My site ranks very well on Google, but MSN seems to be penalyzing it because it ranks much lower for my prime KW. I've been pretty careful about the OOP aspect, but have used several <Hx> tags with the keyword in them. Has anyone else noticed similar differences between the two sites?

Mate, quite honestly, it is normal. If you rank well in Google, then you won't do so well in Yahoo / MSN and vice versa. There are methods to counter this and achieve similar rankings across all. They are generally just called, great SEO.

I think people are too quick to call bad rankings a penalty. You should look at rankings as a sum of parts. Certain algorithms weight different things differently.

On page factors can only go so far to improve rankings
http://chriseo.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=62&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
and then at some point links become the driving factor

The best way to rank well in all engines is to build a site that naturally inspires inbound links and help boost that by getting whatever other links you can.

I think people are too quick to call bad rankings a penalty. You should look at rankings as a sum of parts. Certain algorithms weight different things differently.

On page factors can only go so far to improve rankings
http://chriseo.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=62&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
and then at some point links become the driving factor

The best way to rank well in all engines is to build a site that naturally inspires inbound links and help boost that by getting whatever other links you can.

Yes MSN uses a different alogorythm and is enough of a difference to warrant the extra work.
Try looking at sites that can be found ranking well for both sites. Remember MSN is using Inktomi and even a few stray LookSmart listings... look for the impact of paid inclusion and a comparison to Yahoo results.
I don't have an Inktomi optimizing link handy but it is covered in SEW... so look around at the nav bar to the left.

Remember MSN is using Inktomi and even a few stray LookSmart listings... look for the impact of paid inclusion and a comparison to Yahoo results.
I don't have an Inktomi optimizing link handy but it is covered in SEW... so look around at the nav bar to the left.

Right now they are using Inktomi results, but they will not be coming up here very shortly. The MSNbot has been a busy little devil from what I have seen and heard from others. Right now those indexed pages are not included in the MSN Search results.

Also, why do the work to optimize for Inktomi when you know that MSN is going to change the landscape pretty soon anyway? And nobody knows exactly what those changes are going to be when they do cut loose of those Inktomi results and show the world their definition of an algorithm (which may stink, may not, nobody knows). Best to sit tight and save yourself some time and headache.

Right now they are using Inktomi results, but they will not be coming up here very shortly. The MSNbot has been a busy little devil from what I have seen and heard from others. Right now those indexed pages are not included in the MSN Search results.

Also, why do the work to optimize for Inktomi when you know that MSN is going to change the landscape pretty soon anyway? And nobody knows exactly what those changes are going to be when they do cut loose of those Inktomi results and show the world their definition of an algorithm (which may stink, may not, nobody knows). Best to sit tight and save yourself some time and headache.

As Alec Baldwin so eloquently put it in "GlenGary GlenRoss"..
ABC... Always Be Closing

I love when people say they are waiting... just means my job in the short term is less competitive. I will take the potential 10s of thousands of hits anyone does not want for a month or two.

I find that optimized-for-Google pages often do well on MSN, but if close attention is not paid to the on page factors they will drop on MSN.

I remember seeing a post by Makemetop on MSN optimization at SEW last year that was spot on (as Barry usually is).

I find that optimized-for-Google pages often do well on MSN, but if close attention is not paid to the on page factors they will drop on MSN.

I remember seeing a post by Makemetop on MSN optimization at SEW last year that was spot on (as Barry usually is).

Okay will have to reread that and see....

anyone dare to venture a guess at what they expect to see?

Amazingly, even with the changes on Yahoo/Ink - there hasn't been really any change on optimising for MSN/Ink since I wrote that article. I do the same, wack them in Sitematch and get first page listings more often than not first time around.

Now, if only Google were that easy!

Can someone define over optimization for me? Wouldn't that be spam?

I thought over optimization was just a post Florida wives tale. I still remember when people were dropping their links pages left and right and writing all their link partners to take them off etc etc all under the name of over optimization.

Just curious how it's being defined now :)

I thought over optimization was just a post Florida wives tale.
I think so too but I have seen examples of what people call "over-optimizing" to be where they use the keyword or phrase they are trying to target too much of they place sentences and paragraphs in every alt attribute or something along those lines. I don't think there is such a thing as "over-optimizing" however. I think you can definitely over do something but to call it "over-optimizing" ... I don't know.

