Does anyone use MSN?

Great rank, bad visits

[ganderla]

I am ranked #1 for some really great words on MSN but, I am geting like 7 people a day from them. I do not get it. The Overture tool says that these words are searched for thousands of times a month. Shouldn't I expect more?
I know that this is not Overture, but shouldn't that give me a ballpark figure?

If something is searched for 1000 times a day and I am ranked #1, I better be getting more than 5 people a day clicking on that number 1 spot.

[larryhatch]

The only time I look at MSN search is to see if my site is ranking well or not.
If I want to browse for my own amusement or whatever, I'm off somewhere else. -L

[phantombookman]

It's dire in my area, I'm #1 for all my main sites key terms, great serps but no visitors.

Tesco referred more visitors than MSN yesterday!

[Marketing Guy]

Yeh, Im also getting fairly poor referrals from MSN. One particular keyword I get 100's from the number 1 spot on MSN and almost 10,000's in bottom 5 on Google(.com). Fairly broad keyword as well.

May take off a bit more as their marketing push gets into full swing though.

Scott

[Receptional]

Are people using tracking systems that properly identify referrals from MSN search? Presumably any tracking technology not upgraded since the new search went live may be missing referral string references?

[newsphinx]

Have a site included in Dmoz which ranks No3 for a keyphrase which got about 10,000 search in MSN. While it gives me less referers than DMOZ. Seems very few searchers use MSN search. M$ has to let more people know their search engine! :o

[BillyS]

Glad I am not alone on this one. I rank pretty well for some good phrases but get only a handful of visitors a day from MSN.

One thing I noticed is that sea.search.msn.com are still from Yahoo... Can be misleading even those these are from MSN, they are from Yahoo results.

[HenryUK]

according to Hitwise's stats for UK traffic the MSN search (search.msn.co.uk) is getting about 18% of the traffic that google.co.uk is getting. The .com versions of both are getting lower traffic than MSN (in the UK).

If traffic is proportionate to referrals and you do as well on each, then you could expect to be getting six times as much traffic from Google.

However, that doesn't take into account the different profile of users for each service; something about which I would only be guessing. Some have suggested that MSN search is less likely to pick up b2b users.

My own MSN referrals have doubled recently without any improvement in my SERPS that I can see, so perhaps traffic is improving? They are still only 10% of what I get from Google though.

[Rollo]

I also rank great in MSN and get virtually no referals.

I use AWStas and it's pretty clear, MSN has a much, much smaller share of the market currently than what we have been led to believe.

When Longhorn comes out, I'm sure this will change.

[tigger]

same here I'm in the top 5 for most of my keywords but I get more traffic from buried links pages than MSN

[1milehgh80210]

I read an article recently that stated that a much larger % of MSN (&Yahoo) users click on the sponsered SERP's vs. free SERPS. Compared to Google that is..

[nuevojefe]

It will vary greatly by industry.

[ncreegan]

There are good days and bad days with MSN. They're doing a lot to market their search right now, it's all over TV and the net.

The good days generally occur when MSN's online ad campaign has my keywords in the pre populated search box. If only we could find out what campaign was running when...

I believe the huge amounts of ads in the searches may be used to offset the huge cost that this method of generating searches is costing them. With that many ads, I imagine the search results are getting about 50-60% of the click throughs they'd normally see.

[SimmoAka]

However, that doesn't take into account the different profile of users for each service

HenryUK's point is very valid. One would have thought each SE has a very different effect in different markets. I'd be very surprised if MSN had a significant b2b share.

[steveb]

"M$ has to let more people know their search engine!"

They have to get a search engine first.

Or they can continue to spend millions on publicizing a steaming pile of doo-doo. Bill's choice.

[Beagle]

I'd be very surprised if MSN had a significant b2b share.

That might be extended to the entire commercial/commerce sector. I work with a number of medical researchers, and when this topic came up in discussion I did an extremely unscientific survey. Not quite a consensus, but the general pattern is to use MSN to find information, as it's better at getting specific matches for names and phrases. If someone's going to buy something, they're more likely to use google. (Although there are a small number who are so used to using MSN that I don't think they even realize other search engines exist.)

