5-25 MSN Search Update Continued

[msndude]

Continued from [webmasterworld.com...]

At the expense of repeating myself, I'm going to repeat myself. :-) Here are the guidelines I'm trying to follow when I post here:

I won't discuss the problems of particular sites in any public forum. As long as I can handle the volume, I'm happy to get "sticky" messages, though.

I also won't discuss competitors here -- they have their own forums, and I figure they already have enough people talking about them. :-)

I will not preannounce anything specific here; I might say "we're working extra hard over the summer to fight Spam," but I'm not going to post something like "look for a giant spam-killer release on April first!" After a release goes out and someone notices it, THEN I'll comment on it. If no one notices it, it probably wasn't worth talking about anyway.

Finally, I'm not going to reveal any secret Intellectual Property that would help someone build their own search engine or hack ours. Most of it's hard to explain anyway. :-)

[edited by: engine at 1:54 pm (utc) on June 5, 2006]

[asiaseo]

Whether MSN or Yahoo Singapore or ninemsn Australia or yahoo 7 Australia, results are good wherever in the world you are searching. I cannot understand why these produce good clear results even if I search for something in say South America or Europe or even North America.

[dclick]

i havent posted much lately since the update last month, but msndude you have to take a look at the graph that the other poster posted:

[marketshare.hitslink.com...]

For the past year MSN marketshare is falling each month... Thats a vote of dissatisfaction by the public as far as the serps go, that is far greater then what WebmasterWorld posters feel about their sites. Which will tend to have a bit of moaning and groaning with each update.

Back when i was at Pubcon New Orleans, i met msndude, and was very impressed by their search engine results at the time.. The results i thought were nearly as good as google. But since then especially the past 6 months since the beginning of the year approximately jan-feb, they took a nose dive.. a blog comment spammer appeared to overwhelm the serps for many phrases approx jan-feb and sat up until may. the spammer is now gone, but at the same time the changes washed away alot of the as-good-as-google results.

The results seemed to have improved a little bit since the last month. But for example, I still cant find MSN's own hotmail for typical keywords. a search for 'free email' pegs hotmail at #1 on Google, yet still no where to be found still in MSN...? how can the world's largest free email service not be found in its own companies search engine for "free email"

You still cant find MSN Search for terms such as: search engine, internet search engine, internet search. Shouldnt you be able to find the service itself in the search engine?

These are basic fundamental queries.

Likewise its still seems impossible to find WebmasterWorld on msn... for common keywords its missing in action... Shouldnt the web's most popular webmaster forum.. or one of the best resources for webmasters be found for its own terms?

i have noticed some improvements the past few weeks, but still i think needs alot of work... I thought about a year ago, the scoring was much better then today... and the public apparently agrees. So, i appreciate your interest and Keep tryin :)

[msndude]

Actually we DO pay attention to the query share graphs, and we're not happy with what we see.

I wish fixing THAT were as easy as just fixing a single bug!

But we're definitely working on it. :-)

[rajraj]

I do see that things are improving, but lot of things has to be done. My site which was nowhere to be seen for our major keywords after the "Update", this week I can see it on page 21st, atleast I got my site on the serp for this particular keywords, but still we have lot of pages to climb before reaching our actual ranking i.e. ranking before the update.

Hope Msn get their house in order before it is completely shattered.

[simey]

I feel its a race to the bottom. MSN has the lead , but yahoo and google are gaining.

[Marcia]

I don't agree that it's a race to the bottom that MSN is winning.

Actually we DO pay attention to the query share graphs, and we're not happy with what we see.

I wish fixing THAT were as easy as just fixing a single bug!

But we're definitely working on it. :-)

Maybe part of the answer is that Microsoft hasn't ever recognized an inate strength that they have. It's gone unrecognized and unmentioned for as far back as I can remember, but Microsoft has been a great friend to the middle class on the software front for many, many years, particularly to middle class women - and even those in lower income groups who've had their lives enriched and elevated because of Microsoft.

I don't know how it would translate to a marketing USP, but I've been seeing the same thing happening with MSN Search.

[msndude]

This is interesting, Marcia. Could you elaborate?

[Martin40]

Excellent post by dclick and excellent answer by msndude.
However, Yahoo is also losing marketshare, so maybe it's not an MSN or Yahoo specific thing, but a Google thing.

Where I live Google is becoming synonymous with search. I guess MSN needs Windows help without violating anti-trust laws.

