Forum Moderators: mack
There are rumors that he was on a rotational assignment and he was promoted. Since no one’s saying anything, I’d like to speculate on what’s happened to him.
If you follow this forum, you’ll note that I whine quite a bit about MSN ignoring my website. In fact, this month, MSN accounts for exactly 0.5% of all my traffic. I noticed a couple of days ago that the MSNbot was spidering my site quite heavily, so here is my theory on MSNDude’s disappearance:
It’s pretty easy to identify some pretty significant problems with Live.com. My guess is that MSNDude will not reappear until we see a major shift in the MSN algorithm – which will happen very shortly.
The current MSNDude is still at Microsoft but has changed roles and is now a bigwig engineer in the Natural Language group. Congratulations on the promotion!
However - MSNDude as a Microsoft voice is set to reappear soon I am led to believe.
Good to hear, of all the search engine peeps I felt MSNDude was the most helpful and was willing to give as well as take advice/info
I don't know if the timing is the same worldwide but in the UK, Vista is set to be launched at the end of January.
My guess is all hands will be on the pumps this month to ensure, everything is as it should be (or as near possible) for the launch date. A new operating system with a poor search facility will do nothing to help intial sales and reviews.
So I am expecting big changes this month and hoping all the preliminary work is nearly finished.
I would also guess that MSNDude or LiveDude as he may now want to be called, would make an appearance from then. After all, why give advice on MSN when it delivers different results to Live and Live is the future.
He will be back with more questions and collecting comments soon I am sure :)
I agree with the comment about Blog spam - they did a good job eliminating it where I'm looking. But the fact that my site does not rank well for its own unique name is a problem. And the fact that it does rank well outside of the US for US-related terms is pitiful.
I know it's unscientific, but I'm always trying to see if MSN is "getting it." I tried a complex query the other day (seven words) and Google gave me good results. Ask.com was spot on. MSN wasn't even close (they sent me to shopping sites when the query was seeking information). Like I said, I hope the silence is a good sign.
We do seriously appreciate and consider all the feedback we get (both here and elsewhere). Sorry for the slower response time in getting back to posts and feedback, but we do look into and investigate all of it. Keep it coming!
I think MSN isn't too bad, however needs traffic MSN should maybe buy some high traffic websites and push everyone to start using live.com and also it needs brand building.. badly?
Enjoy your stay!
I am one of those who has had his site totally delisted and as it was part of my income, pretty confused of why it has not come back.
Mine and I think others, most popular theory is having d301s or rewrites or redirects done.
I my case it was to take non wwws to www and index pages to wwws, so there was not duplicate issues, rather than to a differnt site.
Not long after this I started losing page after page until it was all gone. I am guessing the real issue is that MSN is not listing new sites until Live is fully functional.
Can you confirm that this is the case. I know I am not spamming, I do well in Yahoo and inporving in Google, but it would be nice to know if I am doing something wrong in MSNs eyes. All my other sites are ok, except very slow updates.
If I know it is a D301 or rewrite issue (new sites or pages not being relisted). then I know not to change anything and just wait.
Can you help MSNDude?
Thanks
Mark
though I should say that I am the 'new' MSNDude
You have some big shoes to fill :) Glad we have an MSNDude again!
Chris
My theory is that the log-on information didn't get passed on :)
WBF
We have to be sure we don't 301 MSNdude 3.0 or he will display an error message and be gone for good...
<zing>
;-)
:(
