Msn Search (Rank Drop Half Way Figured out)

Ok ive learned that msn has made several big changes we are all aware of that im sure..

Ok what i know for sure for fact so far is this.. and some of these factors will explain why our results are lower..
AutoSpell
Steming
Stopwords
Localization
Abreviations
steming in particular.. is all being focused on more! by the new algo..

1. Msn search has changed its algo so that is has a new type of AutoSpell Correction.

Like if you type roooms they will return results for rooms automaticly now so that instead of asking did you mean rooms they will just auto return results for roooms and then tell you with links at the top something like..

Results are included for rooms. Show just the results for roooms.

Instead of showing results for roooms and then giving you the option of did you mean rooms instead.. Mis Spelled words now will be ignored except for a link asking if you meant this instead (the mispelled word) instead of a link asking did you mean this (the word spelled right) and the right way will be returned in automaticly in all the beginning results.

2. Msn search has changed its algo so that Steming is more of a factor in results..

Like Stemming means matching on the stem (or root) of the word rather than the exact word.

example rooms again would return all results for the word (room) as well as the words (rooms.)
So if you spent all your net life targeting the word rooms and some one else did the same for the word room with out the (s) and and he had out ranked you then when you search your term rooms now hes going to also out rank you there.. even if he never targed the word with out an s on it..

The same for other words.. they are putting more results for the root word so there for many peoples sites are ranking lower for certian words because they got more competition for that word do to the increased change in stemming from the root word.

3. Also they are implementing a new algo for Intelligent “stop word” retention

Meaning some words like The and A and possiably Free and lord knows what all may be left out of the search results for some searches...

I think they always did this to some extent but more emphasis is being focused on that now in the new changes..

They claim they are making it more intelegent and (tweaking this )so that key phrases that would normally need the words would still show up..

like the title (The Firm) would definaly need to show the word the in it but say the boats would not.. under their new algo they claim is supposed to know the differance..

So im thinking hmm But that process cant be perfect so some titles and target key words and phrases that have stop words might not get as high ranking as it would before.

4. Also they are placing more emphasas on localization and abreviations like va. for virginia ect.. So say your target is Virginia Sports now some one with the target Va. Sports would be just as much competition for you for that terms.. and if they had more back links ect.. they would even out rank you with va. even if the search contained The word virginia.


My Conclusion so due to these changes basicly everyone who was on or near the top now would have more competion resulting in lowers hits from msn search basicly at the end of the day they are just spreading the wealth so to speak..
taking a little from the ritch and giving to the poor in a se world that is..

All what i said about the new msn algo is true and you can read about it stright from the horses mouth here.. http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2007/10.aspx .. is fact about msn.

Note: But the results and conclusions are my own but you can all plainly see whith these new things it would make most people drop in rankings due to higher competion and the other factors..

Im now trying to figure out what do do about it..
some ideas are mabye removing stop words from titles and from anchor text on inbound links.
And mabye adding all the different combinations of the root word to help with the stemming problems like say (for example ill target room and rooms) not just room.. so that itll have benifet of both sense both are being returned now understand..
And mabye ill look into some abreviations for some longer search strings that gets me hits as well as the whole strings..

I dunno ill have to think more on how to fix it but at least ive got part of it figured half a*s out as to whats behind the lower msn serps these days..

Others may have different opinions but please dont flame me just out them here its ok to disagree mabye some oen can tell me more but this is what i know and think and the new posts on that blog http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2007/10.aspx show me its partly correct.. at least some peices of the puzzle solved..

Good luck guys lets work together and brainstorm more and hopefully mabye we will all get our top spots back i hope

 

Interesting Post, ive also noticed some massive changes in the results displayed by msn for some of my sites too.

 

Thanks im still trying to figure out the best way to fix my results..
Ive got 2 new sites and im going to start experimenting as soon as msn indexes them..
Its funny google indexed them in 2 days but msn hasnt and its been near 2 weeks..
Their website submission for is still acting funny i hope they fix that soon..

 

Hi, well today its still about the same no real progress 100% of sites are still indexed, but approx 60% are not appearing under the usual keyword searches.

I limited the searches to UK only and noticed there was some chinese results showing which was a bit odd.

maybe its broken ;-)

 

I think this new update is really, really disappointed, not because of my website dropped, but the result pages show a lot of SPAM website. For example, if you type the keyword "PP container" in the search.msn.com, you will find some SPAM websites with the title "PP" rank on top 10 and top 20. When you click the links, a lots of pop-ups and may cause "hang" to your browser.

And, if you search "pc bottle" , the no 4 is a website with chinese words which mean "under construction", this will never happen to Google and Yahoo.


And, if you search " hotel in KL" in www.msn.com.my, Funny, you will find 2 results from "the search result of Google.com.my

I suspect Microsft introduced a new algo with FULL OF BUGS (as usual ) !! Hope Microsoft really can do something to improve it

 

Mabye if we all email them they wil go back.. to the old way.. i hope so im loseing money badly with this new change

 

Why msn try to compete with Google yahoo I don't know. My client's site was index but after doing seo of the site it disappears from msn, and you may wonder that about 15 keywords ranked in google, site is http://www.superjumbopro.com

please tell me what I do, I have submitted the site in msn for several times.

 

My pages are slowly comming back up are anyone elses..

 

I go to search it on google

 

I noticed one or two sites making a re-appearance, hopefully the rest will follow soon ;-)

 

Good to hear that your sites are comming back. a question: have you resubmitted your sites? now and old?

By the way, I don't suppose you contact them, am I right?

 

Hi mahmood, No i haven't re-submitted any of the sites and No i didn't contact them either.

At the time of the issue i could see that the sites were all indexed, just not positioned as they were previously.

The problem seems to have rectified itself now, and the keyword positioning of the sites has returned to normal

Cheers