MSN search mystery - the story continues

I own a site which has been maintained over years and it's quite popular.
So I have a decent amount of inbound links and "useful" content for the
people who visit the site. I'm in the top 10 on many search engines, e.g.
Google (in fact I noticed today that I've become number one on Google for
my most important keyword).

However, MSN Search barely lists the site. It's way down at around position
150 or 200 or so. And it's very strange because the title is just the URL and
the description of the site, in their listing, is also the URL. So it looks like they
can't or don't want to read the content. I have seen other sites which also have
been listed like that.

They don't seem to read the content, not even to generate a decent title and
description. Is their robot limited in some sense?

What might have caused this strange behavior? OK the HTML code isn't perfect
after years of manual maintenance (there's a mix of an external style sheet and the
style attribute etc), but it displays fine on all major browsers without any errors.
And I've seen worse HTML code which is listed. The content is for Mac users, but
not only Mac users, also Windows users and I don't think that would be the reason
I do link to Apple though Perhaps I should link to Microsoft as well to get a boost
No seriously...

It's here: www.mhc.se and it does a redirect to www.mhc.se/software/plugins/
I have tried different types of redirects and I don't think that's the problem.
And the URL I submitted is the *latter* one, so the robot doesn't really get redirected,
which makes me believe that the redirect is not the problem. And the latter URL
is the URL which they list.

Any clues?
No whining over bad HTML please, unless you think that's the problem.
How picky are they really with the HTML?

Michael

On Mon, 23 May 2005 06:50:55 GMT, "noone" <noone (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote:

I own a site which has been maintained over years and it's quite popular.
So I have a decent amount of inbound links and "useful" content for the
people who visit the site. I'm in the top 10 on many search engines, e.g.
Google (in fact I noticed today that I've become number one on Google for
my most important keyword).

However, MSN Search barely lists the site. It's way down at around position
150 or 200 or so. And it's very strange because the title is just the URL and
the description of the site, in their listing, is also the URL. So it looks like they
can't or don't want to read the content. I have seen other sites which also have
been listed like that.

They don't seem to read the content, not even to generate a decent title and
description. Is their robot limited in some sense?

What might have caused this strange behavior? OK the HTML code isn't perfect
after years of manual maintenance (there's a mix of an external style sheet and the
style attribute etc), but it displays fine on all major browsers without any errors.
And I've seen worse HTML code which is listed. The content is for Mac users, but
not only Mac users, also Windows users and I don't think that would be the reason
I do link to Apple though Perhaps I should link to Microsoft as well to get a boost
No seriously...

It's here: www.mhc.se and it does a redirect to www.mhc.se/software/plugins/
I have tried different types of redirects and I don't think that's the problem.
And the URL I submitted is the *latter* one, so the robot doesn't really get redirected,
which makes me believe that the redirect is not the problem. And the latter URL
is the URL which they list.

Any clues?
No whining over bad HTML please, unless you think that's the problem.
How picky are they really with the HTML?

Michael

I'd have said run it trhough
http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html
But it produces an error.
Now I've just run one of my urls through it and it works. So either it
doens't like your domain or there are intermittant problems on it.


Why redirect?


And why not look at the html?
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...F%2Fwww.mhc.se

--
http://www.pokerfreebies.co.uk
Free poker play

I'd have said run it trhough
http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html
But it produces an error.
Now I've just run one of my urls through it and it works. So either it
doens't like your domain or there are intermittant problems on it.

One has to put a delorie.htm file in the root for these tools to work.
I have done that and now the test runs fine. You might want to try again.
Nothing seems to be wrong.

Why redirect?

Well, when I started I used the sub folders and had some other information
in the root domain. But now I've removed the info in the root domain but don't
want to change the URLs, because there are lots of sites still pointing at
the sub folders.

And why not look at the html?
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...F%2Fwww.mhc.se

Well, there are a few things which don't correspond to the HTML 4.01 Transitional
spec, but there are tons of sites which don't follow the transitional spec to 100%
and nevertheless got listed. It's very strange.

Michael

On Mon, 23 May 2005 12:44:23 GMT, "noone" <noone (AT) nospam (DOT) com> wrote:

I'd have said run it trhough
http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html
But it produces an error.
Now I've just run one of my urls through it and it works. So either it
doens't like your domain or there are intermittant problems on it.

One has to put a delorie.htm file in the root for these tools to work.
I have done that and now the test runs fine. You might want to try again.
Nothing seems to be wrong.

OK that was what I vaguely remembered reading - however the file of my
site it did doesn't have one in.

Its a very long page!

Why redirect?

Well, when I started I used the sub folders and had some other information
in the root domain. But now I've removed the info in the root domain but don't
want to change the URLs, because there are lots of sites still pointing at
the sub folders.


And why not look at the html?
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...F%2Fwww.mhc.se


Well, there are a few things which don't correspond to the HTML 4.01 Transitional
spec, but there are tons of sites which don't follow the transitional spec to 100%
and nevertheless got listed. It's very strange.

Michael

--
http://www.pokerfreebies.co.uk
Free poker play

Its a very long page!

It's long, but not extremely long. That shouldn't be the problem IMHO.

Any other clues?

They don't even index the title. Very strange.

Michael