Ineffective MSN?

MSN must have spent a fair chunk of change promoting the MSN search in the UK media. I'm wondering how effective this has been, have people seen a sudden increase in referrals from MSN?

Last week I launched a new website and was really surprised to see how quickly MSN had spidered it and it was ranking on the first page for 'Travel News'

According to overture this keyword receives around 700 clicks / visits per day, so I ran excitedly to my stats checker to find that I'd actually received one click in two days..

I know Overture is part of Yahoo, but even so I'd expected more than a measly click - so the question is MSN ineffective, and is no challenger for the Search engine throne, or am I expecting too much for MSN?

Your thoughts appreciated

Darren

 

Don't expect much out of MSN. I'm in the US, but we're seeing the same as you are experiencing. People aren't that ready to change their search practices, no matter how hard Microsoft promotes MSN search. I'm sure there are more searchers using MSN now than there were before, but it really is Yahoo and Google's domain.

 

MSN is my #3 referring SE; accounting for 16% of all SE referrals.

This is up ~4% from a few weeks ago.

 

MSN is my #2 referral .. Although it's not so popular as google .. but a #1 in MSN for a competitive KW (676.0/day search for google) brings me 347/month ..

 

I don't know if they intended to win webmasters over with quick listing but I am now more MSN aware now that I can get top five rankings almost at will whereas I might wait for months to see new sites show up in Google. I do believe it was the geeks that discovered Google and created the original buzz. The fast indexing and listing in MSN search may win over some of the original Google enthusiasts. I am now getting more traffic from MSN than Google and find myself using MSN occassionally as opposed to almost never.

Get more topics and keywords picked up by MSN and it will payoff well on some of them.

 

What do you think the demographics are for msn search users vs google? I would think you would get some interest in travel news...even if it was just high school kids looking for info.

 

MSN is my #4 refferer across the board in the UK/Ireland. They consistently get edged out by ask jeeves

So much for the dominance SEO's were predicting 6 months ago (I hate to say I told you so, so I won't )

 

MSN are still rising I believe, they gained 1-2% more market share in a couple of months. I am have noticed an increase (even though .com has now stopped sending traffic) I think MSNs traffic is now spread across its country specific versions. The are taking it slow, they have a long way to go. Search built into office, windows and ie - I think they will slowly moving forward, it takes a long time to turn a big ship.

However, the ASK search adverts beat the MSN hands down in the UK. Most people notice them more and are more impressed. Shame about all those sponsoreds on the results pages though.

 

Give MSN some time, they still have tweaking to do.

 

Im not saying they are anywhere near done, I just dont see it as the best start they could have had. But then I dont see what they see. MSN just jumped in traffic for me (rise in a particular term), so I can see myself softening up on them

 

microsoft will always try to dominate, but i think it will be difficult to beat google, unless of course they buy them

 

I think all microsoft would have to do to get a decent chunk of the search market would be:

1. Reduced the number of adverts on the results page.
2. Make the results page a bit cleaner.
3. Get an MSNGuy going to help the webmasters.
4. Keep the results reasonable.
5. Stop the sites jumping around so much.
6. Keep plugging the brand

Average users are not as aware of relevance, as we all are. They care more about their overall experience.

 

I don't think they can just buy em, but maybe they can buy half of Google's employees.