions.
And don't think Inktomi wont penalize you if you're on PFI... I learned the hard way :(
-panic
Another, that got crawled for free three weeks ago, gone.
Glad to see I am not the only one or I would be nervous. Looks to be a blip - hope it gets corrected ASAP.
jd
Cheers,
epsrx
MSN is the only reason anybody does PFI inktomi, the main reason at least...
epsrx - can you clarify, please?... what SE are you talking about when you say you rank well with inktomi, but not hotbot... search.positiontech.com? How do you rank with msn.com?
I started PFI in June of this year.
OK ... I got hit also...
How many links on your page?
Have you made any recent changes?
How similar are your pages?
How much original content do you have?
Do you have repetitive content near the top of your page?
Basically it's an affiliate site with 50+ individual product pages. My home and one other page have a fair amount of original content but the product pages have very little. The keywords themselves are repetitive and they are throughout the product pages.
The only significant change I've made to the site in the last 60 days is that I've renamed one page. Both the new and old pages are still in the index although I deleted the old page from my server.
My Title
My Description
www.thelinkingsite.com/shops.php?openlink=51
I’ve asked them to remove the link and they have.
One more thing I do want to add. I don't see any change in my ranking on Pure Inktomi. It's just MSN and Hotbot where I've dropped way down.
On the keywords I checked it looks like MSN (and Hotbot) are displaying Inktomi listings line by line except they are filtering out a small number of entries (based on what criteria, mine could be duplicate content?) and assigning them a lower rank.
I submitted a .info domain last week - now ranking in msn.co.in and pure search, but not msn.co.uk or .com.
A few days later I subitted a .co.uk, which ranks in pure search and now msn.co.uk, but not .com.
Would be intersted to know what's happened with .com sites.
Try a search for "search engine marketing" on MSN.com .co.uk and .au (web page results). Compare those listings to pure INK on PT. Notice the huge differences.
This only started happening to this extent at the beginning of the month - although regional bias was there before.
You can see the same differences when checking on HotBot.com and hotbot.co.uk - geo-targetting is switched on there - as well as on bbc.com
I used HotBot and msn.com to search for my site using certain keywords. I no longer rank in the top results when searching using HotBot or MSN USA. But when I used the Inktomi pure search, I found my site in the top 15!
There got to be some filtering being done by HotBot and MSN...
Cheers,
epsrx
Yes, i have been seeing some huge drops aswell on MSN.com & Hotbot.com, last couple of days and thought it to be the geo-filtering reason, and i did post the same in the thread
[webmasterworld.com...]
But i am not sure whether the geo-filtering is just based on the TLDs or is it also based on the hosting location of the site?
Many Thanks
JNMetkar
Yes, I have noticed this too
...which is poormans geo-targeting to my mind.
Google seem to have it licked with things like their "UK sites only" on google.co.uk, by comparison
[edited by: Adam_C at 10:37 am (utc) on Oct. 9, 2003]
As far as I can tell everything is the same.
Please enlighten us poor USA SEO's as to what exactly is going down.
Ink continually adds fresh new free inclusions, gives you a bite of peach, then a month later let's you fall off the planet to see if you come back to do the PFI. At this point you can either wait it out (I don't know how long it takes) or PFI.
The geo-targetting looks like a new wrinkle- this is the first mention of it in this thread.
But the IP filtering doesn’t seam that accurate. Not all .com's hosted outside the US are affected. A site hosted in Holland has maintained it's positions. Another .com hosted in the UK is also still unaffected.
So is it just more difficult to filter by IP or is there more to this?
