MSN Search Advice for a Novice

Hi - I'm pretty much a novice at this search engine thing, but I'm
learning by lurking in this group. I'm beginning to get decent
positioning in Google and Yahoo, but MSN Search is a different story.
I'm having no luck whatsoever getting picked up at all by MSN. I've
researched Overture, but I'm not looking for a sponsored listing and
don't really have the $$ to spend. I've submitted repeatedly thru
their free submission, and I'm linked from a number of websites
already included in MSN, but nothing seems to work. I'd appreciate any
advice for getting picked up by MSN. Thanks.

JollyMon wrote:

I'm having no luck whatsoever getting picked up at all by MSN. I've
submitted repeatedly thru their free submission, and I'm linked
from a number of websites already included in MSN, but nothing
seems to work. I'd appreciate any advice for getting picked up by
MSN. Thanks.

See the thread titled
How can i attract the msn.com robot?
So far, only one person -- news /
jayNOSPAM (AT) tequila-stuff (DOT) com -- has even attempted to post a
reasonable reply. Everyone else just made jokes about money
and microsoft's notorious monoploy techniques.

Jay claimed to have gotten a site listed without having to
pay. What i want are some real answers -- how many people
here in this newsgroup have sites that are included in msn?
Did they pay? Did they submit through the free submission
form? Were their entire sites crawled or was the crawling
partial?

cat yronwode

Lucky Mojo Curio Co. http://www.luckymojo.com/catalogue.html

On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 05:16:45 GMT, catherine yronwode
<cat (AT) luckymojo (DOT) com> wrote:

JollyMon wrote:


I'm having no luck whatsoever getting picked up at all by MSN. I've
submitted repeatedly thru their free submission, and I'm linked
from a number of websites already included in MSN, but nothing
seems to work. I'd appreciate any advice for getting picked up by
MSN. Thanks.

See the thread titled
How can i attract the msn.com robot?
So far, only one person -- news /
jayNOSPAM (AT) tequila-stuff (DOT) com -- has even attempted to post a
reasonable reply. Everyone else just made jokes about money
and microsoft's notorious monoploy techniques.

Jay claimed to have gotten a site listed without having to
pay. What i want are some real answers -- how many people
here in this newsgroup have sites that are included in msn?

I supposedly have 3 sites listed in MSN ... at least I started getting
a handful of hits from MSN back in 2001 [amount of hits never
increased over a handful though].

Did they pay?

I didn't pay for submission but the sites were listed back in 2001
when I was part of a content network. I don't know if that played a
role or not in how those 3 sites became listed on MSN.

Did they submit through the free submission
form?

I didn't even try to be listed on MSN - so no, I didn't use the
submission form.

I really don't know how the MSN spider was lured my way.

Were their entire sites crawled or was the crawling
partial?

Depends. I never found MSN being "up to date" on their results - for a
while in mid-2003 they were still listing sites I know people deleted
back in mid-2002 and didn't renew the domain names.

Anyway, I hopped over to MSN.

Using link:URL - nothing. Not a thing appeared for any of my sites.

Using site:URL and MSN only has two pages of one my sites [which has
145 pages] listed. Odd combination of which two also: main page - and
the links page. I tried the URL of my more popular site - which has
around 200 pages - same thing; 2 pages listed on MSN and same two as
above: main page and links. My oldest site ... again, only 2 pages
only this time the combination is different: main page and one of the
more popular inner page articles.

Each site has over 300 backlinks apiece from outside sources [one site
has over 500] - MSN claims much less per site: 30 [oldest site], 90
[more popular site], with the other site coming in at 25.

Oddly, though, using link:URL and I see a couple other of my site's
pages showing up as backlinks.

So appears that MSN, currently, is not very accurate in what info they
share?

The abstracts share META description - if shared by the site author
that is. So Yahoo not alone in using META description ... *shrug*

Sorry I can't share more info than that, Cat.

Carol

"C.W." wrote:

I supposedly have 3 sites listed in MSN ... at least I started
getting a handful of hits from MSN back in 2001 [amount of hits
never increased over a handful though].

Did they pay?

I didn't pay for submission but the sites were listed back in 2001
when I was part of a content network. I don't know if that played a
role or not in how those 3 sites became listed on MSN.

Did they submit through the free submission
form?

I didn't even try to be listed on MSN - so no, I didn't use the
submission form.

I really don't know how the MSN spider was lured my way.

Were their entire sites crawled or was the crawling
partial?