Why can't it be called like "crappy seo" then. LOL :D just kidding.

I say the best rule of thumb is to optimized like a drunk guy would. Don't leave a pattern.

Atleast thats how I see it.

I think if you can tell an SEO did the page you've failed.

Why can't it be called like "crappy seo" then. LOL :D just kidding.

I say the best rule of thumb is to optimized like a drunk guy would. Don't leave a pattern.

Atleast thats how I see it.

I think if you can tell an SEO did the page you've failed.

I always optimize like a drunk person... since I am very rarely sober!

See there ya go I bet you have some good success :D

If people haven't noticed Google and other search engines can pick out patterns pretty quick. When everyone and their mom had a page called links.html Google knew it was time to get tougher on what counted as a good backward link.

If there is a rule sheet for doing SEO and out ranking sites in competition with yours then you'll know that those techniques will be depreciated in the next round of updates. Google says clearly Don't try and game our system. I'm sure Yahoo and MSN feel the same way.

Google takes it more to the extreme by making up their own rules for the internet and ignoring the W3C standard. That's why my test pages I have out there have Italic tags out weighing h1 tags for the same term.

Why would Google do that? Because for years the first rule was optimize your Title, metas, and h1 tags put your main keyword in all of them yada yada. You could make pages rank all day in G if you followed those terms even with little bit of link pop. That's why people that still go by that rule are dominating Y! instead of G LOL. Yahoo ranks pages like Google did a year ago :D

You can get your sites to rank for both just make sure you have good semantics and heavy duty link pop for Google. and Good title metas and h1 and h3 tags for Inktomi fed engines. Just mix it all up though don't make it a pattern. have some pages that aren't 100% by the book optimized. The more the merrier.

by the way here is the test I was talking about. It's the same keyword placed in different tags to see what is promminent. Notice that an h1 doesn't even rank. pretty fun test (http://www.google.com/search?q=maxiummperformanced&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0)

One thing complicating MSN and Yahoo is that while they are both using the same core search engine, Yahoo Search Technology, Yahoo appears to be doing things differently on its own site.

In particular, it looks like Yahoo may be hitting a larger database on its own site than those its powers are allowed to hit. These partners include MSN or Yahoo-owned AltaVista and AllTheWeb, or Lycos-owned HotBot when using the "HotBot" button.

Consider these counts:

cars
YH - 71,900,000
ATW - 19,773,733
MSN - 15,692,974
AV - 15,670,590
HB - 15,496,939

oranges
YH - 2,330,000
AV - 639,415
ATW - 595,285
MSN - 497,477
HB - 492,864

The smaller numbers suggest a smaller database is being hit - shades of what used to happen back in the old days when we still had an Inktomi and it powered other people. The smaller database alone will produce ranking differences. Beyond this, Yahoo seems to be using ranking tweaks on its own site that partners may not be able to do.

Overall, I'd be wary of trying to optimize too much specifically for MSN. That's a moving target. At some point in the next six to nine months, we should see MSN's own crawler come into play. Instead, I'd focus more on doing well with Yahoo and hoping that some of that will also carry through on some of Yahoo-powered results at MSN.

In particular, it looks like Yahoo may be hitting a larger database on its own site than those its powers are allowed to hit. These partners include MSN or Yahoo-owned AltaVista and AllTheWeb, or Lycos-owned HotBot when using the "HotBot" button.


You know sometimes it appears that way. For instance, I can do the domain: query at MSN and it will not bring up nearly as many pages as the site: query at Yahoo will...not by a long shot. Again, it appears that MSN is working from a smaller set of pages to work with.

But, you can do certain queries at MSN and it will show results to pages that never were shown in that domain: query too. It could be that all of the sites have the same amount of pages to work with ... but they are working with different indices to those pages perhaps (or they are outdated).

by the way here is the test I was talking about. It's the same keyword placed in different tags to see what is promminent. Notice that an h1 doesn't even rank. pretty fun test (http://www.google.com/search?q=maxiummperformanced&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0)


that is extremely interesting and surprising to me. regardless of whether the tag got overused by SEO's or not, it's still a way that websites emphasize their terms -- and now google is ignoring emphasis? this is a natural way to emphasize something.

