MSN Algo update

MSN goes live now!

[SuddenlySara]

What do you think? Is this the MSN engine now?

[vincentg]

Well my site dropped to almost nada from them since they now starting using IE search.

It's all MSN now and Inktomi is gone.
And it's all bad.

Vin

[Johan007]

I think all UK websites should ovoid using the dot con’s unless they want a USA presence. My own company would kill me if I suggested they change from dot con to dot co UK after spending so much on their brand, but I do like the idea of all UK companies doing it. Google has a few USA sites in the UK SERPS and this would be worse if UK bandwidth costs come down because currently I guess they are 20 times more expensive.

[andy_boyd]

MSNbot was all over my site on the 2nd, it took every page. What was surprising about this was that MSNbot actually spidered the content within www.example.com/dir/ ... this is the first time it has happened on this domain. The new content they took on the 2nd is already ranking and bringing in traffic.

Because of this I do have *some* hope that my homepage will rise from it's current position at no. 51 and gain a foothold in the to 10. Any tips on what I should do to push it back up?

[edited by: Receptional at 11:07 am (utc) on July 4, 2005]
[edit reason] Please use example.com when giving examples [/edit]

[newwebster]

MSN has no respect for original authority sites. This algo is just as week as the last in determining this. It lacks the ability to rank authority sites where they should be. OK, maybe I am too Google minded or something here. However, as an example of what I am talking about, just type in a well known hot black beverage that people drink every morning and some people like me drink all day and do a search on all three engines. A well know business appears at 1 on Google and 2 on Yahoo basically as they should since they are a respected industry leader in their field. Where does MSN put them...all the way back on page 3.

I am not saying that all of the results in front of the well known business are not relevant as a matter of fact they are very relevant, what I am saying here is MSN does not use link analysis of any kind to determine how pages should be ranked. This is a major flaw and will open the doors up for spam and junk pages which is already starting to happen. My niche is a relevantly non spamy niche on Yahoo and Google, but MSN is finding junk pages that would never make any headway at all in Google or Yahoo and getting great placement in their serps. This just makes my head shake

[Garya]

Maybe MSN wants the larger sites or more established one to pay to advertise to get higher up. I see no reason to have such bad results unless you want it that way. I am not complaining about my websites as I am on the first page for all my keywords. Funny thing is they are the wrong sites for those KW. My older sites and mor established ones are on the 2nd or 3rd page and my new sites 5 or 6 pages are on the first page.

[RichTC]

Well as far as i can see the search engine is a mess, for what ever reason its decided to drop a number of our pages from its index now!.

We operate a well respected UK site, rich in content with over 200,000 pages that ranks well in Google and Yahoo.

We only had 1600 pages indexed anyway in MSN but now its been reduced to only 500!.

Also, it has taken out most dynamic pages and favours static pages.

It likes it even more if its keyword-keyword-keyword.com in the domain name. The results currently imo are in a mess.

Frankly, thank god we have an alternative. The results for the sectors i see are not remotely in line with the search term

[maswee]

hi there
my website was showing pretty well on msn for all relevant phrases but it disappeared all of sudden last week. Any comments how tog et lost rankings.

[Johan007]

Maybe MSN wants the larger sites or more established one to pay to advertise to get higher up.

It does not work like that. MSN like all Search Engines needs the best results to achieve success. Many people get more traffic from Googles dot co dot uk than both the MSN sites put together because MSN sucks… ask Jeeves suck… they all suck.

[petehall]

MSN sucks… ask Jeeves suck… they all suck.

Before this recent update I happen to think MSN were doing really well in terms of their results.

[Fritzms]

I run all the SEO for a large hi traffic web site in the UK, for our chosen keywords we were either position 1 or 2 consistantly before the last update for our .com url. Now all of a sudden our .com has vanished BUT out .co.uk listing that appears nowhere in all the other search engines is suddenly top 10? IT looks like even though we have UK hosting MSN is favouring .co.uk urls over .coms
Come on MSN get your act together and decide what way you are going to go, as we were starting to see a break of the Google stranglehold for searches, but you have played back into their hands

[msndude]

Thanks for all of the feedback. It looks like there is a strong contigency of folks from the UK on here!

Based on this feedback we did some investigation into how we are determining what is a page from the UK and we discovered some issues. I will update this thread with more information once it is available, however, I wanted folks to know that we are on top of this.

- msndude (msd)

[wordy]

Thanks for posting, msndude

Appreciate you taking a look.

[ugnius]

I got hit by this msn update too. After being in top3 since the start for lots of keywords.
now I even can see SPAM in results I monitor. various redirects, low level content.
I think that this recent update ruined MSN. It was better before, not because I lost rankings, just because I see more Spam and Crap content now.

[Easy_Coder]

Ugh... no likey!

I got my clock cleaned on this update. Lost over 1000 (white hat) positions on 100 keywords.

