MSN Testing New Look SERPs

[robzilla]

MSN seems to be testing a new layout for their search engine result pages. I've seen it a couple of times now, but when I reload I usually get the old look again.

Not that many changes, but they now finally highlight (bold) the keywords searched for in the title (e.g. if you search for "widgets" and the first result would be "Widgets World" they now display that as "Widgets World" whereas they used to show it like "Widgets World" which, in my opinion, made it look very crowded. The header changed from blue to white/gray-ish. Overall, I think it's an improvement - easier on the eyes.

[MLHmptn]

Also seems to me that an algorithm change has taken place

[SmartMoney]

I agree the algo has changed...my first take is that they have adjusted the weighting on the domain name.

For example if you search for:

smart money

smartmoney.com is in 9 of the top 10 spots and the other one is smart-money.com. It sure wasn't like that yesterday.

That seems really silly to me, will change MSN SEO tactics dramatically if it sticks.

[truezeta]

That's not much of a search result to offer the same website 9 times.

[MLHmptn]

Did MSN go back into PRE-beta?! These results are sick! Huge algo change has happened and it's far worse than any they have had so far. Someone earlier said something about keyword domain names being given less weight in rankings and I can't actually see that happening. MSN..You need to step forward...Not backwards!

[followgreg]

I love the new design, I am sure that more customers will stick on MSN if it was only for this -

Now I have to agree...the new SERP's are not very good, spam is back on, why SE always do stupid things?

[angiolo]

It's not only a new look: it seems a new algo...
I suspect that MSN implemented something similar to Page Rank....

[stinkfoot]

Looks cool .. clean .. no clutter .. I approve personally

Go MSN!

[mfishy]

Huge algo change has happened and it's far worse than any they have had so far.

Yes.

[robzilla]

Oh boy, I hadn't even noticed the algo change. These are by far the worst results I have ever seen. Spam, spam, spam, and some more spam.

[stephenpan]

msn is ridiculous, this algo change in combination with the dmoz description being used has dropped my site from #3 in the results to not even listed. Any idea why they would completely drop my homepage but keep my subsequent pages?

[pmac]

I must say that this is the worst set of results I have ever seen from any major search engine. A huge step backwards.

[randle]

Biggest change in those results in quite some time. Be interesting to see how it shakes out.

[Bilbo123]

The algo appears to have filtered subdomains and spam pages a lot better.

For the searches I ran - the sites with the keyword in the URL were doing the best.

[sugarrae]

>>>easier on the eyes

And I just came in here to post how much it was *hurting* my eyes. Liked the old layout much better.

Too bright, text is too skinny and nothing being bolded means nothing stands out.

Results aside, please, please change that design. Ugh.