I find that very frustrating. engines should focus on ignoring the bad things that sites are doing for optimization, not the good things. hidden text, repeating phrases, etc etc, those are bad. emphasizing your phrases so the engines see what is most important on your page? that's not bad at all

Actually, the more I look at that test ... the more it looks wrong to me. It is actually not a valid test that I can see.

For one ... the Hx tags appear at the end of the document. In normal usage of Hx tags, they appear toward the beginning of sections of content.

Another problem with the test is that all of the document Titles are different ... in order to nullify the Title from influencing Body elements, the Title (and all other Head elements) should be exactly the same.

Dodger the entire point of the test was to NOT match a title and a tag. The test you are refering to with matching title and tag is here :) Another cool test (http://www.google.com/search?q=maxiummperformanceder&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0)

Once again you'll see that google likes to make up it's own rules when it comes to W3C promminence.

And might I add if you monitor these test like I have done. You'll see that they change around about every other week. They been up and indexed since January of this year. Some will drop out then come back. I would say the most promminent tag has been the Italic tag. Go figure...

Does this mean go change your page?? No

This was just a simple little test. It doesn't include linkpop or crosslinking etc etc. These pages only compete against themselves. I just wanted to see if Google was playing by the book or was making it's own rules.

Also wanted to prove the point that tags are a depreciated optimization zone when it comes to google. After reading the quote by GoogleGuy over in wmw where he stated that "certain things don't count as much anymore" in response to the updates late '03. I think these test hint to the veracity of his statement.

Matching Titles metas and hx tags have always been an optimization zone. and also and overly abused optimization zone. In G it's depreciated if you still believe that content is king. You might be interested to know that it's more like content is linkpops b***.

This is why people that have sites that do good in Yahoo but don't do good in Google.

Since Yahoo still scores pages well for title, meta, and h1 or h3 keyword promminence you can see why people that have that structure can compete quite well in yahoo. They only have a chance at google if they inflate their linkpop which IMHO is too easily abused.

The more I look at it though the more I understand how google messes with SEOs and the more they make their results prone to spam.

Dodger the entire point of the test was to NOT match a title and a tag.

No, I didn't miss the point ... you missed mine though. In order to make it a fair test -- all parts of the document need to be exactly the same. Not one Title in either of your tests were identical. That was the point I was making.

Everything inside of the HEAD tags should be identical. There should have been some substanstial text content on the page also (maybe 100 words or so, exactly the same). A dozen words with one element on the page does not cut it in my book as qualitative test. You cannot base your findings on a miniscule amount of content where the only shining element was the one of test elements itself.

Also, in order for the test to be fair ... ALL elements need to be present on the same document, then float the test term between them. It will be easy to identify which element the term is inside of just by looking at the filename.

Once again you'll see that google likes to make up it's own rules when it comes to W3C promminence.

Neither test proved that to me. If anything, it proved that your documents were not well formed and Google shown preference to one of the lower elements (H5 in your second example.) because if I were an SE and saw an H1 element at the end of a document, I would think it was spam. Headings usually appear at the top (unless you are in Oz, then they are on the bottom ...hehehe).

It doesn't include linkpop or crosslinking etc etc. These pages only compete against themselves. I just wanted to see if Google was playing by the book or was making it's own rules.

In order for Google to pick up on these pages, there had to be linking of some sort for them to find them. What was the order of those links? I would also imagine that you have published that search link more than once, that has an effect on outside link popularity too.

Crosslinking of the pages would have leveled outside influences, for it will spread the PR amongst them a little more evenly and help minimize the effect of the one document you had links coming in from.

Also wanted to prove the point that tags are a depreciated optimization zone when it comes to google. After reading the quote by GoogleGuy over in wmw where he stated that "certain things don't count as much anymore" in response to the updates late '03. I think these test hint to the veracity of his statement.

I take everything that GG says with a grain of salt, just like I take everything that Tim Mayer of Yahoo says with a grain of salt. In both cases their statements usually leave you with more questions and are open to interpretation more than being anything definitive. They both use words like "more than likely", "I would suppose", etc.