The researchers, of course, would add the disclaimer that this is only "anecdotal" evidence, and does not provide statistically significant results. ;-)

[budterm]

My rankings have dropped of late on MSN, so I don't have good current data.

Right after their beta was announced, I was on the first page and getting about a third the referrals as Google for comparable placement.

[artdeco]

I rank top for my topic in MSN though stats gives
Google 85%
Yahoo 14%
MSN 1%
PS:the same averages from other sites i have

[Jon_King]

I would have expected more promotion of their New Search. I've seen the same sort of traffic numbers for a couple of years here, 3-12% depending on which industry.

[jrs_66]

DOA

[imstillatwork]

I get quite a few orders from MSN seraches. I'll have to double check the data of completed orders and find out what search engine has the highest hit to purchse ratio...

[netmeg]

I used to get quite a bit of traffic from MSN Search, even after the new 'beta' went live.

Suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, I dropped off the face of the earth. MSNBot doesn't visit anymore (and if anything, it used to crawl too hard - but I never sent any complaint in or anything)

If I search for my url (blahblahblah.com) I get an old (cached) version of my index page. If I search for any keyword that used to work (my site is only about one thing, and was formerly first for pretty much every permutation of that one thing - as it currently is in Yahoo) I get nothing.

Now the weird thing is, if I use their tool to check to see if my site in the MSN index, it says it is not in the index.

I'm at a loss.

[petra]

I run a UK website with a server located in the US. I rank # 1 and 2 on all my key words with msn.com and hardly show up on msn.co.uk, go figure :O

[jamesa]

>> It will vary greatly by industry.

Yep. MSN is the top referrer in one niche I play in.

Demographics?

[imstillatwork]

demographics is it I think. People that buy a dell and leave all the default settings and pay extra for the msn services. I think they buy a lot of home decor stuff.

here are my general incoming % for search engines.

A quick guestemate from the last weeks orders would be msn makes about 25-35% or more of orders directly; search-browse-purchase.

Who knows how many searched and looked, then came back later. Makes it hard to tell, even with smarterstats reporting.

1 Google ------------ 41.8
2 Microsoft Network - 30.6
3 Yahoo! ------------ 18.2
4 AOL NetFind ------- 3.4
5 Overture ---------- 1.7
6 AltaVista --------- 1.1
7 CompuServe -------- 0.6
8 dogpile ----------- 0.6
9 dmoz -------------- 0.5
10 AllTheWeb -------- 0.3
11 Ask Jeeves ------- 0.3
12 Netscape --------- 0.3
13 Alexa ------------ 0.2
14 Lycos ------------ 0.2
15 WebCrawler ------- 0.2

[Pico_Train]

Yes, some people use MSN these days. Not that many but some. Recently traffic from MSN has increased so I am glad about that. But is it because their searches have gotten better, people digging deeper or spammers removed? Who knows.

[dazzlindonna]

It definitely is demographic based from what I can see. My tech-oriented sites get very little MSN traffic, But MSN sent over 9000 people to my new site today (family-oriented), so MSN is my new best friend. A hearty thanks to MSN!

[Natashka]

My english-language site doesn't get any visitors from msn, 1-2 ppl per day, though it ranks good on very competitive market - dating.

My other spanish-language site gets a lot of visitors from msn. Hispanic community just loves it, they use all Bill Gates features, like it's messenger, hotmail, search, but! They don't use msn.com, they use their own local msn's, for example:

[search.t1msn.com.mx...]

and these local msn's still use old good msn results, not the new beta one, which sucks!

[tictoc]

I run a UK website with a server located in the US. I rank # 1 and 2 on all my key words with msn.com and hardly show up on msn.co.uk, go figure :O

LOL

Sounds about right!

I do well on MSN but have sites that I cannot seem to get in there at all. I think the traffic from MSN is just as good as google and yahoo.

[RichTC]

Amazing,

I run a UK website and have top positions in MSN for many keywords yet see very low traffic from this search engine.

Meanwhile i have 10X the traffic from Google for keywords that are outside the top 10!

Perhaps its a UK thing but i find that MSN just doesnt have any clout at all in the UK -- Yet?

Regards

Rich