I do hope MSN will regain it's pre-update relevance.

[asiaseo]

I agree, the results used to be fine. I think sometimes that in fact the search engines make it far more complex and by some way that gives spammers the ability to manipulate things.
I think everyone knows that a simple database where you allow for the title, a certain number of keywords and a brief desciption can provide clear and good results. But once you start adding keyword density, number of inbound links, page numbers, where a site is hosted and all the countless other deciding factors it can easily just 'get out of hand' and you just cannot control it.
Perhaps this post should be on the 'quality' thread, but although I do not go with charging small website owners $600 to register perhaps if a website had to be 'submitted' and along with that submission the website owner would have to decide what they want their website found for.
Allow certain points per word for up to a maximum of 8 title words, allow a certain number of prime keywords, a certain number of secondary keywords, and a certain number of minor keywords. Provide the option to specify goegraphical location: Suburb, town / city, country.
Then put in some simple checks for the website ( I am certain Microsoft can come up with something easy yet reliable ).
You can then have something built in to the bots to check that the site remains a site about light green widgets and offers a selection of light green widgets in widgettown in widegtcountry.
I know it is far more complex but at the moment I think the search engine that says 'Look, the way it is being done at the moment simply does not give what the surfer expects, we need to find a better way ' will very quickly come out on top.

If someone searches for light green widgets in myhometown then that is what they want to find, not a website on the other side of the world that have links pages that somewhere include those words in some link to another site but achieve their high ranking because they have 500,000 pages and have done a link swop with 100,000 others.
There also has to be some 'reason' why arabia, brazil and ninemsn have clear results but the main .com doesn't, perhaps a very good start would be to have a look at what the different criteria are. I used ninemsn ( Australia ) to search for something in a province of Canada and it gave good results, but then I went to the normal .com and it was no way as good.
I would check how ninemsn and arabia were created and find the differences.

[cabbie]

Is anyone else having a problem with Msn and mod_rewrite or 301's?
A large .aspx site I'm familar with that msn loved has just been tanked.
The site was recently converted to html and Msn seemed to be handling it fine though a little slower than google.
Now all of a sudden, its nowhere for its own name and a site command shows all the old .aspx urls.

[Martin40]

Search engine programmers will probably have thought of this, but wouldn't it be a good idea to compile a list of spammy keywords and apply an separate anti-spam algorithm to that and leave the other keywords/keyphrases alone?

In my search category there was little spam and much relevance and so the main impact of the update has been a drop in relevance.

The above-mentioned scheme seems doable, because all the highish volume keywords are identifiable.

[JoeSinkwitz]

Martin40,

The biggest problem I see to that particular idea is that by virtue of what BH normally is, identifying maximum ROI searches plays a large role. Thus, if the investment drops significantly for a phrase that isn't initially considered "spammy", then the keyword phrase is now a target...ad infinitum all phrases become "spammy" given infinite time. Variable weighting might be a way to do what you're talking about, based on how commerical a search is determined to be, but a on/off filter sounds like it would lend itself to be gamed far to easily.

[Martin40]

If I understand you correctly you're saying that commercial keyphrases are more likely to be spammy, so you'd have to call every high value keyphrase spam, with all the exceptions to the rule. `
What I meant to say is: compile a list of spammy keyphrases manually. That won't be perfect, but will take the sting out of the present situation: that the whole internet is suffering from spam and a cure that may be worse than the disease.
Compiling a list manually will avoid mathematical quirks and may be left up to the discretion of search engines, who would not make the list public, obviously.
Just my 2 cents.

[Garya]

Merrill Lynch suggested Microsoft buy Yahoo to fend off Google since MSN search is doing so poorly.

[Martin40]

But both Yahoo and MSN are making the mistake of integrating their search into their portal.

Suppose 100 people want to do a search on MSN. Let's say 10 of them get distracted by all the other hoopla on msn.com and do some online shopping instead of their original intention to search. Then those people will associate msn.com with shopping instead of search.
Let's say 1 of those 10 people will want to search again and go to google.com. He won't get distracted there and almost certainly do his search and go on to associate google.com with search.
If this scenario is correct, then out of every 100 MSN customers 1 will go to Google.

[Garya]

Results seem to be getting worse, looks like there was and update.
To much is put on domain name a title match content does not matter.
1. Yahoo
2. Google
3. Ask
4. MSN

[Praxus]

Doubt there was another update. If there was, it didn't affect any of my sites.