Someone farted at MSN.

[Web Gazelle]

I think someone over at MSN search must have farted last night. I am seeing terrible results. Anyone else seeing big changes for their area of expertise? If anyone can find an announcement or something about an algo update, please post it. Thanks.

[MatthewN]

A few searches for me have dropped a few places but nothing too terrible.

[Web Gazelle]

I was #1 for a certain search term in my sig that is colored orange. Now the site seems to be gone. There are also many other terms that had the same thing happen. I really liked my extra 200 to 300 referrals MSN was giving me.

[andheresjohnny]

I was just checking my main keywords ... the ones that disappeared from the first page 2 weeks ago.

For some of those keywords, the top 10 or 20 spots are now taken by the same site.

Again, it's the multiple keyword-stuffed subdomain names and keyword-stuffed directory names from the same site.

h**p://keyword1.keyword.com
h**p://keyword2.keyword.com
h**p://keyword3.keyword.com

or

h**p://www.keyword.com/keyword1/
h**p://www.keyword.com/keyword2/
h**p://www.keyword.com/keyword3/


Didn't we just go through this crap several months ago?

[MatthewN]

That is rough! Havent seen anything that dramatic happen here :S I am sure others will chime in soon with details.

[Web Gazelle]

Yeah, I am seeing KW stuffed domain names taking over for the search terms that I used to show up well for. Everyone make sure to tell msn that the new algo sucks.

[mahmood]

This has been MSN's algo for at least the last 1 and a half year. I guess other webmasters have been starting to notice that and the more MSN gets important the more we see these type of keyword-in-domain websites.

As the result of this algo we would probably see more and more specific web sites for example instead of a site that discusses all video games we are going to see numerous sites that each discuss a specific video game with names such as nuntindogame.com

If we give all factors in seo a number of 100, this is how I think it would be destributed on MSN algo

Keyword-stuffed-domain alone gets 30
Back links 25
On page optimisation 25
Others 20

If your competitor has a keyword-stuffed-domain and they know 2 and 2 in SEO, then you'r busted.

.

[thewindmaster]

I ran into some serious problems today.

I have one site go from 1st to 6, 1st to 11, and 1st to 16, for 3 major keywords.

Had another site drop 3rd to 5th
Another from 30th to 79th

[Web Gazelle]

OK.. But there was definately a shift in SERPs and some sort of algo change. I am talking about ranking on page one for several terms when I checked yesterday. More than half of those are now gone today. One term I ranked for at number 1 yesterday is now not even top 50.

[GeorgeB.]

May not be MSN's fault but the spammer who bumped you for your terms.

[debunked]

woops... excuse me....

pppppffffttttt...........

[andheresjohnny]

I agree that there was an algo change, or rollback or something. And it's widespread .. at least among half-a-dozen unrelated keywords that I track.

In these cases, yesterday's top 10 or so ranking sites have been scattered to other pages. If they can be found at all.

[Web Gazelle]

It just means I need to find new spamming methods.

[ServerUnion]

I have noticed a lot of terms that I have ranked one the first page for years go under this week. Not even on the boards anymore. This is for multiple sites.

I do see this every month or so (they do come back after a day), but not for all the keywords on multiple sites.

[Web Gazelle]

I hope it is temporary like the last time.

[debunked]

Originally Posted by Web Gazelle

I hope it is temporary like the last time.

Aren't you the one who "owns" MSN?

I noticed a couple of days last week where things were all over, but last I looked where back again.

[e10]

This morning I checked on a site which showed 110 links in MSN - not great, but an improvement over where they were last week. Two hours later and I looked again and it had tanked to 19. At the same time another site which had less than 20 links in MSN had climbed to over 300 - for no real reason that I could see. Very strange results but I've no doubt it will all even out in a couple of days.

[tstaut]

Glad to hear it's not just my sites!

Massive drops over about 20 sites... with keyword stuffed domains.

Seems at the same time, some secondary keywords are ranking a little bit higher. I'll have to check and see if these are interior pages... hopefully it won't last long enough for me to do that.

[johneva]

Carnt say I have had any change here dude.

[adrian1386]

Iam seeing the same thing. I was awake when this happened. It was about 3AM pacific time. I could still refresh and see my site , however, every third refresh was the new results.

Two of my websites I have been working on like crazy for the last 3 days dropped out of serps. (Top 25 pages). They where both on page 2 near the top so I was workingon them hard to push them to page one.

This really bites. I hope its temporary.