MSN Search SERPs Latest Changes: What's Good and What's Bad?

[mfishy]

Never seen such garbled up nonsense, not "spammy" per say, but generally irrelavant and just bizarre. Someone pushed the wrong button over there.

Search for <snip> - 9 of the top 10 is <snip>.com....almost all serps seem to look pretty much this way...url only titles and just poorer than ever.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 7:34 pm (utc) on Feb. 16, 2006]
[edit reason] I bet even <snip> itself has bad results ;) [/edit]

[seoArt]

I'm with you guys. I thought they were bad before, but this is some of the worst trash I've ever seen.

[Garya]

Getting as bad as Google.
At least we still have yahoo.!

[sugarrae]

>>>My first thought was to jump in and do an in depth analysis, however I think that would be time wasted

Yea, that was my thought too. I've seen a ton of spam tumble this update - but I've seen a ton of good sites drop too across the serps I watch. This isn't a spammy update - it's simply a *bad* update. I can't imagine they'd leave it like this for long.

[Garya]

They are giving more weight to domain names and sub domain names.

[Robert Charlton]

Looks like a rollback pending an update to me. - whew - those are some smelly results..

This has got to be it. This really can't be by design.

I'm looking at one serp page that has a url result so long that it breaks the table and pushes the Sponsored Sites down below the "algorithmic" results (there's got to be an algo, right? ;) ).

[Dayo_UK]

>>>> go back to the drawing board and start work first of all on a quality search bot that will at least start deep indexing sites and gathering data.

Exactly - this should be there first aim - the level of deep indexing for a site is pathetic.

>>>> For a 100 page site with the word on every page it will first say "of 853 pages" then you click to the second page and it shows 57 results total.

Always happened and infuriates me too.

If I do a site search for www.domain.com I can see one of my pages with the title - say Red Widgets Limited.... So I think - hmmz how do I do for that term? and search on Red Widgets Limited - that page does not return in the serps but other pages that link to that page do which fair enough sometimes happens in other engines so I click more page from that site - and still the page does not return in the site search - even though I know MSN has it indexed - it is as if it has disappeared!

MSN has been fundamentally wrong for ages.

Things like sitemaps always outranking content pages still occurs - so many things wrong with this SE.

[angiolo]

Ugly serp.

For same searches I found an expired domain ( a seller of domains...).

MSN has a lot of space to improve...

I do no think this serp will last.....
I do not think they are masochist.

[crobb305]

steveb, I am stickying you with an example search phrase which shows how horrible the subdomain spam is in my industry. It is a popular phrase used by people looking for certain financial services.

C

[ramachandra]

If I search for some kw, I am seeing results with sites kw in domain name.

Totally Flop Update, very bad...

[Liane]

"Be constructive" ... but my Dad always said if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all!

OK, they are faster than the other two to index pages! :)

[zeus]

for our main keyword, with 9mill results, it comes as
1. site has nothing to do with the topic, it got the keyword in title and domain, but it has nothing to do with the keyword
2. free hosting site, very amatur
3. a real site (on topic)
4. affiliate link page
5. affilate link page
6. subdomain, somewhat related to search
7. subdomain
8. internal page of a related site
9. amatur site
10.a real site (on topic)

[FromBelgium]

Search for "MSN" and you get msn.com in the first 120 results!

[FromRocky]

Search for "MSN" and you get msn.com in the first 120 results!

It's #1 on mine. Actually all top 10's are msn.com

OK, they are faster than the other two to index pages! :)

Got traffics within a week from a brand new site.

[mfishy]

<<Looks like a rollback pending an update to me. - whew - those are some smelly results>>

The odds of them fixing this mess are slim to none, I would wager that the odds are better that msndude comes in and raves about the positive feedback they are getting :)

[Steelbank]

Our one-word topic search gives the following:

1. irrelevant site
2. spam site
3. affiliate site
4. irrelevant
5. real site
6. real site
7. spam site
8. free hosted site
9. real site
10. spam site

I thought msn was on their way until this update

[caveman]

mfishy, normally I'd agree; sometimes the SE's just don't see what we see, discount bad reviews if they come from the Webmaster communtiy, and/or rationalization and politics take over temporarily.

