Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I "OWN" MSNSEARCH. In the keywords pairs (that are of any significance to me) I end up in the number 1,2,3,4 and so on position organically on a lot of keyword pairs.
How can those two indexing and ranking schemes be wildly different. My guess is that google is being gamed to death. Any ideas?
"Maybe that's all there really is, and the internet is truly as shoddy as it seems."
As for the first part I don't agree(there is a lot that is walled off from the S/E), but as for the second I think you have a decent handle on it.
Do you use adwords to get your traffic from google?
You are correct Microsoft doesn't just depend solely on its search engine to fund itself.
However that doesn't mean that they are not trying to maximize the return they get on search.
So if it is going to be on that basis you have to figure they are all in it for themselves.
Sorry, I've been around a few years and have watched the games get played both from within and outside the corporate structure. It never sets quite right with most folks that inhabit the tech trenches.
The results can vary simply because each S/E has a differing slice of the internet at any point in time.
They have a lot of the same nodes but they don't have the same graph.
They use different software with different designs and different bugs (mistookies, errors, etc..).
Yes I do, but in a small way. However, I was deducting those referrals from the overall count :-)
There are also sites that rank well on Google, who have advertising from other companies.
We have no external advertising on our site, and it ranks well, so from personal experience, it doesn't affect things.
[edited by: Eazygoin at 4:06 pm (utc) on Mar. 17, 2006]
Fiction: Advertising on Google affects my rankings in the search results.
Fact:
Advertising with Google neither helps nor hurts a site's rankings in Google.
From Googles Webmaster Guidelines Facts Page: [google.com ]
I'm sure that same position in google would be 500 visitors.
And surely that is the question here? How on earth can one search company be so stratispherically above all the others?
The stats above seem to reflect many sites' experience, albeit rarely in such an extreme fashion. However the real question for me is not the here and now but potential future trends. Namely:
1)How long will Google retain such a strong lead?
2)Are there things they are doing badly that a well funded competitor can exploit?
I don't think it is in anyones best interest for one SE to dominate. Especially given Google's erratic updates.
Any ideas?
PS: In answer to the question quoted above, I for one have no idea how Google have come to dominate search in such an absolute fashion. Is this worthy of a thread of its own?
Another thing, duplicate content, how many retailers out there have manufacturers information or instruction on their websites? Umm, probally a lot of us since we should not be rewriting manufacturers instructions due to liability reasons. Food for thought....
Food for thought? How so? Are you suggesting that Google should load up its SERPs with links to boilerplate pages just because other search engines do, or just because that would benefit businesses that use duplicate content? IMHO, it makes a lot more sense for Google to set its own standards for what its search index should include. That way, users can pick the search engine that delivers the kind of results they want.
In the UK we see much the same - only MSN is about as effective as ASK Jeeves in terms of reach imo!
Gawd knows i would love msn to have a greater reach of traffic esp with the current supplemental nightmare going on with Google but the sad fact is that Google do control internet search.
If you dont rank in Google you may as well pack up!
As for msn - do we care if we rank in it at all?. A number 1 position for your prime keyword is about as effective as a position 20 in google!
Sure trafic is traffic and it all counts but i cant say im worried about how relevent msns search results are because they have so little reach its hardly worth the effort.
If msn increase the reach then it may be worth the effort but currently with dire serps results in msn and zero strategic deals in the pipeline to increase reach its a horse with three legs if you ask me!
No, I am not saying that it should load up. One of my sites sells very technical lighting products and we have very detailed manufacturers instructions on our site.
From a liability standpoint we can not make the instructions unique by rewriting them. We feel we should not be pentalized for duplicatation for providing our consumers relevant and necessary information.
From a liability standpoint we can not make the instructions unique by rewriting them. We feel we should not be pentalized for duplicatation for providing our consumers relevant and necessary information.
Are you saying that you've actually been penalized for having that duplicate content (as opposed to simply not having those pages of boilerplate copy listed in the index)?
We have some of boilerplate in the google index and some are not. The site is all very unique content with the exception of the instructions. It has never ranked well in google. I do not know how google views duplicate and how it penalizes sites. But there is an awful lot of talk about it and I am sure google does. Who knows with google...
In the majority of the cases, a duplicate page (not site) is simply not served up. That is it. About the only ones that can really claim this as a penalty would be the original author if it is their copy that is filtered out.
So putting up a few pages of manufacturer instructions, mixed in with a lot of unique content, will cause no penalty to that unique content. Just don't expect any traffic from the duplicate pages.
There do seem to be a very few cases where a site is dinged because the *majority* of their content is flagged as duplicate. But it sounds like that is not the case with your site.
You are right, but I do wonder at times since those pages are filtered out if they do have some sort of effect on PR and the whole calculation on the website.
