Google 1, MSN 0

If you go by these results

[kiwi webmaster]

I took a sentence from a webmasterworld posting (Jan 10)
"Does this mean that the searchers will see the results that currently are in Beta?" and searched it on Google and MSN (without the quotes).

Results:

Google found the page and listed it at number 1.
MSN found the page and listed it at number 3.
Place quotes around the search and MSN gets it right.

MSN is improving... but it still has some keyword proximity issues.

[inbound]

That's hardly enough to mark it 1:0

Are you saying that the default should be to search for proximity? What about the spammy directories that put un-natural terms together to stuff in combinations.

If proximity was the overiding factor then people loong for 'service location' would get loads of rubbish... Oh yeah, in Google you do.

I do think that proximity has it's place but the SEs have to get better at discerning meaning before they can sort out what words go together naturally, then you have another processing overhead to consider if you are going to try and tackle the problem.

[kiwi webmaster]

You make some good points there.

However, there is only one page that has the exact same text on it - google acknowledges it by placing it at number 1.
Why does MSN put it at number 3 when it is clearly the only page I am looking for?

[b0rdslide]

If you're in the UK you don't see the webmaster world page anywhere until the 3rd page.

Kev

[Nikke]

If you're in the UK you don't see the webmaster world page anywhere until the 3rd page.

Now this is the real problem mith MSN Search. If you try that search from Sweden you have to really look for the ww post.

The reason is that MSN Search weights in physical hosting location in the results. A site in English, with lots of good links from the US and UK will never rank good on search.msn.com or search.msn.co.uk even if it is top rated on search.msn.se

Likewhise. UK based businesses who have opted for hosting in the US will have a hard time ranking in their own market.

And this is basically why Google is still on top. Let locality show on local searches, not on global.

[inbound]

My experience with a UK site hosted in Germany (will be moving) is that being #3 for the generic (single word) term on MSN.co.uk out of 1,500,000 matches shows it hasn't hampered that site. We are also #7 for the plural of the generic out of 1,350,000

I know there are sites that appear to be doing badly for being hosted elsewhere but I'd say it's much more complicated than just server location.