Forum Moderators: mack
There are no plans yet to roll the changes back, sorry :)
You have nothing to apologise for.
MSN Search needs quality results more than us humble web masters. :-)
Maybe the SE's should practice what they preach to us webmaster's and concentrate on "off page factors".
Why in the world would a SE want to go for off page factors? IMHO it's the exact opposite of what a SE should look for... That's like suggesting that white hat webmasters should stop writing good copy and concentrate on things like building links.
Ideally, the SE should be able to read an article just like a human being. That is what will keep searchers coming back - when they can read the information they are looking for and the best results are on top. In the end CONTENT will be king - trust me.
That's why we hate spammers and scrapers - because of the on page content that is tricking the SE into believing the copy is what the searcher is looking for.
Does the average person care about "off-page" factors? Quite frankly, they are just as easy to manipulate as "on page" factors.
I think in terms of quality and catching up to Google this latest index is huge step forward for MSN.
You missed my point...
I think it is ridiculous that SE's rely on off page factors for ranking pages.
I was being sarcastic...if they apply it to us...why not themselves?
The IQ of MSN search has just dropped to the remedial, special needs level. I give this update a big fat "F" so far.
My pages are ranking very similar on MSN now to where they are in Google.
I think in terms of quality and catching up to Google this latest index is huge step forward for MSN.
What category are you in? Care to sticky me a sample search term? Hard to believe what your saying given what I am seeing in the multiple categories that I watch.
And it's also hard to imagine anyone thinking that MSN is close to Google. As I mentioned in a previous post, MSN has yet to catch title changes that were made over a month ago. Google on the other hand has caught a title change made 2 days ago and does this on a regular basis.
It is my opinion MSN has a long way to go before they are even close to Google, or even Yahoo for that matter.
Honestly, I can't imagine how you can even concieve of how a search engine should work. Off page factors should account for the vast majority of ranking criteria, and it would just be plain ridiculous if this wasn't so. On page factors, when graded by a bot, should be of smaller consequence. "I walked to school" and "school walk I to" offer the same on page, but one is useless gibberish.
On page can show relevance, but relavance is a very distant second to quality. A page that says Millard Fillmore is President of the US could rank well for president searches, which would be stupid.
It seems some of the few folks who liked the garbage MSN has been putting up don't like the changes, but I can't see how anyone could genuinely not see the improvement here. As stated above, quality sites are now mixing with six or seven pieces of junk on each page. That is a huge step forward. If you could wave your pixie wand and make the dreck disappear, the results would be decent. (Perhaps a problem might be some areas not previously spammed are now being targeted.)
Clear improvement, still not very good, but better.
Do you think they are using the same algo?
I think the difference is due to MSN's geotargetting (based on ISP location).
My site is hosted in the US but aimed at the UK market - i'm top 10 in msn.com but nowhere in msn.co.uk
If you type in "bicycles" in the UK and you would expect to learn about bicycles relevant to the UK and maybe stores online that sell bicycles in the UK.
If you are in the US you likely would not want to see stores that are selling bikes in the UK.
The differences will vary based on the term you search for. For certain terms the country you are searching from does not really matter.
Do people find that the differences are too extreme or off base?
Hope this helps.
- msndude
I am not seeing much spam and I think the balance between on and off page factors seems pretty good... For me, msn has just gone another step toward closing the gap with google on relevancy.
Plus no sandbox, go msn!
Do people find that the differences are too extreme or off base?
The geotargetting idea is good but i'm not convinced ISP location is the most indicative measure of actual target audience - I should be able to choose my hosting based on price, uptime and speed. How about looking for on-page factors such as currency symbols, language ('ise' versus 'ize'), phone numbers, zip/post codes etc.
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In the sectors I watch, several competitors have gone out of business and have devoted their websites to a totally different subject. Used to sell widget and now their websites are devoted to fly elephants for instance. At present these websites are enjoying top 15 rankings and not a single keyword related to widgets. It's only because there are text links pointing to these websites. This is because originally dmoz catagoried them for widgets. Is this not a flaw in weighting off page factors over actual on page content?
In the real world websites change ownership and subject matter all the time. Overly relying on off page factors is that which would come from the mind of an idealist...not a realist.
What I mean't to say, is that SE's (especially google) is out of balance in this regard. Do I have to remind you of other off page factors that have a negative influence on relevant serps? ie; multiple variations of 302 hijacks, scrapers stealing PR, etc? Furthermore, off page factors can be much easier manipulated with seo than actual on page content.
I agree off page factors should be considered, but not at the expense of actual on page content.
So counter argument would be; then you buy lots of links... no cos you can count class C ip's instead of URL's. I think Google is holding back on the IP count a little and its finding ways around oldpros above points.... Ok yes I am an idealist but you have to agree this argument is going around in circles :)
Solution?:
Zeal the largest human edited web pages (dmoz only lists sites and sections) is an opportunity missed by MSN IMO. Use Looksmart to do a search for any product or entertainment review and you get a good set of alternative results from Zeal NOT price comparison websites without reviews! Human edited web directory of pages by a large amount of paid moderators would help rank sites better (Ok you get a little corruption but not in Zeal becuase the way its run!)
THEN a Search Engine should use on page factors for validating the content (oldpro point solved?)
agreed, but this does not seem to be the practice currently employed by SE's. Maybe the inventory of websites exceed the processing/crawling capacity of the collective SE's and alot is falling through the cracks.