For reference, the countries are as follows (again, 1,000-rebased for USA):
I also notice that Googles indices are more stable. MSN listings tend to move around on an almost daily basis. Today I can have a keyword rank at number 1, tomorrow, number 15 , the day after number 5. I am not sure if this is good or bad. But on Google, if its at number one it certainly stays there for weeks, if not months.
Google: The only thing they can do now is dumb down what they have to improve clickthrough on adwords, thats it, don't expect any major innovations unless they supplement the bottom line.
MSN: They can run an engine at a LOSS and it won't make a blip on their earnings/holdings, they do things like that ya know ;). As others have mentioned, previously profitable SW was rendered inert because MS wanted it that way. Is there any money in web browsers or word processors? Flash forward 3 years, will there be money in search? If not guess who wins AGAIN? I also think MSN has the ability to offer a much more favorable/stable advertising system (possibly CostPerMonth), and make the click fraud issue go away for them.
Y!: They talk a good game but they'll have to do more than hand code the top ten serps for popular searches to get any respect, poor choice on their end to play "everything is advertising/entertainment", they will never go away as a major portal, just won't own search, they don't have the culture for it.
Do any of the arguments for the imminemt demise of google seem familiar?
I'll believe it when it happens.
MSN is not exactly having people beating a door to their search system.
Of course maybe the sites I have statistics for are different.
For us there is a spread of 188 searches for the top dog Google to 1 for the underdog Dogpile.
MSN is about half of Yahoo. In fact Google images which I didn't include in the Google figure is between Yahoo and MSN.
So for the time being I'll join with BigDave and say it ain't going to happen right off.
Now for Quantam_Goose all of the S/Es are being severely gamed.
The discontent of webmasters the people the actually make the internet possible can be the lighting of the fire and yes many of you big fella have sites that have no suffer much probably, but the majority has and google search results are not even close to the accuracy of msn. And through our small pages or even big ones the world can start spreading.
May I remind you of Firefox which was a small browser and then webmaster start recommended it and little by little is gaining on ie. if I recall as of 1 yr ago my logs show les then .5 percent if any users using firefox, now it shows 10.5 percent is a big jump in just a year so yes Google can go down if webmaster start recomending msn to their users.
You might also want to consider that the Firefox uptick was in direct response to Microsofts IE issues. The same folks that switched to Firefox are not exactly likely to embrace MSN in any fashion.
The adoption of Firefox was not driven by webmasters.
There is a new case winding its way throught the court system in the US, I can't wait until the judge declares it to warrant class action status and then for Google to shred it.
Oh, you ask what is it about. It is about www vs non www forms of a domain and the resulting downrank due to dup content. Sound familiar. Well not exactly it is about the world of hurt caused by said downranking that is the result there of.
I'd say more but the boss might want to have a choice about being included or excluded from the class.
To be precise you can find a link about it on The Drudgereport.
You might also want to do a few site searches on the domain. Those results sure as heck look familiar to me.
MSN can go for relevant, useful results without fear of earnings shortfalls, not so for google who is near 100% dependent on ad revenue. Do you really think the G$ search engineers are running unfettered? Roll out your algo boys, if its good for the user, we don't care if earnings tank!
If Matt Cutts & Co. were taking orders from a cigar-chomping ad executive so Google could sell more AdWords, why wouldn't be the top spots in the SERPs be dominated by non-commercial listings?
If I search on "hotels in [big city]," what do I see? Hotel-booking services, for the most part, and guess what: They're getting free organic search traffic.
If I search on "[laptop computer model]," what do I see? A few reviews (mostly with price-comparison links), a manufacturer's page, and a couple of dealer pages.
If I search on "[type of suit worn at weddings and proms]," what do I see? Well, the #1 spot is taken up by a rental firm. Apparently someone in the executive suite fogot to tell the search engineers that the top 10 results should contain only Wikipedia articles and blog entries so the rental firms would have to buy AdWords.
Again: Instead of resorting to conspiracy theories, why not accept the obvious? Google and MSN are different search engines, so they deliver slightly different results. (It's like anything else--look up "chocolate chip cookies" or "macaroni and cheese" in two different recipe books, and you'll get different recipes and results.)
Again: Instead of resorting to conspiracy theories, why not accept the obvious?
Leaning into your cash cow isn't a "theory", its called business 101, Google has audience and is good at ad delivery, I would expect them to do what they have stated many times and that is maximize ad revenue, nothing wrong with that, certainly not a "conspiracy". Of course if you are waving your poms poms, everything against the team is "conspiracy theory", rah rah..
Google has no real tech edge in search, just popularity, MS owns its audience, try back clicking out of your windows machine. ;)
