Forum Moderators: mack
Results look very good so far, Look out Google!
AND THERE WAS THREE
The Dr
Because msn beta is crud. They should keep the old version. It is much better. I find some sites ( on msn beta) that are in the serps that are nowhere to be seen now.
not entirely but based yes nearly the same
I see the new MSN screen live when going to[search.msn.com...]
!
This is very in the morning from Europe and I'm not using any new SP2 as I'm under GNU/Linux. :-)
BTW:
The crawler is too running hot...BTW2: They are load balancing behind Akamai's GNU/Linux clusters:
ping search.msn.com
PING a134.g.akamai.net (194.109.192.7): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 194.109.192.7: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=38.8 ms
The beta search results may be of variable quality (although I've found them to generally acceptable) but the market needs another player; Google's results are poor and Yahoo is a glorified front end to PFI/PPC.
An additional source of referals is always welcome, and more importantly, it spreads the risk of over exposure to a single search engine (is Yahoo still considered a search engine?).
I can sympathise with webmasters who are losing position in the new index. Many of us experienced a similar problem when Yahoo switched from Google.
The switch to the new index can't come soon enough for me, and if they also take a small percentage of Google's searches and a massive slice of Yahoo's, I'll be really chuffed.
Now, with the new MSN roll out my sites are doing even better than in Google, since there is no sandbox of sites. I hope MSN kicks Google butts and bury Yahoo in the process, both for their legendary arrogance.
It nicely encapsulates the issue:
The beta search results may be of variable quality (although I've found them to generally acceptable) but the market needs another player; Google's results are poor and Yahoo is a glorified front end to PFI/PPC.
I still wonder though, Google seems to play a game of "wait and trump" other SEs. They wait until Yahoo (etc.) act, then 2 days later they announce they are doing the same thing but better. Latest example is the Jump from 4 billion to 8 billion pages ... nicely timed after Yahoo's announcement.
Things like that might be done to win the PR war (woth it alone), or to maximise their PPC $$.
So when MSN does go live, I wonder what trick they will pull out? The end of the sandbox?
CF
Im doing well so far in the serps a little more targeting me thinks.....
I just did a search using the search box on MSN's home page for a number of keywords. For one, I was #14, for another #10, etc.
After I went through searching for about 15 keywords or phrases, I deleted any cookies and went back to MSN's home page to search again.
This time, the first keyword came in at #5, the second at #2, etc.
IOW, I moved up in the results dramatically in less than 15 minutes.
They must be moving quickly between the "old" MSN search and beta, or the datacenters are very different.
for their legendary arrogance
Like Microsoft will be any better on the arrogance front than yahoo or google? I think you need another white knight. If microsoft achieves dominance you won't feel any warmer to them then than you do towards google and yahoo now.
- One way communication. Microsoft solicits URLs, and asks for help "making the search better". There has been no response in the SERPs to numerous communications I have sent detailing ommissions of numerous sites. That is arrogance.
- Vague and inaccurate tips for inclusion. If the tips were accurate, my pages would be listed #1 in MSN serps as they have been listed absolutely top #1 for 2 years on every other search engine. I have never paid the other SEs a dime, they rank my pages at the top because the pages contain more content about the keywords than any other site on the Internet. That is how SEs are supposed to work, and that is how users EXPECT SEs to work. Instead, my site has been completely "black listed" from MSN beta SERPs. I have checked well past the 1st 100 or so result links. That is arrogance.
- Whole categories of interest are excluded, especially in pop culture. With MSN beta, one is likely to receive SERPs with a hundred links to people other than a pop culture personality who happen to have the same name as the pop culture personality. When the pop culture personality is linked, it is more likely going to be a PFI listing by a tobacco company that has no content about the personality. That is arrogance.
In a way George Orwell predicted things like MSN search in his book 1984. What you have here is a major company, Microsoft, censoring Internet content. The implications of limiting what users may see is truly disturbing. Sites that contain non-conforming political views can simply be suppressed by the search engine. Hello Big Brother.
Fortunately, MSN is small island in the Internet for now. Only about 4% of my traffic came from using the old MSN search.
- Google (Images) 26%
- Yahoo 24%
- Google 23%
- AltaVista 5%
- Other search engines 11%
-- MSN 4%
-- Lycos 3%
-- AOL 1%
-- Mamma 1%
-- Overture 0%
-- Others 2%
At 4%, MSN is just a minor player in search now. Once word of the poor SERPs gets out in the user community, it will probably drive the few that are using MSN now to seek better alternatives.
As a long time Microsoft investor, this MSN beta has been a real PITA. Here MSFT had an opportunity to make a difference and develop an innovative SE. Instead, they developed a SE that is much worse than any SE I have ever used. When a development team is as arrogant and non-responsive as this one, and when the work product is this poor, there are only a few options. Fire the whole team and start over, or sell the whole mess to someone willing to do the job correctly.
finally!
I have changed nothing in that page. I appreciate others trying to help with tips, but as I said before, the other SEs had no trouble ranking our pages #1 for certain 2 to 4 keyword searches, and now MSN beta is also ranking at least 1 page #1 now, where before that page was not included anywhere in the top 100.
There was clearly somthing broken in MSN beta, and now it is partially corrected.
Alot of money is at stake here, and I think microsoft knows that if it hopes to compete, it is going to have to put out a quality product. If you have a very particular thing and you can explain to them the cause of the problem, don't think that they wouldn't listen to you.
god bless MSN!
hahaha. Try telling Google about their redirect handling month after month after month. At least MSFT is not claiming to be "altruistic" or "not evil" .
