MSN referals down 80%

[exam]

I just noticed in my logs that referrals from MSN are down about 80% Saturday and today (I have a site in #1 pos. for one of my keywords) When I go to msn.com and do a search it defaults to their news search instead of a web search. Kinda sucks. Are others seeing the default msn search doing a news search instead of a web search?

[david_sakh]

my msn traffic is down about 30%, but I did suffer some hits to the SERPs, so....

[spdude]

MSN traffic down also, more because of rankings slipping than anything else.. weird, because my backlinks have increased many fold.. and rankings drop by a couple of spots whenever I aquire a powerful link! MSN is messed up, if you ask me. A few weeks back I had number one rankings on one of my links pages for the term "clothes" and number three for "clothing". That page never deserved it of course.

[exam]

hmmm... it's kinda strange. For this site/keyword I'm still #1. Anyone else seeing the news search coming up when you do a regular search from msn.com?

[Will.Spencer]

I see web search. Clear your cookies.

Plus, I'm #5 for "search engines".

Unfortunately, almost no one uses MSN for search.

[AzAkers]

....................yet

[Cyclops]

I have been getting lots of traffic from MSN, in fact it built every day last month as did the rank of my keywords.

However from the 1st April the traffic has come to a screeching halt , I noticed a lot of my terms have dropped, some from the first page to nowhere, others down from number1 but still on the first page.......but the traffic has absolutely gone.

[Mia]

If anything I would say we are up 80%. MSN was one of the best things to happen to the SE world IMHO as of late. The traffic boost has been amazing!

[Cyclops]

Originally Posted by mia

MSN was one of the best things to happen to the SE world IMHO as of late. The traffic boost has been amazing!

I would have agreed with you last week but my logs tell a different story this month.
I think MSN made a few changes that came into effect on 1st April.
I notice I am not getting traffic for terms that have been misspelt, those are the terms that have gone from the first page to nowhere and I was getting a lot of traffic from those.
As for the other terms that have slipped, MSN has probably tweaked something so the competition has become stronger.
I know my sites aren't optimised as well as they should be .

[Mia]

Originally Posted by cupidsux

true .. not really a lot of people using msn search nowadays

Really, my stats show quite differently.

[Crazy_Rob]

Mine too:
--------------------
Google: 55%
Yahoo!: 12%
MSN: 11.5%

--------------------
Just because your rankings aren't good in MSN doesn't mean that people aren't using the service.

[debunked]

MSN has been doing fine and climbing in my stats.

[Mia]

I looked at just a handfull of our sites, but the trend seems to be pretty consistent with Google Number 1, and MSN number 2, Yahoo at 3, though sometimes the other way around, ie., Yahoo 2, MSN 3. Overall though, MSN is very much in use by a great many people.

1. http://www.google.com/ 57,063
2. http://search.msn.com/ 16,233
3. http://search.yahoo.com/ 16,045
4. http://forums.mccoypottery.com/ 11,803
5. http://aolsearch.aol.com/ 6,973

[exam]

It must have just been a spoof.. refferals are back up to normal, and I am now seeing a normal web search again. (by the way I did try clearing my cookies)

And for the people who are saying that MSN is giving them more refferals than Google- It's because your site ranks well in MSN and doesn't in Google, not because more people use MSN.

[AzAkers]

My MSN referrals typically convert at a higher rate than Google referals.

Doesn't mean much, but it seems to be a trend across client sites as well.
Seems to support the notion that Googlers are more information hounds, and MSNers are more consumers.

of course selling to 3% of 100 searchers isn't as good as selling to 2% of 1000, but for now it seems to be easier to rank high in MSN also to, so I consider it a great market.

I'm competitive in MSN and Yahoo for terms I don't even appear for on Google.

hmmm...I started out this post intending to make a point and just can't seem to decide what point I'm making...oh yeah MSN is a great market for us for SERPS, and for Conversions - its not even directly related to the thread..sorry..I need caffine

[LiGhTen]

DID msn update its ALGO a week ago? because i was in the first and second now i can't find myself

[Mia]

Maybe someone else just ranked higher. Changing an SE algorithm is not the sole reason behind SERP's changing. Rankings are shuffled around all the time. There's more than one site on the net

[Cyclops]

I think MSN tweaked it's algo, things seemed to change on the 1st of the month and sure there are one or two other sites out there but to slip 9000 places for some terms well I don't think that many sites are that close together.

[Chrissicom]

Well MSN traffic depends a lot on the current ranking for me the difference between #1 and #5 is a few thousand hits already even though it's not a common keyword. Considering that MSN rankings change every few days on many keywords it can easily happen that one day your traffic is down by 80% the other it's up again.

[david_sakh]

I think MSN did a revision of its link text treatment.

I was ranking for a keyword I had ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS ranking for. I was #3 for a search item that I had a quantity of four of on the site in question, while other sites had thousands of these items.

I believe I ranked well due to anchor text, and I think MSN did something about it.