For my industry and keyword you can get a good view of all the best sites if you look at the top 20 of both Google and MSN together. In other words, MSN picks up some good sites that Google leaves out, for whatever reason, and visa versa.
I think MSN is on the right track. My only complaint is that the traffic is so very low.
The good news:
more of my pages are in the index though--finally.
Honestly, I can't imagine how you can even concieve of how a search engine should work.
You can't imagine how I could conceive... uh, thanks. And remember, i before e, except after c...
On page factors, when graded by a bot, should be of smaller consequence. "I walked to school" and "school walk I to" offer the same on page, but one is useless gibberish.
You need to expand your mind a bit about technology's capabilities. It's too closed.
On page can show relevance, but relevance is a very distant second to quality. A page that says Millard Fillmore is President of the US could rank well for president searches, which would be stupid.
You need to think of a better example... You mean like:
"The year is 1850 and Millard Fillmore is President of the US..."
It couldn't possibly be more inept in most cases. It's mindboggling that MSN would think "geometry" results should be targeted based on where a server is located.
MSndude, if you want to make a local shopping engine, then do that. If you want to make a search engine that doesn't humiliate Microsoft, then return results based on quality.
The results have been dead awful partly because the vast majority of searches have zero server-location importance, and the sooner MSN extracts its head from its nether regions and realizes the world's information shouldn't be pigeon-holed over an overly desperate desire to sell widgets, the sooner they might be taken seriously. As it is, despite the fact that every website I have relates exactly equally to someone in London, New London and New South Wales, MSN deliberately, directly chooses to not rank these pages based on quality or relevance. It's just plain dumb.
That's just plain silly. Obviously on page factors can be manipulated easier than anything. In fact, you can even just copy another page.
"Is this not a flaw in weighting off page factors over actual on page content?"
It isn't perfect, but that isn't saying anything. Off page factors define quality. On page factors offer no ability to judge quality and value.
"You need to expand your mind a bit about technology's capabilities. It's too closed."
Um, no. You need to not think so simply. Generation of text is not so simple.
Worse although I'm UK based with my site hosted in the UK I'm seeing certain keywords rank HIGHER on seach.msn.com than search.msn.co.uk. Also I see some keyword searches drop in rank if I switch ON the "Only from UK" check box. What is going on!?!
Whats ironic is that my new MSN ranks now are roughly where my G ranks where a couple of months ago. I came out of the G sandbox on the last update and now my G results for the same set of keyword phrases are mostly top 5 i.e my rankings have swapped across the two SE's!
Well at least now I get good G results I can now play with the big boys and leave my childhood friend MSN behind :-)
Well I threw up a two page site about a certain tourist attraction and it is already number 2 of 6 million results for msn.com
The people that seem most upset and critical are the people who have lost ground. Surprise surprise!
The people that seem most upset and critical are the people who have lost ground. Surprise surprise!
Excuse me we are not THAT shallow! I am sorry but this point has also been made before. Many of my sites rank much better in MSN than G and its only looking at wider sectors I can see blatant rubbish results eg "jobs" example.
Its not about lost positions. Any site with over 10,000 pages can quickly see that the new algo is not right.
A dynamic page rich in topic about the search term will rank under a static page with little content about it providing that static page carries the search term in the url string.
Likewise other static pages on a site will rank higher than other more relevent pages just because of this one factor.
This is why sites like Autotrader dont rank for a search on Cars or why Redgoldfish doesnt rank for a search on Jobs despite both having high levels of relevent content.
Add to this fact keyword stuffing in the title, meta desrciption and url string and the site comes out top.
Hence why number 1 for the search term Job is a software company that writes programs. The page title has Job in it as it relates to a page on their site about writing a job site program, the meta description mentions Job in it and the url string ends /job_packages.html - The sites about computer software not about finding a job!. Case proven!
Looking at the majority of results now, this is very clear and is the same for all sectors.
Spam is king on msn now, quality content sites are down as a result.
I would go as far as to say that if i wanted to sell say, cheap videos all i would need to do is create loads of pages on my site ending in /popular-search-term.html with the popular search term at the start of the title and about 16 times in the meta description and the site would rank top 10 everywhere. People wouldnt get the result they wanted as on page would be about my videos not the search term but i would certainly get visitors looking at my video stock! - This is what spammers do!
Finally, webmasters complain about googles sandbox but one thing in its favour, like it or not it, is that it stops spam driven throw away domains ranking at the top of their SERPS. This is another problem msn now have!
The results were 1000 times better prior to this update.
The people that seem most upset and critical are the people who have lost ground. Surprise surprise!
then to follow your logic...
the people who are saying this update is great are the one's whose sites ranked poorly before and now have risen to the top of the serps. surprise surprise.
we are looking at this objectively...look beyond your own little corner of the www and use msn as a searcher. it looks like junkyard.
That's just plain silly. Obviously on page factors can be manipulated easier than anything. In fact, you can even just copy another page.
For those of you who remember, this was Excite in '99. Simply copy a page, switch out the keywords and bam, #1 in 2 days. An engine that ranks based on on page factors alone is dead before it even starts indexing. As a matter of fact, on page factors count for little to next nothing now.
Example: I have a page about TV's and with some decent inbound link text, I can move this page to the top 10 for modems all day long.