[Easy_Coder]

I just noticed a #1 result for a 2 term phrase that does not even contain either word in the key phrase on the subsequent page or cached version. I couldn't even get a partial match. How's that relevancy! There has to be something wrong with this index.

[rover]

In my field I notice that a popular search phrase tried on MSN includes no less than 5 listings for the same company's domain and sub-domains within the first 15 positions.

Fully, one third of the first 15 listings are for one company and basically one large site.

I don't think the company is trying to manipulate this, I think MSN just isn't able to handle the results very well.

Seems a bit out of control to me...

[rover]

Just one more that I noticed on MSN results. I tried a different search phrase, and this same company at widgets.com has 4 out of the first 10 search returns. This is all for the same domain and its sub-domains:

#1 widgets.com

#4 blue.widgets.com
-sub listing: bluish.widgets.com

#7 red.widgets.com

#10 green.widgets.com

It's amazing to me that 40% (actually more with the one sub listing) of the first page of results is all from the same company and the same large site that uses sub-domains.

[Shurik]

Msndude, comment from the States. I'm generally happy with the results in my field except that you managed to index some sites w/ and w/o www. As a result they may appear multiple times at disjoined positions per search term once with www and once without www. I don't think it was the case before. You may want to look into it too.

[steveb]

"we did some investigation into how we are determining what is a page from the UK"

Next do some investigation to determine what is a random generated text, spurious subdomain, piece of junk.

Sadly it appears MSN still doesn't get that their quality-last philosophy dooms them.

[StephenBauer]

(no, not the same "steveb" as above)

Yeah, it is odd the low quality of most results. I have seen a few improvements but a higher percentage of results I monitor (85% or so) are just plain junky. I wish I had a black hat site to benefit from these new MSN results.

Me likey the pre-6/21 results better.

"Bring...it...back, bring...it...back,
bring it back to me..." - Moloko

[Rollo]

I launched a new site and have to say that MSN is looking pretty good actually. With all the CMS navigation thrown in, it debuted with about 10,000 pages of original content making it the biggest (and I like to think the best) in its area. There are about 5 significant competator sites and after only a month the home page is up in the top 6 (though only about 10% of the pages have been indexed). Yahoo has yet to index a page beyond the homepage and while Google has all 10,000 plus pages indexed, the site is nowhere to be found in the Google SERPS. MSN gets points for both speed and having the freshest SERPS this time around.

[Receptional]

As This thread is now very long and nearly a long way into the update that it refers to any chance people can try to start new threads? We have plenty of space in this forum for all :)

[sachac]

I have five websites, targeting the five best keyowrds in my industy. All are doing phenomenally well.

keyword 1 #3 11.8 million results
keyword 2 #1 8.8 million results
keyphrase 1 #1 0.9 million results
keyphrase 2 #1 0.9 million results
keyphrase 3 #1 0.8 million results

Granted, my sites are also doing well in the other SE's. However both G and Y have issues. My main site is nowhere in Y, because of an inherited Ink penalty while another is lost in the Google sandbox. With MSN however, we have no issues whatsoever. All the sites are fully indexed and internal pages rank well for targeted key words and phrases.

It seems to me that good old fashioned seo is working quite well with MSN. If I had the same success with G and Y, I am sure I could easily double my traffic.

[Dorian]

As This thread is now very long and nearly a long way into the update that it refers to any chance people can try to start new threads? We have plenty of space in this forum for all :)

I tried it Receptional, but it was locked.

One day I intend to start a competing forum where there's total freedom of expression.

[Dorian]

I'd like to offer an apology an a retraction of my last message. It was a misunderstanding on my behalf.

[Receptional]

LOL - That's OK Dorian. If it was locked, it wasn't by me... Must have been a technical thing.

I think you got side swiped on the new thread. I'm with you - after 20 pages I kinda get blurry eyed. But we're a new forum in here... we'll find a balance that suits most people.

I'm not dictating a new thread - just suggesting. Certainly, the web already tried total freedom of expression, but it didn't quite meet up to the Utopia it so promised! :)

[Clint]

Has anyone checked MSN the last couple of days? Horrifying. I'm PAGES back now, replaced with sites that violate MSN's own TOS for SE inclusions, and sites having NOTHING to do with the searches! Please comment MSNdude.

[JaySmith]

Very ontopic and relevent sites listing in top 10 for keywords I monitor... I know it's a baby search engine but it's really starting to mature and is starting to produce good results.

[HRoth]

My site is number one or in the top five for many of my keywords in Google, Yahoo, and a number of other search engines. This was also the case with MSN, but as of last weekend, my site was removed from MSN entirely. I really wonder exactly what sort of "black-hat" tactics I could allegedly be using on my site that none of the other engines have noticed.

[AffiliateDreamer]

are site wide links not working as well in MSN with this new alg?