Forum Moderators: mack
These SERPs are dominated by old-fashioned SEO sites.
I'm not impressed.
I'm with RichTC - all I see at the top of the SERPs I monitor is www.spamkeyword1-spamkeyword2-spamkeyword3.com.
These SERPs are dominated by old-fashioned SEO sites.I'm not impressed.
I'll second that - these results are absolutely pathetic. Certainly in the UK.
No sense of authority what so ever. Even the auto trader doesn't appear on car related searches!
A little bit of basic optimisation takes you straight to the top!
Major industry leading sites are nowhere to be found in SERPs. This is quite possibly the worst I have seen any search engine in the past few years.
These results give the impression that MSN is around 6 years behind Google etc. If not more as I always remember Google returning quality SERPs.
Shame because I thought they almost had it right before this update.
I think they will lose a lot of respect from UK searchers if this is the future of MSN Search in the UK. :-/
Shame because I thought they almost had it right before this update.
I'm sorry, but this update was a big step forward. MSN was clearly coming off beta before now and is a now a threat.
I'm with RichTC - all I see at the top of the SERPs I monitor is www.spamkeyword1-spamkeyword2-spamkeyword3.com.
Well isn't the MSN SE hitting on the words on which it should be hitting? If the searched for words are in the title of the URL, that's why they are showing up.
I'm seeing great results in the southern USA. A trace on [search.msn.com...] here shows the IP (DC I guess) is 69.45.79.158, but unlike G, you can't get to their search page by entering the IP in the address bar. I thought MSN may have a ton of different DC's like G, maybe they don't, or else they are not accessible by IP alone.
One thing I am noticing is the MSN SERP's are still changing every few hours, sometimes every few seconds.
What used to be before was much much more relevant and better.
For example, what I see number three with one keypharse in helth the page that opens is spam.
Number two result is articles about pets.
MSN do you see this?
[edited by: Receptional at 5:54 pm (utc) on June 24, 2005]
[edit reason] To avoid specifics [/edit]
perhaps to it's own survival :)
Or they need to add some other factors to the algo.
you guys should just left your SE alone ...your serps are really terrible now. i have been using msn search for a couple of months because google has gone downhill in terms of relevancy. but, now with about any query on msn i have to go beyond page 4 or 5 to get past the spam and find my answers.
yahoo has been doing some tweeking and it seems they are going to win this battle.
Yeah I'd have to agree with the general concensious in this thread. The current results in MSN have gotten worse, not better.
Concensus? You mean you agree with the complainers in this thread. My experience is that those most unhappy are most vocal. There are winners and losers with each search engine update. That's the game.
I've got at least three topics that I've written about - they are low search volume terms. No one bothered but me to write on these topics, but they fit with my site's theme. Google and Yahoo recognized this, but up until this update MSN's results in this area were poor.
The common idea that I get from here is that the new search algo is worse, why don't you go back to the old one, that was better, not because I may have a personal interest, but because I see lots of spam.
Or you could have left the old one why the new one is fully tested.
thank you
"Welcome to ***** Movies. We work in movies, we know about movies and just like you we love movies. So, please, use our site to find out about and buy the movies you want. From hot new releases to classics, we'll give you our honest opinion. "
With this sort of on-page optimisation MSN has a long way to catch up with Google. There is no way I am going to add words to editorial for the sake of Search Engines!
The problem for msn is that the better it gets the more like Google results it will show and what’s the point in that.
IMO MSN should have used Looksmart/Zeal combined with some like MSN version of Google news to give an alternative set of good results to Google.
I dont agree, our company has some great positions in the new and older MSN SERPS but we feel the results overall are now worse than ever.
In this forum if MSN staff are giving time to read feedback then we can give an objective view of the new SERPS. They are very poor now and this is because they are not relating to content rich on toppic sites.
For example. Do a search on the word Job (which is a massive keyword sector)on UK MSN and you find:-
1. Is a recruitment software company that has Job in the title and /product_job in the address bar. It doesnt feature one Job on the site because its a software company!
