Micrtosoft bCentral...

... what's the catch

[le_gber]

Hi All,

just came accross MS bCentral again and was wondering what the catch was?

It seem less expensive that Y! (and offers 3 cat listing) with often higher Google PR pages (not that I think it matters that much) BUT we don't see people talking about the value of the listing that much (not as much as the Y! directory listing anyway).

So what's the catch?

Can all companies submit to it?

Are their any geographical limitations? (ie I'm UK based can I submit?)

Why noone's talking about it?

Leo

[The Contractor]

sssshh! Yes, it's a great deal ;)

[Uber_SEO]

I've been subbing to it for a while. The only problem with them is that if your site has duplicate URLs (www.widget.com & www.widget.co.uk), they won't allow you to add your site.

You then can't change the URL to add a different site instead, and so far I've been unable to get my money back. Surely this is quite a common thing affecting many website - not everyone is prepared to redirect their domains.

[blend27]

Leo,

Treat MS bCentral as a source of revenue, separate from G and Y. We have a listing on MS bCentral for one of our site. You are also allowed to have 10 links from your page on MS bCentral to one website, but you could point thouse links to any page on your site as long as it is on topic. It also offers a few good tools to optimize for MS-Bot, works well for us.

[le_gber]

For those of you who know this directory, if I was to take the second option (3 sites 10 URLs) could I have 2 sites sharing 2 links each and the last one 6 - its a site with six clear separate subjects?

Also if I can't submit 3 sites and 10 url will they be kept in account or will I loose them?

Thanks

Leo

[Uber_SEO]

...or they refuse you entry if your site uses a CMS and the homepage redirects to an internal page. Again, this is something that affects loads of sites, and there's not much you can do about it. They'll still take your money though.

MSN Dude - if you have any influence over the directory, is there any chance that you could look into these issues?

[le_gber]

The only problem with them is that if your site has duplicate URLs (www.widget.com & www.widget.co.uk),

Uber_SEO what do you mean?

CMS and the homepage redirects to an internal page

are you talking about sites that when you type www.widget.com it goes to
www.widget.com/html/start.html

Leo

[Uber_SEO]

Sorry le_gber, I could've worded that a bit better. If you have two domains, and both point to the same content, then MS won't enter you into your site into the directory. I'm not sure what the reasoning behind this is, but I think it's a bit harsh.

"are you talking about sites that when you type www.widget.com it goes to www.widget.com/html/start.html"

Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

[crobb305]

Have any of you noticed a correlation between being listed in bCentral, and your MSN search rankings?

[anallawalla]

I took up the $49 plan which is fine, but not one of my 10 URLs get past their validator (even though the W3C validator gives them a pass). Their support people sent me a boilerplate email asking exactly what I was doing and then did not reply.

I think that this entire service is outsourced to one person somewhere in Asia, or so it seems. :)

[Uber_SEO]

Is everyone aware that Microsoft automatically renews your listing once your years subscription runs out.

I contacted support to tell them that I don't wish to renew one of my sites. Their response was that due to security reasons, I had to phone them up to cancel my subscriptions. For some reason, the .NET Passport login is not secure enough to allow you to cancel subscriptions.

This seems like Microsoft are trying to get money out of people by making it as hard as possible for people to end a subscription.

With the number of sites that I have listed in their directory, it becomes a real pain to have to phone them all the time that I don't want to renew.

How about just not auto-renewing (like most other directories), or giving you a feature in the user area to not renew your subscriptions?

[blend27]

Uber_SEO

------How about just not auto-renewing (like most other directories)---

For lots of the people it is a convenient way to keep their site listing up and not worry.

How about just keeping on track for the particular site. It is better to be renewed and keep the listing than get dropped and start all over, don't you think. I don’t know if MS Listing passing PR, but I have a site listed there and the page on MS Central has a PR of 3. It has 11 links to my site with the text links I want. I am pretty sure there many others that will agree.

[le_gber]

that's why I tought there was a catch, PR Passing (from PR5 & PR4 page - I think it passes pr the link are hard coded in a <a href> ) higly targetted key phrase to inner pages of your site, only $49 or lower if you take more listing ... and noone is talking about it.

Leo