Today I noticed an increase in MSN search traffic to my sites, so I went and checked my rankings at MSN.com and to my surprise; I found out that they are completely different results than Yahoo's. I think they are finally using the results from their BETA search. Let's see where this move takes them. Bad for Yahoo though. .
For the first time I'm seeing the beta interface and results when I visit search.msn.com Good times ahead
Interesting trend I see is my smaller sites are doing very well in MSN, and my larger sites are more or less unchanged. It may be due to the fact that my smaller sites are much more targeted towards specific content, while my larger sites have a more broad range of topics.
February 1st is the expected official roll over but they have begun integrating into the beta in some instances.
I'm seeing beta at search.msn.com and I have see sharply increased referrals from msn since wednesday.
I read an article on this today, but now can't find the link lol. MSN.com is now using their own results instead of yahoo's. They stated that one reason they moved up the date was because they had noticed so many links to the beta site wendy
Based on the reactions and posts of most SEOs in this and other communities, I must say that the new MSN seems to be way more susceptible to optimization and currently uses much fewer filters than its two big brothers. And this could be really big for the SEO´s community, as the flip in the use of their own index doesn’t come alone. The launch of the new MSN search results is accompanied by the launch of the new MSN Toolbar Suite that you can bet your pennies, it’s going to be default in upcoming Windows Updates and in any new OS launched by Billy. And even though this could turn Web Masters attention to it, IMO at the end would decrease usability for the average searcher. Let’s wait and see how this evolves, but looks very promising though. .
This is probably the wrong place to ask this, but... What's the secret to ranking well in the "NEW" MSN? --Mark
I would say that if you continue to focus in ranking well in GG, you´ll do well in MSN too. Consider that over the last year and a half MSN has tried to copy everything they could from GG, like the launch of the MSN Newsbot (emulator of GG News), the MSN Spaces (emulator of GG Blogger), and the Desktop Search offered in the Toolbar Suite mentioned above (a clear attempt to compete with the GG Desktop Search Toolbar). It only makes sense that their Search Engine will also emulate GG way of indexing sites and serving results. Also, you can get a good hint of the way their Web Search Engine works, by considering the way the local search tool works. What it does is to scan the computer and create an index with the information of the files found, and then, use this information to serve the local search results. Specifically, the Desktop Search indexes the following types of information: - File information about all files (such as author, file type, and date modified) - Metadata associated with media files (such as song title and artist) and graphics files (such as a description of the file content) - Full text within Office 2000 or later files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote) - Full text within Adobe PDF files, although users must download and install a free add-on from Adobe called the Adobe PDF IFilter to enable this feature - Full text within all locally stored Outlook information (including e-mail messages, attachments, calendar entries, contacts, notes, and tasks) - Full text within all locally stored Outlook Express e-mail messages - Full text within MSN Messenger conversation logs - The IE Favorites menu (only the names of Favorites pages are indexed, not the contents of those pages). .
woohoo beta. Someone I know just got #1 for his site for his main keyword. I am following his same techniques so hopefully mine will get there too.
We'll see how long it lasts. I've already noticed a few shifts in PR over the last week in the beta results. I'm guessing a lot of the webmasters that are losing revenue over the dropping of Yahoo are now trying to play catchup and improve their rank. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a lot of changes in the top spots in the coming weeks.