Who is handling MSN searches now?

[ultramed]

Has INKTOMI lost the MSN search business? I just noticed that the pages I had submitted disappeared from MSN after being in excellent first page positions for the past year.

Would appreciate a reply to my email as I may not monitor the list.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

Gil

[agerhart]

Inktomi's results are still used within MSN Search, but after Looksmart's listings. Many people have experienced losing positions and free pages after going the paid route.

Did you originally pay for the submissions, or were your pages included for free initially?

[ultramed]

Thanks for your reply re. MSN's search engine.

We paid and had excellent
positions until about a week or so ago.

Does this mean we have to pay again?

This REALLY sucks.

[edited by: agerhart at 2:36 pm (utc) on Oct. 2, 2002]
[edit reason] deleted specifics [/edit]

[agerhart]

No, you won't have to pay again. What you need to do is analyze the pages that are ranking well for your desired keywords, re-optimize your pages, and work on link popularity. You may also want to check what listings appear first in the MSN search: "Web Directory Sites" or "Web Pages"?

[korkus2000]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com] ultramed,

Inktomi recently had an update where their algo seemed to change a lot. They have set out to have a much more relevent [webmasterworld.com] database. They are updating about every 3 to 4 weeks. I have seen huge swings in their algo during these major updates.

[thejenn]

Ditto that. There has been a huge shift in the algo over at Ink. I've seen some pretty wild fluctuation in listings that had been stable for months. I don't think it's out of the question that there will be another shake-up next month as they continue to fine tune things into the "new" algo.

Be interesting to see what happens. I assume the idea is to improve the algo, clean out some spam, and use the better results to build some more partnerships outside of MSN.

[ultramed]

I spoke with Tech Support and they said INKTOMI went from a 600 Million data base to a 2 Billion page one at the end of August and attributed the change in placement to that. He suggested I change my page......BUT I have all of my key pages listed on the first page of Google and I'm damned if I am going to change anything that might effect my Google listings. I enjoyed Page one placement on the Inktomi data base for years and wonder what else is going on with this loser. I think their stock was down to 25 cents yesterday. Wonder if they will be around for long? Any news on Ink's financial situation?

Thanks

[edited by: agerhart at 5:02 pm (utc) on Oct. 2, 2002]
[edit reason] deleted specifics [/edit]

[Mohamed_E]

> I spoke with Tech Support and they said INKTOMI went from a 600 Million data base to a 2 Billion page one at the end of August and attributed the change in placement to that.

At some time they decided that they had to include more pages (for free) if they wanted to stay relevant. As a result my site when from essentially 0% traffic from MSN to around 12% of SE traffic. Though I am obviously delighted, I can clearly see the unfairness of it.

For an example of someone else whose traffic went down drastically (though much earlier than the inclusion of free listings) see the post on Inktomi (PositionTech) PFI Performance Report [webmasterworld.com].

[Axacta]

Well I don't get it. Up until a few weeks ago my site ranked #1 or #2 for the previous 6 months on MSN. Now it has dropped to #35 even though it ranks #6 on Inktomi and #3 on Looksmart. It is a free listing on Inktomi, and on Looksmart through Zeal - could this have something to do with it?

[ultramed]

Our key pages were all within the first 10 listings previous to
the changes in INK's database. They have literally disappeared since INK made the changes to their system, database or whatever.

We are on the first page of GOOGLE or within the top 15 or so listings under all of our key topics so I don't believe there is anything wrong with our pages.

Some of the pages that are way ahead of us now in placement are totally irrelevant to the subject and there is nothing that I can find to determine why.

Gil

[thejenn]

It's possible that in the massive push to expand the SIZE of the database, the relevancy of the SERPS will suffer. (Hopefully temporarily)

The idea may have been to get as much in there as they could this month and then to start sorting it all out. I imagine there will continue to be shakeups in the SERPS through to the end of the year.

Not the way I would have planned the expansion, but that's the best guess I can give as to what happened.