In the statement you just provided, it does not say that it "does not count it out entirely" either.

This is why people that have sites that do good in Yahoo but don't do good in Google.

...and vice-versa, and sometimes you do well in both. Hell, I can come across cases where people are doing well in both and MSN.

Since Yahoo still scores pages well for title, meta, and h1 or h3 keyword promminence you can see why people that have that structure can compete quite well in yahoo. They only have a chance at google if they inflate their linkpop which IMHO is too easily abused.

Both have their merits, both have their faults. Yahoo, is easily spammed IMO. And if it's ability to effectively crawl the web sucks too. It's spider is brain dead, while Google is more than a spider -- it is a scraper of content and does it well.

The more I look at it though the more I understand how google messes with SEOs and the more they make their results prone to spam.

I agree on GG maybe messing with your head a little, but I can see with all the interpretations of what GG says by others messing with your head even more. Sometimes it is best to look at what he is NOT saying, rather than what he actually says. As for the spame part...see the above.

Funny thing is I've bounced these tests off of a lot of successful SEOs and you're the only one that thinks this way.

This isn't the gospel truth nor were they meant to be. They're a sample of it.

Ever hear of duplicate content penatly? These things were indexed and didn't show up for 3 months until I changed the head tags.

So I guess the testing isn't a 100% perfect. Show me a test that is when it gets down to it they don't need to be 100% these results have shuffled and shuffled. Main thing is in all that shuffling I've seen h3,bold,italics,titles and yes even an h1 take the top rank. BUT they don't ever stick.

I take GG's words with a grain of salt too and that is why I did these test. To see if something was up with tag promminence. Why tags? Because that's the frist thing people are told to do when they start asking about optimizing their site.

In all the tests I've done that I don't put in public fora that are more in depth they all show the same results. "Tag promminence doesn't amount to jack crap anymore" they've been deprciated like meta tags have.

I don't care if you believe my tests or not. So how about a real life example. Hmmm let's pick a hard term. Oh like this one search engine optimization (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=search+engine+optimization)

Notice that listing #2 doesn't have a single hx tag on the entire front page. point proven. Thank you. All it needed was a few thousand links. Funny thing is the only way SEO inc could beat them and get back to rank 1 was to out link them. That's why their ad is on this site and many others

Right now they could take their whole site down and put up a flash presentation with no text and they're still own rank 1. :D ;)

Which means they've tainted googles results and/or gamed them.

I take it you have a vested interest in this battle for number 1 spot...
What you have imparted in information is that links work... the more and better the quality the stronger your results will become...
banners etc. are forms of links and contribute to your ranking.
So buying a link could be also done by buying banner placement.
Don't forget to add the title tag in the href tag!

True I think people get too wrapped up in algorithms google uses. After all I've seen I think it's a lot more simple then people make it out to be.

It's probably a simple sql statement like this "SELECT * FROM results WHERE..... ORDER BY linkpop DESC" LOL :D

True I think people get too wrapped up in algorithms google uses. After all I've seen I think it's a lot more simple then people make it out to be.

It's probably a simple sql statement like this "SELECT * FROM results WHERE..... ORDER BY linkpop DESC" LOL :D

I knew it was something underhanded... the nerve of them...

There's no such thing as 'over optimization'. I wouldn't worry about that as you'll be worrying about a red herring.

Too many SEOs lean too heavily on one "trick" and then sit back when they do well in Google. If their one technique for doing well doesn't also work in Yahoo then you'll see the results in your SERPs there. In fact, in this example you might be better off talking about under optimisation.

The MSN portals tend to be a closer match to either AltaVista or AlltheWeb; it depends which Country MSN Portal you're looking at. The .com MSN portal is slightly different again insofar it seems to have a sub-set of main Yahoo index. This actually makes sense. It's unlikely MSN have a live feed straight into the Yahoo database. Most likely there will be data warehousing, where MSN takes a copy of the database, or gains access to a newly ringfenced one, on a regular basis. Yahoo, with it's 2-day update, is likely to be larger than MSN at any given point. It also makes sense for Yahoo to have a model where clients like MSN can pay per update/pay per db size too.