Depends. I never found MSN being "up to date" on their results -
for a while in mid-2003 they were still listing sites I know people
deleted back in mid-2002 and didn't renew the domain names.

Anyway, I hopped over to MSN.

Using link:URL - nothing. Not a thing appeared for any of my sites.

Using site:URL and MSN only has two pages of one my sites [which
has 145 pages] listed. Odd combination of which two also: main page
- and the links page. I tried the URL of my more popular site -
which has around 200 pages - same thing; 2 pages listed on MSN and
same two as above: main page and links. My oldest site ... again,
only 2 pages only this time the combination is different: main page
and one of the more popular inner page articles.

Each site has over 300 backlinks apiece from outside sources [one
site has over 500] - MSN claims much less per site: 30 [oldest
site], 90[more popular site], with the other site coming in at 25.

Oddly, though, using link:URL and I see a couple other of my site's
pages showing up as backlinks.

So appears that MSN, currently, is not very accurate in what info
they share?

The abstracts share META description - if shared by the site author
that is. So Yahoo not alone in using META description ... *shrug*

Sorry I can't share more info than that, Cat.

Carol

Thanks! Your results resemble mine:

My domains have been online since 1995 and under their
current names since 1997, 2000, and 2001 respectively. Page
counts per site vary from 12 to 6,000. Backlinks per site
vary from several dozen to several hundred. Unique visits
per day average 10,000, most of them to the non-commercial
free information pages about sexuality and magic on the
largest site.

A grand total of 4 pages have been indexed by msn from all
three of these popular domains. Pages selected by msn for
display are not representative of what is at each site and
appear almost random.

The reason i checked out msn at all is that they announced
an upgrade and relaunch of their search service. Obviously
that was a premature notice on their part, because no search
engine can be considered useful if it cannot properly spider
a site that it has already located.

Perhaps the relaunch announcement was just more drivel from
Microsoft -- an attemot to draw attention away from the
current and ongoing security flaws that are bedeviling the
IE browser. If so, this public relations move has failed,
because it has caused us to go check out and post here about
how very poor a search engine msn really is.

Anybody else listed at msn? If so, how many pages out of
your site's total, compared to the number indexed by google
and yahoo?

cat yronwode

Karezza and Sacred Sex ------ http://www.luckymojo.com/sacredsex.html

On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 06:36:15 GMT, catherine yronwode
<cat (AT) luckymojo (DOT) com> wrote:

"C.W." wrote:

[snip]

Anyway, I hopped over to MSN.

Let me correct a typo on my side:

Using link:URL - nothing. Not a thing appeared for any of my sites.

I meant to type "Using allinurl:URL - nothing." Sorry about that ...

[snip]

Thanks! Your results resemble mine:

My domains have been online since 1995 and under their
current names since 1997, 2000, and 2001 respectively. Page
counts per site vary from 12 to 6,000. Backlinks per site
vary from several dozen to several hundred. Unique visits
per day average 10,000, most of them to the non-commercial
free information pages about sexuality and magic on the
largest site.

A grand total of 4 pages have been indexed by msn from all
three of these popular domains. Pages selected by msn for
display are not representative of what is at each site and
appear almost random.

Kind of odd though.

Did you happen to notice a handful more of a site's pages will appear
if doing "link:URL" but, still, not as many as on the site itself and
not "sorted" like Google lists those kind of results. Just scattered
throughout the listing. :/

The reason i checked out msn at all is that they announced
an upgrade and relaunch of their search service. Obviously
that was a premature notice on their part, because no search
engine can be considered useful if it cannot properly spider
a site that it has already located.

MS announce something prematurely or slap it out there for people to
start using "before it was ready"? I have _never_ heard of them doing
such a thing. *innocent look*.

I never got over 100 a month [to my popular site] from MSN search
facility so I never really worried about it that much. I saw my sites
were on Page 1 [woo hoo!] - even one for a competitive phrase that it
struggles with on Google [on Page 5 there for that phrase]. But what
good is that if apparently not many people use MSN search? I mean 100
visits compared to the 4,000 Google sends my way or the 1200 Yahoo
does for that SAME phrase - and that alone put MSN on the low end of
priorities.

Perhaps the relaunch announcement was just more drivel from
Microsoft -- an attemot to draw attention away from the
current and ongoing security flaws that are bedeviling the
IE browser. If so, this public relations move has failed,
because it has caused us to go check out and post here about
how very poor a search engine msn really is.

Well this part of their promo, available from a link at the bottom of
search pages, is right in some ways:

"Cleaner, Simpler Results."

