The Fairest Search Engine - Thank God for MSN

I have a 2.5 month old site that I've been working hard to rank in the major searches. I'm ranking in the top 10 on MSN for most of the competitive keywords I've gone after, and my rankings are in the top 10 allinanchor and allintext for google. What would I do without MSN? I've had people devalue my efforts by saying, "Oh MSN is just easy to rank in". They should tell that to the 5 million other web pages I had to beat in order to make it to the top 10; however, my site is also much more relevant in my opinion than the sites that rank below me. MSN isn't easy to rank in, but I feel it is the fairest for those willing to build and optimize a quality web site. We all know that Google and now Yahoo have age filters that bottleneck rankings on new sites. Have these changes really done more to help the quality of the search engines? Putting my own bias aside, I do feel that google does provide the best search results; however, they have kept a lot more quality sites out for the wrong reasons. As I wait patiently for my site to get out of the sandbox and claim it's rightful top 10 spot in google, I am thankful for MSN's fairness and lack of discrimination based on age of site. Lets face it, without MSN, many web sites would be in the dark.

 

Actually, MSN is often filled with SPAM pages for commercial keywords. MSN IS easier to rank on. A page with no top 100 position on Google can be in the TOP10 results on MSN.

BUT it is true that Google and Yahoo! have Age Filters and this makes it harder for new site to rank high. But if your site is of good quality and has good links with good anchor text, you should rank well.

regards
-PAuL

 

Anyone can rank in MSN, but what is MSN's market share vs Yahoo and Google? I'm guessing 2-5% max. Those aren't good numbers if you want to be a "hot dog" instead of a "weenie dog". I created a site 2 weeks ago and I'm already #1 on MSN for a few keywords, but nobody has called or bought.

Google takes forever because they put value on website age and things like DMOZ you can't control. Yahoo is your best bet, but they also take some time. In my opinion, new kids on the block have to "pay to play" ...ie, PPC. But...if you have a good product or service, who cares, you'll make money right way with PPC.

 

MSN is pretty easy. But it can provide some decent traffic when getting your site off the ground. Also, I tend to think that the traffic you get from MSN is less web-savvy - which means you may be able to manipulate/exploit them more easily than traffic from other engines.

 

I use MSN myself when I want to find the lowest priced products because MSN doesn't care about a sites age or DMOZ. Look up air purifiers on google and you'll find the first 2 pages full of 5-10 yr old sites that are nothing but resellers. Only one or two factories list in the top 10. No wholesale sources. (such as ourselves) We rank okay in Yahoo and MSN nowever for over 30 keywords. My own experience led me to use MSN and yahoo over google for commercial products. I don't think that the oldest site or only DMOZ listed sites on the first page (most editors simply include their own sites, can you say "conflict of interest") MSN returns searches for meta tags and SEO optimization, and yes, a lot of spam sites, but I know how to spot those. A site can list a product on special and a few days later MSN will pick it up. That's not the case with google or even yahoo. So MSN does have a purpose...to get fresh "less than a week old" results for commercial products or recent news.

 

I have to agree. I have often thought of that myself, I mean if it is so easy to rank in msn, they why isn't everyone in the top 10?

On the other hand, I personally knew nothing about seo until I joined some forums and in 3 months I was able to get the #2 spot on msn for 'photo hosting' ahead of the big guys. So, yes, you could say it is easy.

 

I remember a time when google didn't have an age filter. If google and yahoo didn't have the age filter, then it wouldn't be any harder to rank high. The misconception with both yahoo and google is one of being difficult to rank. All they do is stop you from getting your true ranking sooner. MSN simply shows your work faster.

 

top ranking on msn like 1-5 ,can be worth a lot, regardless of people say, if you are targeting competitive terms its not that easy to rank high in msn

 

I agree. It's not exactly easy to get a keyword like "web hosting" in the top 10 for any search engine. My site is in the top 10 on msn for bill consolidation and consolidate debt, which are pretty expensive keywords for ppc. I'm not getting a ton of traffic, but I would be spending a lot of money in ppc for thecompetitive keywords I'm getting traffic from msn.

 

"my site is in the top 10 on msn for bill consolidation and consolidate debt,"

Heh I hope you're not the !!! SUPERB DEBT CONSOLIDATION !!!! guy.
He owns all the insurance keywords too. But ugh, way too spammy.

 

No. That isn't my site. I have created a very well optimized site. It's going to be a great day once I get out of the sandbox in google. My allinanchor are looking very strong.

 

@jnm007a: can u provide the site's URL and its keywords for the MSN rank. I'm just curious

 

There's too many smart people on DigitalPoint that might just turn into more competition for me. I'll say that my site is the nicest one in the top 10 for bill consolidation on msn.

 

Somehow msn doesn`t like me. 4 years now but won`t index my site
I have 20000+ pages @ google, a big 0@ msn.

 

ill bet u im higher for that keyword on msn...and im not the spammy site either...

 

Maybe. Maybe not.

 

todays share MSN - 14% Yahoo - 27% Google - 43% .
MSN ranks sites based on the keyword density and content and it will index your sites faster than anyother search engine.

 

Agreed. MSN does seem to rely heavily on on-page factors.

 

lol... tru.. DP is filled with smart people who'll outrank sites if they really want to!

 

its ironic that we want users to use MSN so they can find our site, but we would most likely use GOOGLE