Yahoo rocks, MSN stinks

I love to keep an eye on my stats and check the behavior of the engines. Today I saw something interesting...

A while ago I was #1 at MSN for my main keyword. Not ranked at all at Google or Yahoo except for some lame untargeted keywords. I was getting about 110 daily uniques.

Then MSN did some weird update and dropped my keyword to the 3rd page. Traffic of course dropped and I was only getting a few visitors from some oscure keywords.

Now Yahoo did an update, and sent my keyword to #10. I got 112 visitors.

So, a #10 at Yahoo is bringing the same amount of visitors than a #1 at MSN. I just can't believe how much MSN sucks, no one seems to be using it.

 

That took you a while to figure out

 

Yahoo still delivers more traffic than MSN?! No way!

But yeah, Yahoo was an established brand long before Google and MSN. There are still a lot of Yahoo faithful out there.

Though an interesting point is that even in Google, the #10 result may yeild more traffic than the "heart of the line up".

 

A top 10 in Google would bring me more traffic than a #1 at Yahoo and MSN

Why is MSN so stuck? Yeah, Gates sure has billions, but can he just throw his money away like that, building a search engine that no one uses? Seems really stupid to me. People kept telling me "oh wow, I have seen some cool ads promoting the new MSN engine"... well, the guy in charge of the publicity campaign should get fired, he sure is doing a terrible job getting people to use the engine.

 

That doesn't happen overnight though so give it some time. I already see MSN usage increasing slowly so it is growing but searchers seem to be loyal folk so I'd give it some more time prior to firing the Marketing Director.

 

Give it time and MSN will be driving traffic the same as Yahoo. Wait until the new 'Longhorn' OS comes into effect and Microsoft 'saves us all from the evil-doers of the internet and therefore becomes our new, trusted, 'friend'. They're playing a 5 year plan as far as I can make out.

 

I always stood by the fact that it would take at LEAST 18 months for MSN to increase their market share by any signifigant amount. Webmasters are quick to change and their personal bias skews the analysis.

I know plenty of average users that just like the Google interface. Combine that with familiarity and Google keeps its dominant position for now. MSN's results (in my opinion) from a users perspective aren't so much better that they would change the trend drasticly.

 

MSN has not really lived up to expectations - yet. MSN.com regularly doesnt work for me. .co.uk results are not very good and traffic is very low. Results changing on different pages, reducing impact of uk results on .com. I am not even very impressed with the site design or anything. It is not really much of an improvement on the old. maybe the actual serps are a little better than they used to be.

I havent seen many people that are impressed. Personally, there doesnt seem to be a reason to swap to msn at the moment, although there is plenty of time yet.

Yahoo, however, seems to be improving in all areas although they are not making as much noise. Increase traffic, nice homepage design, results are getting better, less spam, clean design, loads well, fast indexing + ranking. It seems yahoo is starting to do things right.

Google still is the best overall though IMO.

 

I totally agree to that. There is nothing atractive on MSN, nothing to make you want to use it.

Add then you get the search results where you only get 9 sites listed and huge sponsored links slammed at your face all over the place. Very ugly interface and the link to move over to the next pages is so small and hidden that it is a miracle if you even find it.

 

Yeah, I have never clicked a sponsored link at the bottom. Dont they read the same articles + info the rest of us do ?

Google is popular because it is clean, fast, relevant and doesnt overload you with sponsored results. - Is that overly complex ?

Forget slidy bars and being able to switch from a blue interface to a blue interface.

I dont know why no serch engines puts the 1-10 links at the top of too.. I think it would be useful.

 

Because the people in the bottom 5 of every SERP would get royally screwed by lazy users

 

Thing is with MSN, a lot of non savvy users will be getting it as their default search, so even though anyone with an ounce of sense won't use it, millions of others will - so grab a piece whilst you can.

 

MSN may not bring alot of traffic, but it brings some. When your waiting to be indexd in Yahoo or for a Google aging filter to be removed, MSN is your best friend.

 

I have to fully agree with that statement, MSN was once my closest friend. I think the homepage itself throws too much at a user, so really they have not time to search. the Page has soo much "stuff" on it, you cant just go there and search. I think is why "true" searchers use google, it has a search box.....that is all. But what do i know.

 

I also agree to that... at least when you do some seo change on your site you can see almost instant results at MSN, while it takes several weeks at Yahoo and several months at Google.

 

Heh, indeed, MSN sucks. I'm listed #1 there for a single most competitive word, but I don't enjoy in full the full advantage of it, so I am working to get #1 position in Google and Yahoo!

 

I have noticed that for being number one in MSN and Yahoo for the same term, Yahoo brings a little more than double the traffic of MSN.

 

I like the way MSN search engine picks up my new links and indexes me even for a site only 1 month old.

 

Yahoo stinks and MSN stinks even more. The traffic i get from Yahoo and MSN together is about 2 % what i get from google. And now since they both have changed there algo, hope your aint targeting hotel keyword phrases at Yahoo , i even get less traffic. Im no where to be found on yahoo.

 

IMHO, Msn is only useful to track your backlinks. Since msn picks backlinks quickly, I can track which directories accepted sites that I have submitted 24hrs before.