new MSN search engine

[Alan Knighting]

Paolo,

We are using two different search engines although they are both Microsoft.

Using the MSN Search I first appear on page 6 but that points to my postings on Lay My Hat. Very interesting but not much good for selling my holidays properties. I appear again on page 15 and that is my Areca Webpage.

Using the MSN Search with the simple criteria of Monflanquin I am No. 1 but again that points to my postings on Lay My Hat. My holiday properties appear at No. 8 on the first page.

Has anyone any real idea how these Search Engines actually work? I must admit, I haven't got a clue.

Alan

[MadDogWoman]

Brooke
I just did a search and you came third on first page but after at least 3 sponsored lisitings both at the top of the page and at the side. This MSN engine is looking more and more llike Googole by the minute!
Nicola

[livinginitaly]

Has anyone any real idea how these Search Engines actually work?

I read somewhere that over 90% of the staff at Google don't actually know 'how' the search engine determines its results. Even those working directly on the 'formula' are split into separate departments and only given a 'portion' to work on.

So basically, the answer is .... no.

But of more importance though, isn't the main question 'why' not 'how'?

Alan, you are top of MSN (via laymyhat) because MSN values laymyhat has an informative, quality resource.

Sitting at top position for a search means you will get visits to your property listings, even if they have to go via your laymyhat profile or signature. Obviously, a percentage of visits turn into bookings, so the more visits the better.

Also if you had you're own website, it would benefit from all the 'incoming' links and so gain positions with the search engines. Just a thought

[paolo]

Brooke,

Yes I get the same result as you - a spectacular success, especially for the shorter phrase. However, 1 and 2 for that phrase is a costume hire shop, which mentions the colour Burgundy! That suggests that this search engine is far from fine-tuned.

Whether this is a blip or not I don’t know, but MSN is returning individual owners’ sites right up there among the rental listing sites even for plural searches (‘rentals’ instead of ‘rental’). For instance ‘burgundy holiday rentals’ puts you about 5th on page 1. On Google you are outside the top 100 (and possibly very far outside).

Perhaps MSN is not taking account of inbound links yet? Anyway, I like this search engine! My sites are right up there. Don’t bet against MSN eventually taking over Google’s crown, Microsoft doesn’t usually settle for second place.

[paolo]

Has anyone any real idea how these Search Engines actually work? I must admit, I haven't got a clue.

No. Nobody knows - and that is why there are so many SEO 'experts'. Some are good at their job, and then there are an awful lot of people taking advantage of the fact that nobody knows the truth.

[willemijn]

Brooke,

did the search "holiday rental france burgundy" (without quotes) and you are Number 1.

It matters maybe also which msn search one is looking at, as there is search.msn.co.uk and search.msn.com

[vrooje]

Ah-hah! I hadn't searched on the .co.uk -- just the .com. On the .co.uk I am not anywhere on the first page. Perhaps I should register my domain as a .co.uk and point it to my .com webpage.

It seems like that would be the most natural explanation for the differences between Alan's and Paolo's (and my) search...

[goo-rat]

Ah-hah! I hadn't searched on the .co.uk -- just the .com. On the .co.uk I am not anywhere on the first page. Perhaps I should register my domain as a .co.uk and point it to my .com webpage.

It seems like that would be the most natural explanation for the differences between Alan's and Paolo's (and my) search...

Hi Vrooje
I would be very carefull using redirects, you need to use a 301 (permanent) redirect not a 302 (temp) redirect, using the wrong one can result in you being dropped from the g**gle index completely.
Also be aware that you will also be penalised if you exactly duplicate your site content on two seperate domains.

In optimising for the msn search you musn't forget that g**gle is an important source of traffic too. and it is likely that msn will have the same sort of filtering too.

HTH

[vrooje]

David --

Thank you for that tip! I'll be sure to use a 301 redirect.

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten google -- in fact I didn't even know we were listed with fairly high placement on MSN until this thread started!

Cheers!

[Christine Kenyon]

Hello Brooke. It took up your challenge and using www.msn.co.uk, found the following:

holiday rental france burgundy no. 1 was discover-france-holidays.co.uk, with experienceburgundy nowhere to be seen! Sorry!

holiday rental burgundy no. 1 was www.villarental.co.uk.

I'm not at all technically minded, but I tend to do these sort of searches on a computer other than my own so that the results aren't distorted by what's in my cache. Is that maybe what is happening? Or are you using msn.com?

Cheers

Christine
www.stybarrowcottage.co.uk
www.troutbeckcottage.co.uk

[vrooje]

Christine:

Yep, I was using msn.com -- you're right, I show up nowhere on msn.co.uk