My Website Position dropped suddenly in MSN

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My Website Position dropped suddenly in MSN

MSN Ranking dropped

ramachandra

11:53 am on May 23, 2005 (gmt 0)

Hi friends,

Till last week my website was #20 position in msn search today it has been dropped to #40 position. We have made little changes as per SEO.

Can anybody help me in finding why this is happening what might be the reason.

Garya

6:19 pm on Jun 20, 2005 (gmt 0)

just reviewed the top 2 site for a very competitive keyword. They both don't have the keyword on there home page, or tags. Do you think its some kind of over optimization filter.

Garya

6:19 pm on Jun 20, 2005 (gmt 0)

just reviewed the top 2 site for a very competitive keyword. They both don't have the keyword on there home page, or tags. Do you think its some kind of over optimization filter.

Clint

7:28 pm on Jun 20, 2005 (gmt 0)

Here we go again. First Google and the Bourbon crap, now MSN! I haven't read the posts here but I will, here's my 2 cents. Comments PLEASE.

A few days ago I posted something odd was happening on MSN (commented on it in the Google thread), but it went away and one of my sites was back on top. I just checked today, and that site is GONE, can't find it anywhere.

When I now do a [search.msn.com...] , instead of the index page showing FIRST, and showing as "MyDomain.com", the index page now shows LAST, and it's shown as: "MyDomain.com/index.html", note the "index.html" now on the end. That has got to have something to do with it since when I do that command with my other sites, the index page shows up FIRST, plus it does not have the "index.html" on the end!

The **ONLY** thing I changed on the page was at the extreme top of the HTML code. It WAS:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

and I change that to:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html lang="en">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

Now how the hell could that have caused my site to PLUMMET into oblivion? I know that is wrong, but I don't see how that could have caused this. That area was changed minutes ago to:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
[space]"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

and the htaccess file now has the content-type tag.

The only other thing I did was to the htaccess file where I did the 301 redirect from the non-www version to the www version (thanks to Google issues).

Can anyone tell me if either of these caused it? I don't think it's the 301 of the non-www since I did that to my main site and it is still the same in MSN.
Thanks.

onlineshrine

7:59 pm on Jun 20, 2005 (gmt 0)

I'd give it a few days. I noticed the pages on my site that dropped out are not available through a site:www.mysite.com search ... I think the latest index just forgot about them for some reason. I've had this happen on a small scale in the past with one or two pages. This time it happened with a bunch, but a bunch of other pages are ranking well. I think in my case at least I just need patience and the problem may fix itself within a few days if the past is any indication.

Clint

8:50 pm on Jun 20, 2005 (gmt 0)

I just noticed something else horrifying in addition to the MSN info I just posted. I've been dropped in Yahoo as well for many search phrases! Not only is that one site I was referring to above gone for all search phrases where it was FIRST in some cases on MSN, but my main site has also disappeared for some (but not all) search phrases in MSN as well, and both sites also dropped or gone from Yahoo for many phrases! I'm wondering of all this crap we've been doing to appease the G bot (like the 301 redirect), is screwing us in Y and MSN?!

monsterhair

11:19 pm on Jun 20, 2005 (gmt 0)

I have enjoyed to listing on MSN for about a year this week most my internal pages were dumped.

Clint

9:46 am on Jun 21, 2005 (gmt 0)

Has anyone contacted MSN on this? Searched other forums for this issue? I've contacted them but it was only yesterday, and I haven't had time yet to search other forums (due to Google fiasco).

ramachandra

10:21 am on Jun 21, 2005 (gmt 0)

Hello Clint,

You mean to say making 301 redirect and absolute linking will effect ranking in msn and yahoo?

Clint

1:52 pm on Jun 21, 2005 (gmt 0)

Ramachandra, I don't know about absolute and relative linking, I didn't mention it and I've always used relative links ( /whatever/name.html) at my sites....

The only other thing I did was to the htaccess file where I did the 301 redirect from the non-www version to the www version (thanks to Google issues).

Can anyone tell me if either of these caused it? I don't think it's the 301 of the non-www since I did that to my main site and it is still the same in MSN.

From the looks of that, it appears that the 301 redirect from the non-www version to the www version didn't cause it since my main site is the same in MSN, and I did the 301 to it as well. Give me a few minutes to check my keywords again to be sure.

I'm wondering if something sinister isn't taking place here because in place where I USED to be 4 days ago, are NEW WEBSITES I've never before seen in my place. It's like they did something to me to knock me out of the MSN SERP's! What could that have been? I see one of the websites have more than a dozen DUPLICATE PAGES with only the title tags changed on each of them! Plus they are made to appear as though they are cover pages, with "click to enter" on each of them, but if you scroll down you'll see the duplicate pages! "Click to enter" goes to a totally different domain! Well, I guess I have to do that now!

Clint

2:43 pm on Jun 21, 2005 (gmt 0)

Ok I ran the keyword checks for my MAIN domain that I said was unaffected and it appears overall about the same. Some key phrases I watch have RISEN, most the same, and 2 or 3 I've fallen a spot or two. So, going from this, I'd have to say the 301 redirect was NOT the cause of my other domain getting trashed and it apparently(?) was what I mentioned in my message #33 about those tags at the top of the page above the <html> tag. Can anyone comment on that please as to how those lines could have caused this site to get removed from MSN?

Clint

6:00 pm on Jun 21, 2005 (gmt 0)

Something very strange is going on with MSN.

For the past few hours I've been checking dozens and dozens of my monitored key phrases in it on all my sites. My site that I previously mentioned is STILL GONE, removed from it. But 3 of my other sites were GONE, nowhere to be found, seconds later they are all 1st on the 1st page. This happened just after I submitted them again! It's like the MSN bot got "jolted" into thinking again. There are NO "sponsored results" up at the top of the page anymore, and there WERE minutes earlier!

