Looksmart back on MSN?

West Coast US... seeing looksmart backfills again

[Thanasus]

I saw my MSN traffic drop and noticed that MSN.com is backfilling with looksmart result again!

[caveman]

I'm presently seeing both sets of SERP's just by hitting refresh. More evidence that they are doing testing, I would think.

[afterburner]

Caveman,
I am seeing the same thing you just explained, web directory first then web pages after hitting refresh! What in the world is going on?

[caveman]

Best I can offer is a pure guess. When they were flipping the switch every other day or so, it seemed odd, but what is happening today looks a lot like an A/B test.

We don't know if, or how, this is related to negotiations that may be going on...

The INK SERP's look similar to pre-Florida G**gle (a good thing in my view), whereas the LS SERP's looks more like post-Florida G**gle. But that observation is based on fewer than 20 categories. Results may differ greatly from one user to the next. :-)

[minnapple]

Web Directory Listings are gone again.
Hope it is sticky
M i n n a p p l e

[caveman]

Oy...back to LS this morning...at least where I am. It had been about a week straight of INK.

[Jon_King]

All Looksmart in the Midwest US as of 9:00 pm...

[webvisitor]

In California also.
In the beta as well from directory.
Clients are being advised to stick with L$ until they no longer show up in the results.
Gates may decide that L$ isn't as bad as the SEO,SEM community think they are. Human editing may still have a place and who wouldn't put their clients sites in MSN in any case?

[kevin1023]

Here in SF, seeing L$ as well. The web directory, then ink results buried.

[caveman]

Problem is, the L$ dir in its current form is a disaster. Some sites have managed to get hundreds of listings in there, aka, spam.

Plus, let us not forget that now, L$ is also PFI/PPC.

At least INK works from a spider fed index, albeit modified by paid inclusion (which affects which pages of a site appear, but not so much which sites).

Has anyone ever said, "Oh, I use L$ when I want quality search results"?

[caveman]

They're baaaaa....aaaaaack.

INK results that is...LS gone again for the moment.

Maybe the feed from LS just breaks every once in a while...and when MS fixes it, the LS dir results pop back in above the INK SERP's.

;-)

[wiskur]

Just noticed something unusual.
I have both a Mac and a Windows computer in front of me. Using the same version of IE explorer, I notice I am getting different results on both machines.
The PC I am getting Ink results. For the same term, I keep getting LS results on the Mac.
I am located in the Midwest.
Strange that they would have different results showing up for different platforms. I keep refreshing but it is staying the same.
Hopefully this ends soon.

[steveb]

[search.msn.com...]

I've had this page bookmarked for months, but now am noticing that it suggests submitting to Looksmart to get into MSN Search. Has that always been there?

Big difference between if it has always been there and should be deleted, and if it was recently added.

[caveman]

Just noticed a flash of LS back in MSN a few minutes ago. Hope they finalize this soon.

[tosho]

Well, it looks browser based too. Mozilla shows the old type of SERPs with LS, IE shows something completely different, without LS, but without Ink too. In the latter case, everything is tracked by g.msn.com link. No ink content, at least no PFI stuff.
Btw, if you look at the msn logo, for me it says "beta" in IE, and no beta in Mozilla. The beta is shown no matter if you use the beta search url or the other one.

[webvisitor]

Still there---but it has been 5 minutes since I checked.
For over a week the L$ directory results have been in use. This is no longer just a Monday phenomenon so it seems.
Can anyone explain why MSN now accepts Yahoomi feeds that even Yahoo puts down the page?
L$ conversions are still nice. We need some confirmation that this will continue.
Anyone else?