changing # of pages listed

[Robber]

Heres the scenario, one of our sites had a small number of pages listed in MSN (ink), a while back when ink did there major update (perhaps a couple of months ago now) the number of pages included in the search results rose about 1000% - thats a big change. This led to a noticeable change in traffic, about 1000 uv per day. Since then the number of pages indexed has been gradually diminishing by about 25% every so often since, total loss now about 75%. No structural changes at all.

I have seen ink doing this sort of thing before but on a smaller scale - anyone else had this or got explanations? Could it be that pages in the index that dont get hit get purged? That would seem a little drastic. Or could it be that Slurp cant dig through a whole site quickly enough with shorter update cycles.

Lastly, anyone think it could be that ink are trying to tempt people into the PFI scheme by showing potential traffic and then dropping pages?

[seth_wilde]

I haven't heard a definitive answer for this.. But I do have my own theory :) In early August Ink did a major update that included a lot of previous unindexed free content.. I think this was part of Inks courtship ritual with Yahoo (they wanted to show Y! that they aren't completely commercial). The only problem was that this really pissed of the people who were paying because they saw a considerable loss of traffic. I think Ink is now in the process of slowly backtracking to appease their paying customers.