I think I've figured out MSN's algo...

[fryman]

Boy, it sure is easy to get a top rank at MSN. One of my old sites, that I never paid any attention to, is #11 right now for my main keyword, which shows over 3 million results.
Yesterday I optimized and put in some of my knowledge... the cache from my site is from February 8th, I am waiting for the new optimized page to get cached, and I will post here my new rank as soon as I get it. I can't wait to see if I have really cracked their algo.

If only MSN had more traffic... :rolleyes:

[ResaleBroker]

... and I will post here my new rank as soon as I get it.Can you post your idea or is it confidential?

[Refrozen]

And, if it's confidential, why did you bother posting this?

[fryman]

Not confidential, just give me a few days to see if it actually works...

I'd be happy to get more people switching to MSN...

[craige]

Boy, it sure is easy to get a top rank at MSN. One of my old sites, that I never paid any attention to, is #11 right now for my main keyword, which shows over 3 million results.
Yesterday I optimized and put in some of my knowledge... the cache from my site is from February 8th, I am waiting for the new optimized page to get cached, and I will post here my new rank as soon as I get it. I can't wait to see if I have really cracked their algo.
I am trying something similar. My site ranks #3 for my main keyword and #10 for a competitve keyword which I did not even think of targeting. I have done some SEO to my site to now target the competitve keyword. If I can get higher than #10 I will post my new rank and exactly what changes I made to my site.

[ResaleBroker]

Not confidential, just give me a few days to see if it actually works...Sounds Good. Thanks! :)

[neilgroom]

All I can figure out is that MSN likes alot of incoming links, and doesn't really care where they are coming from. I used the ad network

I made a page about 'arthritis pain relief' and did a 'prweb press release' and pointed a small amount of weight at them from the ad network.

They rank 1st and 2nd at MSN for - arthritis pain relief (2,245,948 sites)

Works for me. Trying it on other pages now

Neil

[samantha pia]

i am #1 of 9.2million for sexual health advice,
#5 of 19+ million for sexual advice
139 of 25+million for sexual health,
i have only 800 backlinks to my site
and i dont even know how i did it, i am sure msn take meta tags and content into account more than anyone.

[Will.Spencer]

MSN is, from what I have seen, all about anchor text.

[EyesCoffee]

My experience for 3 keyphrases:

Keyphrase 1 I was ranked 2nd.
Kehphrase 2 I was ranked 20th
Keyphrase 3 I was ranked 53rd.

Bought some text links for $30. The results...

Keyphrase 1 rank #1
Keyphrase 2 rank #6
Keyphrase 3 rank #20

Yahoo & Google (sandboxed btw) no change...

[fryman]

More info please... ;)

Sidewide or single links?
Where were the links? (footer? left? right?)
Themed sites, or unrelated sites?
Did you use the exact anchor for your keyword, or a similar one?

[Foxy]

MSN is, from what I have seen, all about anchor text.

Yep........ :)

[Dirkjan]

I've been trying to figure MSN out, what I also have seen is that MSN is way more about the frontpage. If you have the same keyword all of the site, you will rank higher on that. I got a few keywords that were impossible in Google, because other SEO companies just BOUGHT it (bought the links, and just had a site completely made by seo) but now I rank higher as them in MSN because they only optimized a few pages for those words, as that used to be enough for Google.

To me, I used to work the same way as them, so lost a lot of slots on other sites in MSN :P I like MSN more than Google though, to me, the results are more relevant!

[Infiniterb]

MSN is back links and anchor text.

[Old Welsh Guy]

MSN likes titles, description, some repetition of keywords in the body copy, and a good internal navigation system.

[Spyware Remover]

Yes, MSN is much more heavily weighted towards some off page factors than "G".

I too wish they had more traffic, but that will come when they start integrating MSN search into all their applications like Word, Excel etc....

AJ

[Dominic]

Have to agree that anchor text (doesn't matter where it comes from) is the trick to msn and from what I've found yahoo as well.

So, if you use the word "Home" to link to your homepage sitewide - change that to alt text behind an image using the word or phrase you are targeting for the homepage.

and so on.

[da22in]

MSN likes titles, description, some repetition of keywords in the body copy, and a good internal navigation system.
Absolutely, MSN has nothing against SEO. They obviously like anchor text too. MSN seems to give a fair playing field, rather than favor tired, old sites because...well, because they're old and have accumulated plenty of BL's. I wish G would put more emphasis on content and structure rather than fighting spam (read as: site supression for AdWords profit)....currently they're losing on both fronts. But it's "google"...an actual verb in many parts of the world now; so they'll survive.

