Anybody know how MSN filters UK sites?

how come some .com sites appear in the results msn uk results?

[sullen]

I've noticed lately that search results from uk.search.msn.com differ wildly from those on search.msn.com (I mean the "web" search results from inktomi, not the sponsored listings)

As far as I can make out, some kind of geo-filtering seems to be going on. The UK search is quite similar to the generic .com one, but lots of sites are missing. Now the thing is, there doesn't seem to be any pattern in it. Most .co.uk sites remain in the results, yes, but so are many .com sites (some of them clearly US based).

Has anyone got any clues?

[makemetop]

MSN uses (if we are talking about the Web Page results) Inktomi's geo-targetting features. For naturally crawled results (or PFI pages) this gives an algo boost to sites that are in the appropriate region (.co.uk for the UK - etc.). However, if a site is deemed (through good external links) to be an "authority" site and/or is just plain very well optimised (where other sites are not) it will still rise up above local sites.

View the location algo boost as a "plus 10 points" factor. If it is also reasonably optimised it may wind up with a standard optimisation factor of 20 - plus 10 for being local, = 30 points. It will beat other sites which are less than 30 points. However, if a site has 35 points for optimisation and other off page factors - then it will beat the local site.

Note all these figures are for illustrative purposes only :)

But, hopefully, it will give you the idea.

[sullen]

That would explain it, thanks!

I was convinced it was an MSN thing...