MSN to launch algorithmic SE today

Big Bill wrote:

Hence the expression; beta.

Does Microsoft software ever move out of Beta?

David Off wrote:

Gateway Farm wrote:


I'm sitting here scratching my head over what I see. For instance, a
search for "oregon alpaca farms" returns this -
http://www.alpaca-farms-breeders.com/contact.htm - which does not show
the word "oregon" anywhere in it.


Not in the visual contents but the word occurs in the drop down list of
states. This to me, is a bug in the way MSN search is indexing this page.

John is right, let's have some more analysis of this search engine place.

I think the MSN Beta is heavily influenced by domain name, URL and TITLE
elements. After that I suspect there is some algo like Hilltop that
ranks the results. The more I am using it today the more I think the
results are poor.

Uggh, they are putting more and more sponsored links on the search pages
- it is one butt ugly site, it also refreshes to one of the sponsored
links if you don't click on the search results fast enough.

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 09:55:53 +0100, David Off
<david.off_dumpthisbit_ (AT) voila (DOT) fr> wrote:

Big Bill wrote:


Hence the expression; beta.


Does Microsoft software ever move out of Beta?

I got good news and I got bad news.
The good news is, I'm no longer an unpaid beta tester for Bill Gates.
The bad news is, I'm now an unpaid alpha tester for Bill Gates.

BB
--

http://www.kruse.co.uk SEO (AT) kruse (DOT) demon.co.uk
home of SEO that's shiny!

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 10:52:27 +0100, David Off
<david.off_dumpthisbit_ (AT) voila (DOT) fr> wrote:

David Off wrote:
Gateway Farm wrote:


I'm sitting here scratching my head over what I see. For instance, a
search for "oregon alpaca farms" returns this -
http://www.alpaca-farms-breeders.com/contact.htm - which does not show
the word "oregon" anywhere in it.


Not in the visual contents but the word occurs in the drop down list of
states. This to me, is a bug in the way MSN search is indexing this page.

John is right, let's have some more analysis of this search engine place.

I think the MSN Beta is heavily influenced by domain name, URL and TITLE
elements. After that I suspect there is some algo like Hilltop that
ranks the results. The more I am using it today the more I think the
results are poor.

Uggh, they are putting more and more sponsored links on the search pages
- it is one butt ugly site, it also refreshes to one of the sponsored
links if you don't click on the search results fast enough.

I think they do a plain vanilla search at www.search.msn.com.

BB
--

http://www.kruse.co.uk SEO (AT) kruse (DOT) demon.co.uk
home of SEO that's shiny!

Stacey wrote:

"C.W." <from_you (AT) nomail (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:4193dfb2.27714945 (AT) news (DOT) prodigy.net...

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 22:36:34 +0100, David Off


snip

But a mixed bag, I agree.On the other hand <span style="conspiracy
theory">don't a number of the page 1 and 2 results look like FP
created/template pages?</span


I kind of noticed this also. I noticed it in the preview of it. :-) I was
thinking how in the heck did these sites get to #1. Some of the 1st place
listings have FP in the tags. If that is the case I will have to put the FP
back on my pages and let the essence of the FP take over. :-)

You guys may be onto something. On some searches random pages with the
word MSN Search turned up very high in the results.

I was worried that the very divergent results when compared to Google
and Yahoo would cause us uptimizers problems but I figure they will have
to make their results more relevant, which means even more Google like
which will mean turning up similar pages.

David Off wrote:

Stacey wrote:

I kind of noticed this also. I noticed it in the preview of it. :-) I
was thinking how in the heck did these sites get to #1. Some of the
1st place listings have FP in the tags. If that is the case I will
have to put the FP back on my pages and let the essence of the FP take
over. :-)


You guys may be onto something. On some searches random pages with the
word MSN Search turned up very high in the results.

Important Factors for MSN Beta Search
1. Site uses Microsoft authoring or content management tools
2. web server is IIS, the later the version the better
3. web server is running Windows, the later the version the better
4. Inbound Links
5. Title / Meta Tags / keywords in unusual places - comments, form elements

1 to 3 are either an attempt by Microsoft to monopolize the Internet and
persaude everyone to buy IIS 6 on Windows 2000 Server or simply because
they've tested the algos heavily on internal pages/servers running
Microsoft software.

Caveat: don't tune your website based on this list!!!

On Sat, 13 Nov 2004 00:55:15 +0100, David Off
<david.off_dumpthisbit_ (AT) voila (DOT) fr> wrote:

David Off wrote:
Stacey wrote:

I kind of noticed this also. I noticed it in the preview of it. :-) I
was thinking how in the heck did these sites get to #1. Some of the
1st place listings have FP in the tags. If that is the case I will
have to put the FP back on my pages and let the essence of the FP take
over. :-)


You guys may be onto something. On some searches random pages with the
word MSN Search turned up very high in the results.

Important Factors for MSN Beta Search
1. Site uses Microsoft authoring or content management tools
2. web server is IIS, the later the version the better
3. web server is running Windows, the later the version the better
4. Inbound Links
5. Title / Meta Tags / keywords in unusual places - comments, form elements

1 to 3 are either an attempt by Microsoft to monopolize the Internet and
persaude everyone to buy IIS 6 on Windows 2000 Server or simply because
they've tested the algos heavily on internal pages/servers running
Microsoft software.

Caveat: don't tune your website based on this list!!!

You mean I shouldn't rush out and insert <p align="left"> on my pages?
*mutters something that sounds like "wish someone said this 2 hours
ago ..."*

But - in my opinion - such a MS "preference" thought applied to
ranking of sites can backfire too ... just like the WinXP originally
with JAVA support kinda blew up in their faces. May just have MSN
Search remain a "low traffic source" out of the 3 'well known' search
engines. [At least, over the past 3 or so years, I get a very low
amount of traffic from their side of the SE deal - even with them
using Yahoo's data].

About keyword placement - very lenient handling on MSN's beta version
on that thought. Almost like doing a search in Explorer on the
handling.

Carol

"Big Bill" <kruse (AT) cityscape (DOT) co.uk> wrote

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004 23:25:20 GMT, "MM" <ngreader (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Hence the expression; beta.

BB

You know, you got me to thinking. It seems like the main difference between
MS and Google is that at least MS tells people they are in beta!

Over the last 6 months, I have encountered many, many unusual results in
Google. I certainly don't see Google as the champion of relevant searches.
Just one example - I have a site that was 43 in a Google serp that is not
all that competitive. It recently moved to 82. To give you an idea about
how competitive that serp is, #6 is a page about a particular type of
insect - completely unrelated to the search.

I have other sites that are #1 or top 5 in very competitive serps and I did
nothing different to the poorly performing site. It gets the same treatment
as any of my sites and I want that serp.

That's just one example. I think that Google's frequently unusual results
leave the door open for someone to do to them what they did to Yahoo.
Whether someone could do that or not remains to be seen. Apparently, it
won't be MS unless the actual product is significantly different than the
beta product.

On the other hand, the site that is #82 in Google is #1 in MS beta, so it's
not all bad.

MM

MM wrote:

That's just one example. I think that Google's frequently unusual results
leave the door open for someone to do to them what they did to Yahoo.

I think they did it to AltaVista to be accurate.

"mark | r" <markrush (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote

"David Off" <david.off_dumpthisbit_ (AT) voila (DOT) fr> wrote in message
news:4191dd6e$0$6877$79c14f64 (AT) nan-newsreader-07 (DOT) noos.net...


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...86752_msn10.ht
ml

yay and we're #1 for all our terms

mark

at the moment. ;-)