Forum Moderators: mack
I mostly found the short output quite irrelevant and disapointing but maybe others can tell more.
From where I stand I am very uncertain of where they are going with this...maybe was just a glitch.
and one set of results is once again missing our index page...
bout ready to just throw in the towel this time :(
DJ
We're a bit curious about this, though. Did you issue your query against search.msn.com or against live.com?
On page three, I find the #4 site from pages one and two is listed at #5 and two sites which have been missing for at least a month are now at #2 and number 4 on page three.
Everything else in the top fifty results is spam.
My domains was before on top positions for year before June ... after May update decreased down to 50-100 or 9999+ nowhere posisitons, but was always spidered and indexed .... today are again back at top positions.
It is nice ..because i'm not running spammy or content crap sites..
and I don't know why sites was dropped down before...
Now they are back ...huraaah
Markus
But overall it's not too bad. It's just that the bad results are VERY bad. If you ignore 4 or 5 sites MSN would be producing a solid first two pages of results. That's more than I can say for Y! right now and about the same as G.
Also, maybe I haven't had enough diet coke yet, but it seems like the first page of results is getting duplicated onto the second page too. Hey, I'm seeing double! *shakes head to unstick eyes*
Yep, not an entire duplication, but a lot of the same URLs on page 1 are on page 2. Couple that with many of the page 1 results being subdomain spam and that creates a problem.
Hope this helps msndude.
Cygnus
(But I'm VERY glad people seem to like it.) :-)
For a particular search query, I am seeing the EXACT same results on page 2 as on page 1. That is, after I hit the 'search' button, I see a set of results, then click to page 2, and see the same set. Some of them are even on page 3, but not all of them. I have cleared cookies, etc...Still see it. It is almost like seeing two different indexes, but for ALL of the urls on page one to be listed on page 2 is a bit more than coincidental, I think.
What is going on? I have seemingly lost communication with MSN also, so I don't know if my spam reports are getting dealt with. I still see the offending sites, so I would say no.
Too bad. MSN was making some progress but this is back to the old pathetic days of "oh, look a keyword subdomain with 100k blog comment links, goody."
Back to the drawing board.
Steve: Yeah, I know; I can see them outside my window. :-) However, I don't think this particular release made a difference to them.
Personally I don't see any other effect other than a dramatic return of subdomain spam.
I suppose that could be because the algo has turned up the "we love blog links" knob even higher than it was, but the irrelevant, useless spam is far worse than before, primarily on subdomains but also the expired domain type too.
One day when I was 15 I had thirteen screwdrivers at an open bar. The next day I resolved "don't do that again". Looking at this update you should have a similar thought... :)
When you go to page 2 from the first page of results, it is defaulting to "first=7"
Like this:
[search.msn.com...]
[search.msn.com...]
I will sticky 2 url's
steve: Good idea. I'm going to go home and have a screw driver. :-)
C
I can say that not only I am happy with my results, but I am now using MSN as a preferred search engine: lately I found the information I was looking for only on MSN.
It looks like with page one showing
[search.msn.com...]
and page 2 showing
[search.msn.com...]
and with only very minor variations between the two pages, that page 1 and page 2 both represent the first page of serps from two different indexes. Page one looks like what I saw BEFORE the update, page two looks like what I saw AFTER. Now, I can see both by just clicking to page 2. Is this accurate MSNdude? Will this be fixed today?
That result is the same as the #4 result on page 1 and page 2 except it has index.html appended to it.
You may recall my sticky asking about duplicate content penalties due to the 10+ different addresses which that one page might have due to where it is hosted.
I have not seen the page listed multiple times with those different urls for several months but it looks like that might be back.
Sooooo.....I was right! cooooool, I like that.
Ok now that fluctuations are gone I checked my usual test queries and I think that it's not bad at all.
Well, the Wikipedia cancer is spreading to MSN though.
Ok, that's probably the way to go, trusted sites should be emphasized (however trust is calculated and seeds deposit on quality sites).
More quality is going on, but still quite a few niche authority sites are missing vs subdomain spammers, my-keywords-domain or bloggers for example IMO.
Is the Strider anti spam stuff turned on already? :)
..
NOTE: I think that this algo needs a little understanding of singular/plurals in order to definetely leave Yahoo far behind (where it belongs) and move closer to GG.
I didn't get a lot of traffic from MSN anyway, so it's not a big deal to me. I'm in a very competitive area that is often targeted by spammers. So I'm trying to cut through some very big players and some very sophisticated ones too.
I'm not looking for top spots, but the same kind of traffic I get from Yahoo - mostly long tail searches for very specific information. I have to admit that I concentrate more on writing content than SERP placement - something I'm pretty sure will pay off in the long term.
I looked back at the example I sent to MSNDude about a month or two ago. While it's not 100% fixed I do see some improvement. Good job.
#10 is a client's site (good for them!) but it is far, far from worthy of that position (not to mention that they will not be pleased to be so highly ranked on the generic term, but that is another story).
Meanwhile, another site I am associated with that really does deserve to rank highly in this niche is nowhere to be found :(
Change the term to plural and an interior page from the latter site does show up in the top ten. But surrounded by double entries and various other garbage.
What I see is that it is still possible to rank based on listings in phony directories, sitewide links hidden in a small font period, etc.
On the other hand, there is not a bunch of scraper, MFA sites, and that is a definite imporvement.
WBF
It occurs to me that you can compare building a search engine to solving Rubik's Cube; at the beginning, it's very easy to make progress, but after a while it takes a lot of work to advance without messing up what you've already got. This is why some things that look like they ought to be easy end up taking a while.
As far as I'm concerned, the whole .info domain can go drown itself in Lake Michigan.
<posting this in two engine forums in one day, gee, is it a theme>
More emphasis on PAGE TITLE. Spam, and especially subdomain spam, has a much harder time competing when exact match in title is weighted heavily. MSN-valued spam is often some expired domain with new random text content that is anchor-text blogged spammed for everything under the sun. You simply can't have the same effect though with a title that can only have 60 characters. Spammers also just throw up random words, while real sites use words like searchers.
More page title emphasis please...
My page dropped again to old positions ...to nowhere. traffic decreased 3 times .....
I'm sad.
Markus
[edited by: xspace at 9:14 pm (utc) on Aug. 25, 2006]