Can't get simpler than claiming you only indexed two pages out of a
100+ page site! Makes it easier 'cause less pages involved?

But more on my mind after reading that promo page is: With all these
search engines and other places offering their own toolbars - when is
someone going to come out with a form of Trillian for those thingies?

Carol

"C.W." <from_you (AT) nomail (DOT) com> wrote

On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 06:36:15 GMT, catherine yronwode
cat (AT) luckymojo (DOT) com> wrote:

"C.W." wrote:

[snip]

Anyway, I hopped over to MSN.


Let me correct a typo on my side:

Using link:URL - nothing. Not a thing appeared for any of my sites.

I meant to type "Using allinurl:URL - nothing." Sorry about that ...

[snip]

Thanks! Your results resemble mine:

My domains have been online since 1995 and under their
current names since 1997, 2000, and 2001 respectively. Page
counts per site vary from 12 to 6,000. Backlinks per site
vary from several dozen to several hundred. Unique visits
per day average 10,000, most of them to the non-commercial
free information pages about sexuality and magic on the
largest site.

A grand total of 4 pages have been indexed by msn from all
three of these popular domains. Pages selected by msn for
display are not representative of what is at each site and
appear almost random.


Kind of odd though.

Did you happen to notice a handful more of a site's pages will appear
if doing "link:URL" but, still, not as many as on the site itself and
not "sorted" like Google lists those kind of results. Just scattered
throughout the listing. :/

The reason i checked out msn at all is that they announced
an upgrade and relaunch of their search service. Obviously
that was a premature notice on their part, because no search
engine can be considered useful if it cannot properly spider
a site that it has already located.

MS announce something prematurely or slap it out there for people to
start using "before it was ready"? I have _never_ heard of them doing
such a thing. *innocent look*.

I never got over 100 a month [to my popular site] from MSN search
facility so I never really worried about it that much. I saw my sites
were on Page 1 [woo hoo!] - even one for a competitive phrase that it
struggles with on Google [on Page 5 there for that phrase]. But what
good is that if apparently not many people use MSN search? I mean 100
visits compared to the 4,000 Google sends my way or the 1200 Yahoo
does for that SAME phrase - and that alone put MSN on the low end of
priorities.

Perhaps the relaunch announcement was just more drivel from
Microsoft -- an attemot to draw attention away from the
current and ongoing security flaws that are bedeviling the
IE browser. If so, this public relations move has failed,
because it has caused us to go check out and post here about
how very poor a search engine msn really is.

Well this part of their promo, available from a link at the bottom of
search pages, is right in some ways:

"Cleaner, Simpler Results."

Can't get simpler than claiming you only indexed two pages out of a
100+ page site! Makes it easier 'cause less pages involved?

But more on my mind after reading that promo page is: With all these
search engines and other places offering their own toolbars - when is
someone going to come out with a form of Trillian for those thingies?

Carol

Things are about to change at MSN

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+prepar...tag=html.alert

Regards

Eddie

http://www.englandsportal.com/

catherine yronwode wrote:

Jay claimed to have gotten a site listed without having to
pay. What i want are some real answers -- how many people
here in this newsgroup have sites that are included in msn?

My site is included, although from a quick check only two pages seem to be
searchable. (http://tinyurl.com/2h273 -- I searched within my domain for
"chris" - my name is on just about every page).

Did they pay?

Nope. I don't ever recall ever submitting my site to MSN either in any way.

Did they submit through the free submission
form? Were their entire sites crawled or was the crawling
partial?

MSNBot crawls my site every few days picking up a few pages each time. I
have no idea how many pages it has crawled though although I could have a
look and do some analysis. It doesn't really seem to matter though, as it
only appears to find two pages when doing a search...

--
Chris Hope - The Electric Toolbox - http://www.electrictoolbox.com/

On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 07:42:04 GMT, "Me" <admin (AT) nospam (DOT) co.uk> wrote:

"C.W." <from_you (AT) nomail (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:e4rpe0h120799j19r5h1l2gqi5u0tur5u1 (AT) 4ax (DOT) com...
On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 06:36:15 GMT, catherine yronwode
cat (AT) luckymojo (DOT) com> wrote:

[snip]

Thanks! Your results resemble mine:

My domains have been online since 1995 and under their
current names since 1997, 2000, and 2001 respectively. Page
counts per site vary from 12 to 6,000. Backlinks per site
vary from several dozen to several hundred. Unique visits
per day average 10,000, most of them to the non-commercial
free information pages about sexuality and magic on the
largest site.