MSN's algorithm isn't hard, from what I see it narrows down to basic and proper SEO technique with good html.

[skattabrain]

you an idea on the algo? search this - guitars

my site is www.fretburners.com (http://www.fretburners.com). it's currently just a place holder while i get to it ... and low and behold.

maybe i can sell my site to musiciansfriend.com now! :p

[rth]

Looks like MSN likes keyword density. Try GUITARS GUITARS GUITARS and you may get #1. :D

Roger


you an idea on the algo? search this - guitars

my site is www.fretburners.com (http://www.fretburners.com). it's currently just a place holder while i get to it ... and low and behold.

maybe i can sell my site to musiciansfriend.com now! :p

[tom22]

Yep, they seem to really be paying attention to keyword density. My new site with barely over 100 backlinks (and those only coming form a small number of sources) is ranked #1 in MSN for it's keyword. It's nowhere to be seen in Google. And, the site that is currently ranked #1 google for that term with almost 3,000 backinks only ranks #3 in MSN, below my site!

[nfzgrld]

Yes, I've seen similar results, but I'll tell you I think there's more to it than that. I think MSN does a "shuffle" of sites that rank high. Over the course of a couple weeks where I made little or no changes to my site it went from #26 to #12 to #1 on a key word just in the first few days. Then it went back down to #4 where it stayed for a couple days, then to #9 where it stayed for a couple weeks. After making a change to the title It went straight to page 7 a couple days ago, now it's GONE! However, another keyword where I was consistantly down in the double digit pages I'm now at #5 on page one just from that title change, and all I did was add one word. Go figure.

[cshetler]

I thought I was making some inroads into a theory I had re: Google, about contextual copy on pages and a couple other things... anyway, it didn't work very well. :(

But, and I don't know if it's the copy or not -- I put a lot of attention into anchor text also -- at msn I am 2 out of 3,613,894 in an extremely competitive area, the promotional products business.

And I think I have only a dozen or so backlinks. I have never worked on that with that site. So clearly I do not think MSN puts nearly the emphasis on them as G does. Which is fine w/ me; it is irrelevant in my opinion at this point -- everyone knows about bl's, so everyone runs around getting links to their site in an artificial manner, simply for the seo, that defeats the credibility of using them to largely determine a site's quality & relevence. Just my opinion. Now I'm off to run the ad network on our site. ;)

[wizardofx]

My site does very well in Google, but gets no respect from MSN. Since I rely mostly on content and not so much on links, maybe MSN is link-happy.

[darqSHADOW]

Yup, I launched a site on another IP and another domain where every page points to my primary site, using very specific keywords. (I will start using a keyword pool shortly, so each page uses a different keyword set.) My site as of today ranks #1 in a category with 5.8 million results and #3 for a category with 5.3 million results. Not too bad, I'd say. =)

DS

[fryman]

How old is it?

[GTech]

I've ranked very well with MSN on many of my sites. For all the suggestions I've seen about SEO, such as page title, keywords, description, h1/h2 tags, using your keywords in your text...all those things, MSN seems to be rating well on them.

[Hank]

Please do post any learned knowledge for MSN. I want to make sure I start considering them as I grow my sites!

Hank

[iconrate]

#7 of 55,183,944 for contest
#7 of 9xx,xxx for paris hilton

as far as I can tell msn likes links whether internal or external.
can't wait to get my coop weight back :]

[compar]

I think someone needs to write some MSN tracking and reporting tools like the ones available for Google.

I truly think the action is going to be on MSN over the next 6 to 9 months. It sure would be nice to have tools to monitor the results.

[anthonycea]

Yeah, it is just like Google's, mix up the search results enough to force most webmasters to buy ads.

It is the same game everywhere.

[ian_ok]

Am sure it's some sort of game MSN are playing......

I have less than 50 backlinks and No 1 - (for one of my keywords) just need to think of some more keywords....

Ian

[Las Vegas Homes]

MSN is doing really well for real estate terms. Even though I have found that cloakers can still get past their algo check out Las Vegas Real Estate (http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=las+vegas+real+estate&FORM=QBRE) the number 1 and number 2 ranked websites are cloaking big time and also show up for every real estate phrase known. Even the search phrase real estate they are number 1 as well as homes, property and so on.

