Forum Moderators: mack
i have also seen a substantial change in the serps in the beta.
anybosy else can confirm this?
Google had very little content related to local markets. Unless, i wanted to purchase from a directory of everything located #$$%@!
beta msn retrieved local businesses, some with sites others in a LOCAL directory. There is no comparion who has the best results and you start targeting local markets + product, etc.
Try this:
Make sure MSN beta is set to your exact city under settings and save it.
Search for lumber yard
The MSN beta returned a lumber yard in Michigan and other scattered lumber yards, but nothing close to me in California.
Go to Yahoo Search
Click "Local"
Enter Lumber Yard in the Search text box, your zip code in the location box, and click search.
The results were the 2 lumber yards closest to me complete with links to maps and driving directions.
I went back to MSN beta and tried:
lumber yard <my zip code>
lumber yard <my city name>
I got web sites with photos of lumber yards, arts council meeting at a lumber yard, and not one single actual lumber yard. None. Zip. Nada.
Now guess which search engine I will use the next time I want to shop locally?
MSN beta, like Google, is a terrible search engine for everything I have tried so far.
While MSN Beta has content rich, useful pages for users. In contrast, Google decides to rank in the first few slots doorway pages with Adsense as the very first thing on the page. No navigation. Outbound links through redirects. Even the page content seems to be pieced together from a DB of semi-random paragraphs. (with appropriate keyword replacement)
It takes to about result 7 to get to something that is actually RELEVANT and USEFUL to the user. (It's a competitor so don't accuse me of selfish bias)
The sweetest bit on this is that the 2nd result is about the technology to colonize a neighbouring planet, yet content was obviously just glued on regarding travel (on our planet obviously). And that content ranks well in competitive areas. The Sandbox helps increase relevance and decrease spam in SERPs? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA...C'mon...
The other twist is that with the yahoo update, they have it "right" as well. Not as good as MSN Beta, but average user has maybe 7 valid options out of 10. Far better than the crap-ladden "Glue-smell" results above. (Good effort Tim, it's coming along!)
Get it together G, as "king" you have a responsiblity to your users. For now, I'm recommending Yahoo until MSN Beta launches...at least in my area...
Colin
[edited by: Tigrou at 7:07 pm (utc) on Dec. 18, 2004]
With the disaster that is currently happening at Google would be a good time to launch.
I work with a large isp, we're switching from Google to msn once it goes live.
Hopefully many more large ISP's will follow suit! Would be nice to see comcast, at&t, earthlink, aol, etc. do the same thing.
Bring the heat MSN & Yahoo!
MLHmptn
I work with a large isp, we're switching from Google to msn once it goes live.
that says it all. A large ISP is going to switch on the basis of results it hasnt yet seen. Brilliant piece of forward thinking.
Check your inbox. A few suggestions as to what will help you with your site in msn search. Utilize them for a week and see what happens. Check cache date on msn to make sure it has grabbed your new page and get back with me on results :>~
MLHmptn