A grand total of 4 pages have been indexed by msn from all
three of these popular domains. Pages selected by msn for
display are not representative of what is at each site and
appear almost random.


Kind of odd though.

Did you happen to notice a handful more of a site's pages will appear
if doing "link:URL" but, still, not as many as on the site itself and
not "sorted" like Google lists those kind of results. Just scattered
throughout the listing. :/

[snip]

I never got over 100 a month [to my popular site] from MSN search
facility so I never really worried about it that much. I saw my sites
were on Page 1 [woo hoo!] - even one for a competitive phrase that it
struggles with on Google [on Page 5 there for that phrase]. But what
good is that if apparently not many people use MSN search? I mean 100
visits compared to the 4,000 Google sends my way or the 1200 Yahoo
does for that SAME phrase - and that alone put MSN on the low end of
priorities.

[snip]

Things are about to change at MSN

http://news.com.com/Microsoft+prepar...tag=html.alert

Quote from article:

"In July, the format of the site will change--and so will the quality
of what you get--and the way it'll look is dramatically improved,"
Gates said. "It'll be later this year that we actually roll out what's
entirely our own back-end driving the search".

So apparently not changing now but "later this year" sometime. That
will give them time to snag the other 6,000 pages from one of Cat's
site *chuckle*

Carol

"C.W." wrote:

catherine yronwode <cat (AT) luckymojo (DOT) com> wrote:

Perhaps the relaunch announcement was just more drivel from
Microsoft -- an attempt to draw attention away from the
current and ongoing security flaws that are bedeviling the
IE browser. If so, this public relations move has failed,
because it has caused us to go check out and post here about
how very poor a search engine msn really is.

Well this part of their promo, available from a link at the bottom
of search pages, is right in some ways:

"Cleaner, Simpler Results."

Can't get simpler than claiming you only indexed two pages out of a
100+ page site! Makes it easier 'cause less pages involved?

This is getting interesting. I checked site:URL on my
husband's site -- he has about 300 pages there -- and just
TWO PAGES were indexed by msn.

Meanwhile, two weeks after i submitted it, msn finally
indexed my third (very small, 12 page) gardenofjoyblues.com
domain! And guess what -- they found TWO PAGES there!

My other little domain, yronwode.com (12 pages) remains with
TWO PAGES indexed by msn.

My big domain, luckymojo.com (7,000 pages) is now up to
THREE PAGES indexed by msn.

So i checked a few other domains at semi-random. The number
of pages msn indexes for each of those domains are as follows:

site:dmoz.org 15 pages (google lists 444,000 pages)
site:google.com 169 pages
site:npr.org 31 pages
site:utexas.edu 80789 pages
site:geocities.com 58 pages (no, that is not a typo)
site:harvard.edu 164980 pages
site:cocacola.com 2 pages (google lists 75 pages)
site:microsoft.com 8127 pages
site:sfgate.com 13 pages (google lists 45,000 pages)
site:unc.edu 48944 pages
site:flags.net 2 pages (world flag database; 408 pages)

The randomness of the depth of indexing at masn is obvious
when you note that although google lists almost ten times as
many pages at dmoz.org as at sfgate.com, the msn index for
the two sites is closely comparable, at 15 pages and 13
pages respectively.

Likewise, although google indiactes that there are about 5
1/2 times more pages at flags.net than at cocacola.com (408
pages versus 75 pages), msn has indexed exactly TWO pages
from each site.

The fact that only 58 pages at geocities.com are indexed by
msn would almost have to speak to some sort of ban or
exclusion -- how could the 2,870,000 pages that google finds
in that domain be reduced to a mere 58 by msn?

What we have here is a joke, a pathetic failure, and a
laughingstock.

cat yronwode

Hoodoo and Blues Lyrics --------- http://www.luckymojo.com/blues.html

catherine yronwode wrote:

What we have here is a joke, a pathetic failure, and a
laughingstock.

Ah yes but their FAQ specifically states:

Once MSNBot crawls my site, will it appear in the search results on MSN
Search?
MSNBot is a prototype crawler. The crawling it does is not necessarily
related to the search results found on http://search.msn.com.

So from this (and your research) I take it to mean that the data that MSN
currently supplies is rubbish and is in no way related to what their bot is
currently doing. Presumably at some point in the future the bot will feed
the search results. Only at that stage can we see whether MSN search is any
good or not.

--
Chris Hope - The Electric Toolbox - http://www.electrictoolbox.com/