Top UK Job sites including Monster.co.uk , Redgoldfish.co.uk and Workthing.com dont feature in the top 20 and thats simply imo because the domain name doesnt have the word job in the string. Mixed in with the results are US Job sites that are obviously not relevent to the UK Job market.
Same for the word Jobs except they even include a nice cloaked page in position 10 that re-directs
Some very poor sites are listed - good SERPS should show good quality sites that are THE MOST RELEVENT to the search term.
Also the change to favour static pages over Dynamic means that some great on toppic results pages are not now listed whilst poorer static pages take their place.
Overall, the results were better before imo
This means that at least a human has looked at the site and confirmed it is relevent to the subject matter. If its a site about cars, it lists under cars, google knows its relevent to search requests relating to cars. Meanwhile a spam doorway page doesnt get in the directory in the first place and doesnt rank so high from a starting point.
Also, Google deep spider sites and hence bring into the index relevent pages that are the best match. Meanwhile MSN ranks some of our pages higher for some keywords than pages that are more relevent.
What should we webmasters expect?
I'm sorry, but this update was a big step forward. MSN was clearly coming off beta before now and is a now a threat.
Currently MSN Search in the UK is certainly not a threat.
In fact they are down by 0.6% market share on the 18th of June 2004. One year on and less market share.
In terms of users Google UK are out performing MSN Search UK by almost 500%. Goodness knows how much of an advantage Google has with regards to outbound traffic delivered to sites.
I accept the opinion that MSN might be trying to provide different results from Google, however I fail to see how these SERPs are going to anything but drive users away.
In my opinion if people can't find what they want they'll just go back to Google, Yahoo! etc.
Surely at this stage in MSN's battle with other SEs it's all about user retention?
Market share information and user statistics from Hitwise
I have always thought that Google's sole reliance on the spotty DMOZ product for its directory was a big mistake.
Human review is one thing, but DMOZ has stated time and again that their directory does not attempt to be comprehensive, but merely representative. In other words, they do not and can not list all releveant sites and consider a category to be complete if it merely contains a few good sites.
This leaves many good websites out in the cold and can not be a basis for a comprehensive search of information of the web.
steveb said it best -- this MSN update scores well for on page relevancy factors but needs to have the authority knob turned up a bit. Incoming links analysis or a combination of Looksmart/Zeal data would do nicely, for a start anyway.
We encourage you to use our feedback report to tell us about spam. [support.msn.com...]
If you are spamming us (using black hat techniques) and want to tell on your buddy who is ranking higher than you, that is great. If you are using legitimate techniques then telling us about spam will also be helpful for you and for us.
- msndude
I find it pleasantly ironic that the biggest search engine on the planet, the one that used to be the fastest to update its indexes still hasn't done so.
What next? is Inktomi paid inclusion coming back!
Glynmusica
ps. still a bit of oldskool gaming left in SEO yet.
I think one of the improvements may be a reduced reliance on the sheer numbers of links, and either greater focus on the topical relevance of the inbound links, and/or greater emphasis on other aspects of their algorithms.
I accept the opinion that MSN might be trying to provide different results from Google, however I fail to see how these SERPs are going to anything but drive users away.
To add to this point...
Logic would assume that there would be very little variation in the serps of the major search engines if all achieved perfect relevancy. Maybe the SE's should practice what they preach to us webmaster's and concentrate on "off page factors".
MSN and Yahoo have the competive edge with off page stuff like free email, chat, their group forums are more popular than google.
msndude...strive for relevancy, don't try to offer different serps just to be different than google or yahoo in that regard. You have them beat in all other areas.
MSN have screwed up badly and its not cos my place of work ranks poorly (my own sites rank really well).
[edited by: Johan007 at 4:25 pm (utc) on June 24, 2005]
Google is a bunch of SE algo geeks. To them, "robots do it better". Google never had any desire to go into the directory game, like Yahoo. The only reason Google has a copy of the ODP is it is a freebie. And, Google has now buried their directory so there are no longer any direct links on the home page. To Google, dmoz.org is just another website. The only effect dmoz.org has on Google is that it picks up PR from the links to it from the Google directory. However, dmoz.org has TONS of links to it. Dmoz.org would have solid PR even if Google totally dropped its directory.