But lots of the problems we're seeing are not subjective. One site owning 10 or more straight listings; observable, absurd influence of kw-based domains on rankings; wrong pages being shown (e.g. for a pair of listings w/one indented, either one or both showing footer pages instead of content pages, when content pages used to be shown).

I'm sorta surprised that they did not flip this back overnight. Either this is a very temporary (and for some reason necessary) step on the way to better SERP's, or the patients have taken over the ward. One really has to wonder what's up.

[crobb305]

Our two-word competitive phrase reveals the following

1. Subdomain
2. Subdomain (Spammy title, all caps)
3. Subdomain (Spammy title, all caps)
4. Subdomain (Spammy title, all caps)
5. Subdomain (Spammy title, all caps)
6. Subdomain (url only, no title or desc)
7. Subdomain (Spammy title, all caps)
8. Subdomain (Spammy title, all caps)
9. Subdomain (Spammy title, all caps)
10. Subdomain

[truezeta]

Well I didn't get as many referrals from MSN yesterday. Usually MSN and Google are even. The only difference is MSN brings me natural traffic and I use Adwords for Google.

This sucks.

[crobb305]

If there is any glimmer of hope, it is that this thread may be the one to get their attention. Fingers crossed.

[skipfactor]

>>Be constructive

OK, they're giving away prizes to searchers, and the increased revenue from PPC should foot the bill--no pun intended.

[MLHmptn]

skipfactor

My thoughts entirely...Make the SERP's so horrendous that people will have to click on the advertisers to find results...Hmm...No wonder MSN wants to pay people to use their search engine.

I am in flat disbelief that MSN is using these SERP's.

They are so bad I had to take MSN search off my sites because I will not send my visitors to MSN when it's that terrible.

[Liane]

Has anyone noticed that for any site with 2 listings together in the SERPS that MSN shows "See more results from www.whateversite.com"

I have never noticed this before. Is this new or something they have done for a while?

[RichTC]

Agree they have completely lost the plot now! Some of you are doing well to see 10-20% relevancy.

Two word popular search term in the sectors we watch:-
1-10 out of 5.9mil results

1. Spam site with doorway page
2. Duel listing for same doorway page above
3. Different site url but same doorway as 1&2 above to same site!
4. T & C page of an unrelated site bt i did find the keyword on it!
5. Duel listing of (4) but contains half the search term in the URL but page nothing to do with it.
6. Junk site that openly admits its part of a web link ring!
7. Fair site but nothing to do with the keyword - how did that get in?
8. 3 page site that has the search term in the url
9. This ones amazing! - single page site with text about the keyword but with nine outbound links to other sites down the left hand side! - Pure Junk
10. Division 4 site but at least its on toppic.

Its 17 before we see a quality site thats rich in contnt about the search term.

I think someones having a laugh here, they must be able to see this mess - perhaps they have been hit by hackers and just havent put a press release out yet?

[Nabeel]

When I searched for "money lovers" it returned first 16 results from a single spam website. MSN you are dead.

[ddogg]

They messed it all up, not sure what is going on here...

[MLHmptn]

Okay, so it appears MSN is sticking with these results....What makes the NEW MSN favor a particular site? Anybody here that notices a trend among sites 1-10 in your niche? (Besides getting #1 and subdomaining it with duplicate pages so you can OWN the results). Is MSN favoring sites that produce .05% keyword density, .01% keyword proximity, .000012345% keywords in title and metas, 95% FFA link farmed sites, ....? :>~

Thank God my business is not SEO and providing a client with guaranteed Top 10 listings.

[Tomseys]

looks like they are changing back - or at least making it better

[crobb305]

Some sort of update overnight. Looks like a rollback. Somewhat better than what we saw yesterday. Though, still see a lot of subdomain spam.

C

[newwebster]

major change overnight in my niche. Looks like they are beginning to correct this mess.

[pmac]

I see a total rollback.