Forum Moderators: mack
[edited by: WiseWebDude at 9:00 pm (utc) on Mar. 24, 2008]
I expect it had something to do with ridding their SERP's of the dominance of stray pages from high auth sites (i.e., where the stray pages were ranking too well), but the net result has been more pages from iffy, third tier sites ranking than I have seen in long while.
A lot of spammy mini-nets too. Reminds me of Yahoo five years ago. Especially the weird stuff, like niche sites with top ranking homepages, and badly performing high level subpages. Illogical, split personality stuff.
First step should be to clear the junk out, then fine tune. This seems to be the other way round.
<added> A lot of mess-ups on the geo and local fronts too. </added>
I am pretty sure each change takes a couple days to get around the net.
Remember Google did the same thing and slowley activated different filters to reduce the junk slowly.
Give it a few weeks to see if they can bring this in line as we may be jumping the gun on them.
I have looked at some of the results some are not so goodd and some are looking much better, really too early to tell.
Maybe they are fluctuating as this thread goes on. Maybe I am in the UK so I am not seeing what you guys are seeing. Maybe I am just blind to the results because I am no.1 for my favourite term :)
Well... not totally no 1, because there is a directory (universal like) box in there now...
We did and do rank for many KeyWords as #1 or #2 in $M SERP, there is almost no visitors from that anyway..
Yahoo and Live seem to be competing for worst possible results. Great to see them joining forces soon :-)
This could be a way MSN pushes the junk to the top to see when a filter if activated what changes in the results.
Maybe, in the niche that I watch, I am seeing abandoned pages that haven't been visible for 6 years appear again.
Let's hope that there is some reason for these results.
(maybe it's a good time to get into the search engine business - there's only one competitor).
You'd think they'd have some kind of quality control before releasing these results to the public. I can here the whoosh now as Live.com users rush back to Y! and Google.
Looks like this is going to remain a two horse race.
Whats' notable here IMHO is the dive in quality at a time when they should be catching up, and when they are vying for increased dominance...this happens.
Having looked at a few more details, I'm wondering if they're trying to sort out what an authoritative page is, versus an authoritative site. Perhaps playing a bit with age of site and internal linkflow in the process. At least part of the issue seems to be under what circumstances does link equity flow down into subpages of newer versus older sites.
Anyone noticing differences by age of site and/or deep versus homepage? Anyone seeing differences in crawl patterns lately?
We should almost set the geo stuff aside, as that aspect of this update is more or less completely, ummm...
Anyway, I'm curious to see if this is part of what is affecting MSNs new update. Since I am not seeing it on my client's who have just one site.
Thanks!
[edited by: engine at 9:56 pm (utc) on Mar. 26, 2008]
[edit reason] Specifics [/edit]
But I do see a lot of strange results when I just use it as a search engine (which is why I typically don't)
I am looking into this and could use some sample queries where you are seeing problems. I have tried the "cheap hotels" example, but I could use some more specific examples to test with.
Please post the term and the query link and we will take a look.
Cheers
MSNDude
<Edit Note: PLEASE don't post specifics here - STICKY MAIL MSNDude. Thanks.>
[edited by: Receptional at 10:36 am (utc) on Mar. 28, 2008]
[edit reason] Keeping it all insode TOS [/edit]
I searched this time for "lower my car payments" - I got different results this time, but those .edu links are still there. Bad bad stuff.
Just ran this query. I clicked one of the .edu links, the fifth result I believe. A classic case of Spam. The link actually redirects to an adsense site. A javascript file is looking at the referrer and if it's a search engine it redirects. If you paste the URL in directly you don't get a redirect. Looks like a scraper site as the text makes no sense. Probably got banned from adsense, which is why they are redirecting to another Adsense site.
ASK.com has the best results then google, yahoo.
I just did a search, the #1 site does not work just a shell
[edited by: engine at 8:58 am (utc) on April 20, 2008]
[edit reason] no specifics, thanks [/edit]
this is from the UK
A search for <term removed> for example brings up a lot of dictionary sites, mainstream sites, articles about <term removed>, etc. When people search for this term, they're looking for the best <term removed> sites.. They don't want definitions from a whack of dictionary sites, or addiction stuff, or #*$! Church for example.
[edited by: jatar_k at 1:27 pm (utc) on Mar. 28, 2008]
[edit reason] no specific terms thanks [/edit]
I stopped looking at MSN a couple of months ago
any user could could explain it to Gates & Ballmer why their search engine is useless. But they believe in their well paid experts.
So best to forget about them. IT search belongs 100% to Google.
Or the term "cutts" again, Y! and Google get it right.
Or the term "bush" getting closer, nearly as good at Y! and Google.
And what about the term "ballmer" - Ops! Better get rid of that number 2 spammer, Y! and Google know better. ;)
I'm just picking terms that come to mind, nothing special about these terms to me.
And, BTW, I'm monitoring close to a dozen well established sites. These same sites got respectable traffic from MSN during those early days, but now, it's pitiful.
If they bring in some engineers who can turn it around, I'll be the first to sing their praises. But until then, I've given up on them -- by expecting nothing, at least I'm no longer disappointed.
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