May 2006 MSN Update: Observations on Changes

[Marcia]

The main thing I'm noticing right off is that instead of the "clustering type phenomenon" that's caused the index page to turn up at MSN for search terms that actually relate more to interior pages, it's the interior pages that are now being returned for queries.

That index page thing took its toll on conversions, unless it was *very* clear above the fold how to navigate to the desired page for what the user was specifically searching for.

This is a good thing for those of us whose demographic includes a good number of "MSN types," the only downside for some people might be that that some of those interior pages now pulling traffic have been a bit neglected and now need updating ASAP.

[Savweb]

So, it seems like these changes are going to stay at msn? What do you think guys?

[Lyndsay]

Not a fan here.

[simons1321]

wait a sec, does that mean MSN is making the Terminator??? they used neural networks too

Looks like msnbot is spidering bringing in more sites but alot of sites that rank well for major keywords don't have many backlinks related to those keywords. I'm guessing they're indexing pages right now and will do a major re-ranking when they're done spidering. Plus I've noticed a number of missing index pages for many sites. I did hear last week that MSN messed up and did not filter about 100m sites that got let into they're index. I'm guessing that to fix a mistake that big you've got to re-shuffle the deck a little bit. I also noticed that if you do a search on MSN explorer 6 and explorer 4 you'll get totally different results. Explorer 4 acts like this update never happened and is showing results from about 2 weeks ago so that aslo means they are running multiple data centers for search results and have a good backup of the way things were before this update. Its all pretty strange but they could also be testing a new data center or bringing a new data center online. I do like MSN and I think they've come a long way and any competition for the big G is good, it's nice to have alternatives just in case you get dropped from one or the other. I'm thinking things should be on the straight and narrow within a month just like when they sarted the new MSNbot last January (which took about a month of indexing and then a weeks worth of re organinzing once they have all the backlink data to add to the rankings.

[ChefRob]

All,

Check this out,

http://search.arabia.msn.com/

One of my sites was visited from this url and I was very suprised that the results were so different.

A bit cleaner, but it's late (here on the west coast) and I only checked a couple of terms. Will dig around more tomorrow. Enjoy and let us know what you think.

[FDJA]

I just submitted a new site I made for a client <edited> to MSN yesterday evening (6/14/06) and this morning 6/15/06) it's already indexed. It's not spidered or relevant yet, but it's in there!

[Marcia]

There's definitely been another shift, and just to comment, the SERPs I've been looking at look nice and clean.

I'm seeing a lot of pollution with irrelevant results (apparently even more than before). I'm also seeing quite irrelevant internal pages in the SERPS instead of the home page: not good at all from a consumer's point of view.

Never was a fan of MSN Search, now even less...