MSN Beta Search

Disappearing rankings

[cardpro]

Prior to the release of beta, I was on the front page for several keywords. After beta, I disappeared. I mean if I type in the name of my home page/business I can't be found. Still at the top in Yahoo. Neber have had enough links for google. Anybody got a handle on beta.
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[edited by: engine at 4:53 pm (utc) on Mar. 15, 2005]
[edit reason] See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[chopin2256]

How big is your site, and how many pages do you have? I rank ok on MSN. I used to get indexed quicker when my site was smaller. Now that my site is getting bigger, MSN indexes me slowly, and Google indexes me the next day or two.

I have a few problems with MSN myself. Some of my pages were dropped from the index for certain keywords (very non competitive) and I still cant figure out why. Google and Yahoo have those pages indexed and ranking, and I think those 2 search engines are a bit more reliable for a SEO to optimize for. MSN is still unpredictable, and it seems they are still experimenting.

To fix your problem, add more pages with keyphrases that you think you can rank well for, to see if they get indexed by MSN. The MSN bot seems to crawl right away, however there seems to be a little delay to get the page indexed.

Other than that, if nothing is working, I would work hard on building links for Google, if you are serious about your site. The work pays off in 7 months or so. Once you are on Google's good side, you will not even worry too much about MSN or even Yahoo.

[cleanup]

Could this have something to do with the geo-area targeting?

Remember if your site is .co.uk (say) and you are searching on MSN .com then you may not be found (very easily).

[cardpro]

Yea, I'm getting tired of messing with MSN. I rank very high on Yahoo, but don't have the links for google. Most of the links that are recognized by yahoo or msn don't show up as google links. What is google looking for in links that is different?

[chopin2256]

Google doesnt show all links, but it looks like your links are being picked up from MSN and Yahoo. This is good news.

In order to do well in google you need to be patient. If you started from scratch, like I did, you need to wait 7 or 8 months. This is ok, because you need that much time to market the site anyway. Once you are in google, forget MSN, and write for Google. Since Google is the hardest search engine to get into, when you do get in, you will automatically be picked up by MSN, Yahoo, and the other hybrids, and most likely rank well.

[mbush27]

Yes, I have also experienced problems with "disappearing rankings".

During the beta search, I was ranking 4th for my big keyword (a niche site), but when MSN went public, I dropped and then disappeared.

I currently show over 1,400 links in MSN, and my site is about 700 pages. I do very well in google, but I just looked at msn, and searching for the pages for my site by typing:

site: www.mysite.com

brings up 10 pages! My site is search engine friendly, because it does well in google, and decent in yahoo. What is going on? My site is about 1 year old.

Matt

[sugarrae]

>>>>Prior to the release of beta, I was on the front page for several keywords. After beta, I disappeared.

Well, the first important thing is that prior to MSN's new algo being released, it was a pseudo engine and used the Inktomi database. So, you were never doing well in MSN, you were doing well in Inktomi.

>>>>I mean if I type in the name of my home page/business I can't be found.

Well, that would probably mean msnbot hasn't found your site yet (if what you're saying is that you're not even indexed). Not that you have done anything wrong as far as their new algo.

>>>>Neber have had enough links for google.

If you don't have many links, than that's probably why msnbot hasn't found you yet. Get a few - the more frequently crawled (i.e. higher in the msn serps they are) the better.