Msn unlike others

[asherwood]

Hi, new here, but already gainned so much useful information

Current site is ranked high within google and yahoo, but msn just doesnt seem to like it at all, anyone got any advice to why this could be, and what are the best things to do to improve this.

Thanks
Scott

[Receptional]

Scott, Welcome.

I really would not worry about the current MSN results if you have a site not yet ranking in MSN. The launch of their new technology, whilst not neccessarily imminent (though many reckon it's ready) is certainly soon enough to ignore the existing MSN serps from a strategic point of view unless you are already there.

What you should concentrate on is the new beta (http://beta.search.msn.com) and see how you will be faring in that index. The rules for that are new to us all, so presumably you can learn as fast as anyone else. That said, there seem to be some pretty close overlaps in theory.

However, just to be complete in replying, the current MSN results are a subset of the Yahoo ones. There is an occassional filter on MSN, but in general the results do not change much. I have been feeling that of late, MSN has not been getting an updated index from Yahoo, but can only postulate as to why.

Dixon.

[Marcia]

Welcome to SEW Forums, Dixon!

I have been feeling that of late, MSN has not been getting an updated index from Yahoo, but can only postulate as to why.
I've had some pages that seem to have been updated quicker in MSN than Yahoo for some reason recently, and those appear to be faring better at MSN than Yahoo by far. The most obvious reason would be different weight being given with regard to inbound links.

That said, there seem to be some pretty close overlaps in theory.
I've been wondering about this a lot, in fact a bit concerned over it. Are you saying that there may possibly be some correspondence in how sites are being scored in the MSN subset and the ranking criteria for the new MSN search?

[Receptional]

Hiya Marcia - good to banter again :D

Marcia said: Are you saying that there may possibly be some correlation in how sites are being scored in the MSN subset and the ranking criteria for the new MSN search? (I assume you meant correlation)

No, I wasn't saying anything so clever. Merely saying that MSN beta seems to have learnt a lot from Google's way of ranking sites and has used many of these proncipals in their new algorithms, so an SEO will not be learning from scratch.

If you are seeing an uncanny resemblence between MSN current and MSN Beta then Marcia, I am pretty sure that if you delete your cookies on MSN, you'll go back to different results. What has been happening is that people who have been using the Beta seem to be starting to see the Beta results in the live results - hence the resemblence. This seems dictated by your previous search behaviour and is tracked using cookies.

[Marcia]

Sorry for the miss, welcome to the forums, asherwood.

Receptional:
If you are seeing an uncanny resemblence between MSN current and MSN Beta then Marcia, I am pretty sure that if you delete your cookies on MSN, you'll go back to different results. What has been happening is that people who have been using the Beta seem to be starting to see the Beta results in the live results - hence the resemblence. This seems dictated by your previous search behaviour and is tracked using cookies.

Dixon, good to "see" you again too, and thanks for the input.

It doesn't resemble and it isn't what I'm looking at, actually. I've been deliberately avoiding doing much checking on my own search terms of interest with MSN Beta and have instead looked just a little bit at other markets. I think it's so possible that there will be a big change when they actually go live with the real thing, so that it may be a bit of a waste of time to divert time better spent on other things right now into too much analysis of what they're doing.

What I'm doing is more comparing what I'm seeing at MSN and Yahoo proper, and have just been wondering if what we see now in any way reflects what they'll count as important down the line when they make the switch.

One of the things I'm looking at is how much link pop and/or anchor text may sway positioning. I'm not so sure that's something that could be measured near accurate right now between MSN Beta and regujlar search.

[Receptional]

Marcia said:I think it's so possible that there will be a big change when they actually go live with the real thing, so that it may be a bit of a waste of time to divert time better spent on other things right now into too much analysis of what they're doing.

I agree that there could still be some major realignments between now and live, but the underlying philosophies seem set in stone (which is not to say the results can't change hugely)

What I'm doing is more comparing what I'm seeing at MSN and Yahoo proper, and have just been wondering if what we see now in any way reflects what they'll count as important down the line when they make the switch.

One of the things I'm looking at is how much link pop and/or anchor text may sway positioning. I'm not so sure that's something that could be measured near accurate right now between MSN Beta and regujlar search

I confess that I am not looking much at the current MSN results any more, as I woudl have thought all their "brains" are looking at the new one, so the filters they use on the Yahoo data are (I am guessing as usual) pretty much whatever they had 6 months ago, but on a yahoo database without Sitematch. I would have thought that the Beta is more or less starting from first principals, rather than trying to emulate the best of their current results. But that said, I am sure that they are going to do more than anyone in the past to work on the location aspect of both the user and the web site's business. MSN were always playing around with user's settings and delivering content based on language but they seem to want to be going much further now than anyone has gone before.

The inbound anchor text link issue is, I am guessing, one of the things they still want to improve upon in the Beta. At the moment, black hat link farms appear to be more effective than they would like. Presumably they are working on this - infact they are - see:

Their Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2004/11/13/256915.aspx) to note that they have taken on board the fact that they are not immune to MSN bombing. I think they would like to be able to filter out at least the commercial terms from MSN bombing before they feel good enough to go live.

Dixon.