This is one reason a lot of the SEs have to place these filters because of webmasters like this. The person doing this I know and he has already been ban from google and yahoo and now I guess MSN will be next.

If MSN keeps producing good relevant results, google is in for a big market share loss.

[seo-ireland]

I think someone needs to write some MSN tracking and reporting tools like the ones available for Google.


This will happen for sure. Will there be an MSN API similar to Google, I hope so. A DP Keyword Tracker version for MSN would be wicked. :)

[jamjv]

This will happen for sure. Will there be an MSN API similar to Google, I hope so. A DP Keyword Tracker version for MSN would be wicked. :)

Yeah but MSN will require you to pay $100/month to access the api.

[CanadianEh]

i am #1 of 9.2million for sexual health advice,
#5 of 19+ million for sexual advice
139 of 25+million for sexual health,
i have only 800 backlinks to my site
and i dont even know how i did it, i am sure msn take meta tags and content into account more than anyone.I would be willing to bet that MSN doesn't use meta keywords. I have a new site ranking:
#7 of 2,743,078 for "paid directories"
#1,2 of 614,119 for "best paid directories"

Since the site is new, I just noticed that I had never updated the keywords and the word "paid" was not even included.

I have noticed similar things on other pages.

[dfsweb]

I think MSN relies mainly on the following factors:

Number of BLs (Doesn't matter how important the BLs are)
Anchor text
Title tags
H1 text
keyword density in the pages

[CanadianEh]

I think MSN relies mainly on the following factors:

Number of BLs (Doesn't matter how important the BLs are)
Anchor text
Title tags
H1 text
keyword density in the pages
My results support your analysis, although I have had some good results for new sites that do not have a large number of BLs

[Tuning]

I think with Co-Op network, you can be on top for any keyword in MSN, very easily. i.e, anchor text is important i think.

[mizt]

Can't figure out the dang algo but I'm sure happy with it. My secondary domain that I can't for the life of me figure out how to redirect to the correct page within my site is #1 for the main keyword term "saltwater fly tying" and #2 for a very competive term "fly tying (http://saltwaterflytying.net)"(sneaky backlink) and the page that it is optimizing at the domain isn't even mean't for those keyword terms. Once I figure out how to do the redirect I will add it to my coop and don't think it will be long before I'm #1 for "fly tying".

1. Domain Relavance
2. Anchor Text
^^Seem to be the key players. My sites aren't even a month old and im deep in the sandbox for google. Hell I don't even think saltwaterflytying.net has more then 20 backlinks.

[compar]

Yeah but MSN will require you to pay $100/month to access the api.
How do you know this? I looked all over the MSN search site and couldn't find any reference to an API?

[dfsweb]

How do you know this? I looked all over the MSN search site and couldn't find any reference to an API?

I think that was meant to be a joke, Bob!! :D

[payoutwindow]

I think that was meant to be a joke, Bob!! :D
lol :D

btw ... where is Fryman after all this is his thread

[clasione]

I think MSN relies mainly on the following factors:

Number of BLs (Doesn't matter how important the BLs are)
Anchor text
Title tags
H1 text
keyword density in the pages



Agree Completely with the above hypothisis - They really have to start putting something better together....

I love my rankings - but it's too good to be true......

[wizardofx]

What counts as achor text?

[dfsweb]

What counts as achor text?

Anything which is between the <a> and </a> tags, i.e:

<a href="http://www.yoursite.com">Anchor text here</a>

The descriptions before and after this do not count as anchor text but might make the link more "relevant" ..... although I don't think it makes any difference.

[webminor]

# Number of BLs (Doesn't matter how important the BLs are)
# Anchor text

The two biggies. Same goes for Yahoo.

[Tyler Banfield]

Boy, it sure is easy to get a top rank at MSN.

Cough...

.Blogspot

[infonote]

I do not have any success with MSN. Hardly if any traffic. I am wondering what I am doing wrong.

[Tyler Banfield]

I do not have any success with MSN. Hardly if any traffic. I am wondering what I am doing wrong.

You're probably trying to rank an actual domain instead of a .Blogspot domain :D

[infonote]

What do you mean?

[Tyler Banfield]

If you haven't noticed, MSN is quite fond of .Blogspot domains

[terryuk]

MSN is fairly easy, it just gets harder when you have to rank high on all three ;)