StephenBauer

8:27 pm on Jun 21, 2005 (gmt 0)

I noticed their spidering frequency drop off the last few days (only hundreds of pages per day instead of thousands). I am down a little bit in overall page count in their engine too.

outland88

11:42 pm on Jun 21, 2005 (gmt 0)

I've noticed the scrapers are vanishing right and left in my areas of MSN. Time for Yahoo to do the same.

BillyS

12:59 am on Jun 22, 2005 (gmt 0)

I've noticed an increase in traffic from MSN over the past two days. Comes at a great time being as Yahoo just dumped the site for no apparent reason.

ramachandra

7:38 am on Jun 22, 2005 (gmt 0)

Today two of my kw are doing well and are on 3rd and 6th position, previously it was on 3rd and 5th page but I am not able to see change in rank for main kw which is on 4th page since 3 week.

Any ideas to improve ranking for my main kw.

thanks

StephenBauer

5:29 pm on Jun 22, 2005 (gmt 0)

My overall page count in MSNSearch dropped suddenly yesterday (from about 8K pages to about 2K). I am at a level now as I was about two weeks ago or so.

I think the big three are working together on screwing everyone lately! ;)

unreviewed

6:26 pm on Jun 22, 2005 (gmt 0)

Over at MSN's Blog they just recently posted that they're using a new technology to rank results, call "RankNet", based on neural network technology.

[blogs.msdn.com...]

brokenbricks

8:42 pm on Jun 22, 2005 (gmt 0)

I went from page 1 to 4.

BillyS

12:46 am on Jun 23, 2005 (gmt 0)

Interesting concept. Based on my experience with neural networks the concept uses adaptive learning. The relationships can get pretty complex and is very iterative.

This might mean more frequent changes in ranking as the network attempts to refine the results and tweaks are made.

Whatever the change, it likes my site. I'm getting nearly as many referrals from MSN as Google.

Clint

12:06 pm on Jun 23, 2005 (gmt 0)

Thank God, my site that was removed started to crawl back day before yesterday, and is back to today to not only previous results, but better in some search phrases.

I got a reply back from MSN today and they said: "It looks like this was a recrawl timing issue." I don't really know if what I did caused it (msg #33), or if it was something on their end.

ramachandra

2:32 pm on Jun 23, 2005 (gmt 0)

Hey, what actually going on in msn. My site postion for main kw was first on 4th page then dropped to 21st page, 3 days later again came back to 4th page, today again suddenly dropped to 18th page. I have not changed anything to the website pages.

MSN keeps on jumping the position for my kw.

I am little bit confused, please help me out.

Thanks

Clint

4:04 pm on Jun 23, 2005 (gmt 0)

Ramachandra are you reading these threads? ;) This one right here, plus another one: [webmasterworld.com...]
There's nothing anyone can do since they are obviously in an update (God forbid) like Google has done or is doing.

You may try and email them at msnbot[at]microsoft.com if things don't change in a few days. In my case, I can't honestly say if they didn't do anything to get me back. As I indicated earlier, they replied to my email and the next day I was back, but they said it was a "recrawl timing issue". If they did do anything to help, they probably wouldn't have admitted it.

Clint

3:19 am on Jun 24, 2005 (gmt 0)

FYI:
"Editor's Note: Recently, MSN Search announced they would be integrating a new method for determining result relevance. In fact, the developers said they were obsessed with providing the most relevant results they can. Whenever a new algorithm is introduced, it changes how sites get ranked. Have any of you noticed anything different about MSN Search since they introduced the Neural Net?"

[edited by: Receptional at 7:45 am (utc) on July 14, 2005]
[edit reason] No unlinked or spelled-out URLs, please [/edit]

ramachandra

1:17 pm on Jun 27, 2005 (gmt 0)

Thanks Clint for the Reply,

Today, I see some good changes in SERPs for some of my kw. I feel things are going well right now, I will wait see for some more time. What you guys suggest?

Thanks

Clint

1:30 pm on Jun 27, 2005 (gmt 0)

Like Google, I suggest nothing. ;) If they are indeed screwing around with their index, changing things on our end can only confuse us. Unless of course someone from MSN can tell us something, but they'll probably remain silent and watch everyone aimlessly scurry about as Google did--IS DOING, on the Google thread.

One of my sites got TOTALLY REMOVED from the MSN index! 1st on the 1st page two days ago, yesterday, GONE. They key phrases I monitor for my other sites remain unchanged.

stroudtx

4:20 pm on Jul 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

MSN for us has now been our only source of natural traffic. We are now #1 on our main keyword children's boutique. They only thing I did was run Web CEO and used some of it's advice as to how to optimize our home page. I've also added some incoming links.

Mike

Scott_F

4:53 pm on Jul 1, 2005 (gmt 0)

I read about a lot of people's positioning dropped, but in the last two weeks, my site totally, no longer there, even with the "site:" command, dropped from MSN and Yahoo.

I really don't understand. The only place I see it in Yahoo, is the directory listing.

Clint

6:19 pm on Jul 8, 2005 (gmt 0)

Anyone noticing anymore changes in MSN? How is search.msn.com comparing to beta.search.msn.com?

This is strange. Each time I do a search, I get different results seconds apart! This is with BOTH of their search sites!

jakegotmail

9:21 pm on Jul 9, 2005 (gmt 0)

we dropped like a rock today in MSN

Clint

7:52 am on Jul 10, 2005 (gmt 0)

Which site, the Beta or current? I've never seen so much SPAM and BS in my life! They have their heads up their ***es almost as bad as google! "Search engine bait" pages everywhere I look! Well, it's time for me to go blackhat, being legit only gets you HURT.

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