Forum Moderators: mack
There is one site that has ranked #1 on all of the above search engines for almost 2 years running. Today, that site is not listed in any MSN Search (beta) results.
I tried for a month to work within the private feedback network provided by MSN Search (beta), and after a month, the results are worse, not better.
I just registered for this forum. It appears that it would be a violation of the agreement that I signed to join this forum to post the links that provide proof of the claims made in the paragraphs above.
And no, this is not a spam site. It is a site that provides news and links about cast members of a popular TV show. It may not be an "important" site, but it has remained popular with fans of the TV show.
Does anyone know of a forum that would allow public posts of links to actual examples of MSN Search (beta)'s failings? Perhaps if the public could weigh in with actual examples of failings, the MSN Search (beta) team would be embarassed into doing a better job. They do not seem to respond using their "normal channels".
There have been plenty of complaints about MSN(beta) already. Some MSN folks are believed to be following at least some of the discussion about them here.
It is not appropriate to post lots of specific details, especially if it would include your site name. The moderators will likely just delete it.
The challenge (and ultimately fun) here is to figure out how to describe your situation and get advice without using the exact search terms or your site name.
Seems funny at first, but it's what makes using this site work, and prevents the whole thing from degenerating into link-seeking spam.
I hope the following is an example of using sufficently general terms that do not point to my specific site.
I wonder if the new MSN Search is suspicious of the graphics and slide shows on the site. There are galleries of thumbnail jpgs, using js to open the full size version of the image. That seems pretty ordinary.
There is also a js slide show I wrote that opens a new full screen window to display a series of large images. Finally, there is a Java engine version of each slide show. I have the Java engine version of the same shows because Java includes bicubic rendering which does a great job rendering large images.
Maybe MSN is suspicious of full screen "kiosk" windows, as it is used by some nefarious types to spoof sites. I don't know how to resolve this if that is an issue, because full screen is clearly the best way to view a slide show. I have a "Close this Window" link on the full screen view.
I have read and re-read the MSN guidelines and cannot find anything there that even hints at any of my above guesses of possible problems. I have all the usual META tags. I cannot find anything I am doing that would not make the site MSN friendly.
In addition, most of the site is just plain old HTML. Those pages are also well covered by the other 6 search engines I mentioned. None of these pages appear in the MSN Search (beta).
It's driving me nuts. :-)
- Text descriptions of the slide shows
- Video clips from the Internet feeds of raw footage edited into the TV show (wmv files)
- Short "headline style" summaries beneath links to other sites that have news and stories related to the show and cast members
- Full text descriptions of the TV show as it was released on DVDs
The rest of the site in plain HTML contains lyrics, posters from concerts we produced in the 80's, and unrelated to any of the rest, a no prize challenge we ran 3 times where the guesses of how high and low a stock index would move in the next 6 months are posted.
This is a non-commercial site that displays no advertising. If I was doing this commercially, I would spring for separate domains for each subject. Instead, my domain name is very neutral, so I can post pages about any subject. Maybe that's the problem. The new MSN may think I am "renting space" to a variety of versions of myself. :-)
site:<my domain name.com> produces 17 results for various primary pages of the site. So, at least I can confirm that the site definitely has been indexed.
However, these pages do not show up at all in keyword searches on MSN Search (beta), while the same pages show up in all the other search engines using the same keyword searches, often as the #1 result.
Odd.
I notice that some other well known (in that circle) sites about the TV show and cast members that appear in other brand SERPs are also not shown in the MSN Search (beta) results.
I know if I was searching for three words, I would expect to see pages listed from the index that contained all three words before I saw pages with 1 or 2 of the words. That is how the other SEs always work, except Google which is not consistent and MSN Beta which seems to consistently ignore pages with all 3 words.
Even when the 3 words are enclosed in double quotes, most of the pages that are in the "site:" results do not appear in the MSN beta search results. Page 1 of the MSN beta search results often contain pages with only 1 or 2 of the 3 words. That seems to be part of the mechanism that bumps off all the other sites about the TV show that also contain the 3 words thoughout their sites.
Other search engines give weight to sites that contain phrases exactly matching all three words, without a user needed to enclose the words in double quotes. The fact that MSN beta does not appear to do this is a real weakness IMO.
It's a summer show, and sometimes the cast members a are wearing their bathing suits. While the show is aired at 8 PM and has never had any complaints from the FCC for content issues, I thought maybe MSN beta had classified the site as adult content. However, turning off the "SafeSearch" filter had no affect, so that must not be it.
It just seems as though my site and other sites related to the TV show are simply black listed from any search results. Very frustrating.
It goes beyond my bad experience with the new engine. When the word spreads (which it will) that the new MSN search engine leaves out 80% of relevant pages for searches, why would anyone bother to use it? By extension why would anyone pay for placement on the SERPs?
