Oct. 2005 MSN Search Changes

[lobofenris]

MODERATOR NOTE: SEVERAL DIFFERENT THREADS ON MSN CHANGES HAVE BEEN MERGED INTO THIS ONE.

Has anybody else noticed that the rankings on MSN have changed drastically the last few days? My site, California Beds, www.calbeds.com, used to be the #1 search result for 'california bed and breakfasts' and now is nowhere to be found. Same thing with a number of other terms where we were top 10. At first I thought that I had just been singled out for some reason, but then noticed that the results have changed totally for some of the search terms. For instance, 'california lodging' where I used to be in the top 3, has completely changed, and the former #1 California Lodging Association (www.clia.org) has fallen way down. Oddly, some of my internal pages now outrank my homepage for some keywords.

Does anybody know if MSN just did a major update of some nature? The new rankings, beyond my own bias of getting slammed, suck. The old rankings were much more accurate.

Thanks in advance for your insight.

Lobo

[Rebeldog]

I was checking my website on 9/30 7:30 Am (Friday) and realized that the server with the hosting company was down. I'm not sure if it was down all night or what. Once it came back on, I noticed that my index page is no longer showing on MSN but all my other pages are. So I'm assuming that MSN did the crawl when my site was down. I was ranked in the top 3 for several keywords and obviously now I'm not.

My questions are:

1. Am it right to assume that my Index page is no longer showing on MSN because of the issue I indicated above or should I be worried about something else? (I don't use any tactics or do anything to trick the search engines)

2. When should I expect my main page to be indexed again?

[lobofenris]

My index page is no now longer being shown on MSN either (I have a topic thread called "New Update on MSN?" where I talk about this). On thing I suspect is that MSN just rolled out a new indexing system, and there is a time-lag for home-pages (similar to Google's infamous "sandbox" for new sites). Is you website less than a year old? The reason why I suspect this is now MSN search results for my 6-month old site are similar to those of Yahoo and Google for my site. Meaning that my index page doesn't appear for my main key phrases, but deeper pages optimized for more esoteric keywords do appear.

This is just conjecture on my part. I'd love to hear somebody else's viewpoint on this issue multiple people are suffering from in regards to MSN.

Thanks.

[Rebeldog]

Actually my site is over 4 years old.

[raaj81]

Dear Friends,

I was gettting good traffic from MSN till last month when my sites total pages 400 was indexed by MSN, Suddenlly on 27th Sep MSN increase my website indexed pages from 400 to 2100 and on 28th Sep, My web site completly disappeared from MSN, Not any of my Top Keywords giving me result even my visitors from MSN are zero from last four days....

Could anybody help me that why msn disappeared my website pages? Is it permanent changes or for some days? will my website keywords come on top again?

Anybody have any idea please let me know about it....


THankx

Regards,
Raj Khatri

[raaj81]

dear my sites pages are also completely vanished from msn.... hope that it will be back after a week or 10 days

[strategicrankings]

Hi Raj,

i'm experiencing the same issue with MSN since the 27th, i had around 30 top 20 keywords and other top 30 and they have all completely disappeared but my site is still in their index.

Maybe you should wait for some time and see what happens.

I have not made any change to my site and i really think its on their side.

[detlev]

Hello everyone,

Indexing for one of my small sites dropped 1/5th of its pages since early this morning. It's tough not to worry, especially if it hits your bottom line, but changes to indexing and positions usually mean good things in the end. I wouldn't fret too much, unless you risk your indexing with aggressive seo.

Best,
-detlev

[detlev]

Hello again,

After looking at this some more, I notice my indexing is back to what it was, and rankings have gone up on the few phrases that I monitor.

Good luck!

Best,
-detlev

[strategicrankings]

seeing the same things on my side, rankings are back if not improved.

MSN dumped my site into the abyss for 2.5 weeks ago. It was nowhere to be found. But today its back as nr. 17 on my main keyword. Time heals all MSN wounds

[lobofenris]

My site and pages are back to their original placements that they had before this mysterious re-indexing we all saw. Thanks to Danny for merging all the threads into this one and letting us commiserate our MSN de-rankings! Fortunately all is back as it was. I think MSN must have tried something new with their ranking algorithm, saw that it sucked, and went back to how it used to be.

[L]

I havent watched our ranks on MSN recently, but we saw a huge increase in MSN organic search referrals on the 26th - almost double - and as of yesterday they are closer to normal, but still have stayed quite a bit higher.

[raaj81]

From Last two days im recieving many emails that msn has reindex and positioned the disappeared pages... that was only bcoz msn is going to index new pages and making re-positioing of website. this effect of disappearing remains from 3 to 7 days then disappeared pages came onto same position.

my website is on same position where it was before...

[Robert_Charlton]

At first glance, some of the changes I'm observing are very similar to changes that started appearing on Yahoo in late July. I mean, very similar....

[achronic]

In the last week, my indexed pages in MSN have gone from 15000 to 155. Nothing has come back as of yet. I've had many top 5 rankings disappear completely. I'm hoping for a resurrection soon....

Aaron

[DavidSEO1204]

Same thing happen for us being number one in MSN for cruises term we are now dropped to position 46 we have no idea what caused this big drop. Any official news on MSN index update?

Thx

[achronic]

My pages partially returned to the index yesterday. Back up to about 5000. Rankings shot back up almost to where they were before, only lost about 2-3 spots on average for our primary terms.

Not sure what the story was but I certainly don't like such an unstable index.

[L]

Yeah - our referrals dropped back down to about what they were before too.

[gehrlekrona]

If it wasn't for MSN my sites would never be found Google is a PIA and it takes a long time before they even show up when you search for the domain name. After that, so they say, there is a sand box period so you are talking 8-12 months before a site shows up and then way back in the index. Not sure why people even bother using Google.
After their latest update, where they are trying to guess what people expect to see from their search it has become rediculously to be on the 10 first pages and if you are not there you are "nowhere" because people don't bother go beyond that, if even scrolling to the next 3 pages.
MSN, on the other hand, is fast when it comes to adding your site to their index. They have usually good results of the search and it is probably because (guessing here!!) they are showing relevant results without a scientific guessing game like Google.