new MSN search engine

[willemijn]

doing fairly well on Google, I am now staring to hear about the new MSN search engine. I am not at all in their results and do not know why and worse still ... don't know what to do about it. Anybody any idea how to get listed on MSN?

[vrooje]

Holy moly...

I just typed in "vacation France burgundy" and our site came up as #1!

I didn't do a thing to be listed on there... so it must be somewhat like Google in that way. Just speculation, though.

Cheers!

[paolo]

You don't need to submit: if your site is out there, and it is linked to by other sites, MSN will find you. But if you want to you can submit your site here:
http://beta.search.msn.co.uk/docs/submit.aspx

[willemijn]

thanks a lot, have submitted because apparently I am not in the MSN index yet ...

[Alan Knighting]

Brooke,

I did the same by typing "Vacation France Lot-et-Garonne" in an MSN search and my page on a Holiday Rental Site came up No. 1. The perverse thing is that I have only ever had one enquiry from that source.

One could say "so much for the much lauded Search Engine Rating!". Are they really the "be all to end all" that some people would have us believe? Is it really the case that the majority of people search for and buy their holidays on-line? I am sure a lot do but somehow I suspect that many more do not.

Alan

[paolo]

Alan,

I did the same search and didn't get you at number one.

There are a couple of other factors to consider about a site's appearance on page one of search results:

- Is the Title and description that appears on the results page going to make people click on it, or move on to the next one?

- If they do click, is the site that meets them user-friendly, easy to understand, and is your property easily found?

It's not just a question of how well a site ranks on a search engine, that is the first step. I bang on about it because without that first step it is irrelevant what the site is like - people won't find it.

Also, the phrase you typed in is not one that will be used much, if at all, by potential renters, so I wouldn't pay much heed to who comes top for it.

[livinginitaly]

One could say "so much for the much lauded Search Engine Rating!". Are they really the "be all to end all" that some people would have us believe? Is it really the case that the majority of people search for and buy their holidays on-line? I am sure a lot do but somehow I suspect that many more do not.

Well the world is changing, i'm an avid watcher of the 'a place in the sun' and 'no going back' type programs ..... and i can honestly say that i've not seen a program where the 'purchasers' have not used the Internet to research the area and properties, be they 20 year old 'wizkids' or 60+ 'silver surfers'.

You could say that 'purchasing' is different from 'renting', but in my experience it isn't. Most of our friends (some far from computer literate) use the internet to research holiday destinations and claim it all adds to the 'event'.

Not using the internet is like booking a package holiday and not knowing the hotel you'll be staying in as far as i'm concerned. If i was only interested in a 'last minute' weekend 'city break', i probably wouldn't bother, but something more planned would certainly be an 'internet job'.

[MadDogWoman]

This is crazy..I've just done a search on MSN and what comes top when above search is done? www.laymyhat.com all posts by maddogwoman! See below what displays...

Lay My Hat :: Viewing profile
Lay My Hat Forum The forum for holiday rental owners FAQ Search ... Find all posts by MadDogWoman Location: Haute Garonne Website: http://www.frenchsecrets.co.uk ...

www.laymyhat.com/forum/profile.php?mode ... ceefed9693...

[livinginitaly]

Bet you wished you'd selected a better 'login name' now

Thing is, you're No.1 on MSN!

It also shows the popularity of www.laymyhat.com, good allround i'd say.

[willemijn]

since I am not at all included for most keywords I can be found on on google, I do have a serious website with content and I am not trying to trick search engines into anything ... next questions is what should I do to get high in the MSN search results?

I know some things about google ... nothing about other search engines. Possibly I am a bit 'blond' never to have considered other search engines ...

[Alan Knighting]

Paolo,

I did the same search and didn't get you at number one.

I have just repeated the search - that is, using the search facility in Internet Explorer v6 - and the first in the returned list is my property. It is an individual Webpage on a Property Listing Site - Areca.

I am not sure I entirely agree with what you say about the criteria. It seem to me just the sort of thing that prospective visitors would use when searching for a holiday in the Lot-et-Garonne department of France.

Tony,

Well the world is changing

I wouldn't argue for one moment about the importance of the Internet. For business and personal purposes I have been using the Internet for many years. I couldn't do without it but neither am I solely reliant on it. I continue to get enquiries from all sorts of sources but the balance has certainly shifted very much in the direction of the Internet. It has become my single best source of new business.

One of the obvious problems with the Internet is the huge overload of Websites all desparately trying to get noticed and scrabbling to climb the Search Engine ratings.

Alan

[vrooje]

Willemijn,

I don't know this for sure, but I would guess that the MSN search uses most of the same criteria as Google but weights them in a different way, hence the different rankings.

It can take many, many months to get ranked on a search engine, just because they crawl the web and re-index their sites at their own pace...

There is a forum where people talk about this stuff exclusively... but I've forgotten the URL. I've seen Paolo mention it a few times...

[paolo]

This is crazy..I've just done a search on MSN and what comes top when above search is done? www.laymyhat.com all posts by maddogwoman!

Now that is crazy, although the words are all on that page.

MSN search is a new search engine, and is probably in a 'shakedown' period, so I wouldn't expect that to be top for long. But it must mean we are doing something right!

Willemijn,

If you are a real SEO expert, you can do different things to please different engines, but for our purposes we should just treat all search engines the same. Their goal in life is to get more users and to do that they have to return the most relevant results - so try to fill your sites with plenty of good content and that is what all search engines look for. Then work on your inbound links.

The site Brooke mentioned is www.highrankings.com/forum. You could spend three years at college learning what they tell you there for free.

[paolo]

Alan,

I don't know what the IE search function is using for its results (I can't find it on my browser), but on the MSN search engine - http://search.msn.com - you are not in the top 100 results for that phrase.

You may be right, people may use the phrase "Vacation France Lot-et-Garonne", but I think it is too long. People tend to use shorter search phrases (although that is changing as we evolve as users). That phrase also doesn't include an accommodation type, so people who use it may not be in the market for a holiday rental.

[vrooje]

Alan,

I just tried "Vacation France Lot-et-Garonne" and also didn't find you on the first page.

That's very interesting... would someone mind searching for "holiday rental france burgundy" or just "holiday rental burgundy"? When I do those MSN searches, experienceburgundy.com shows up #1 for the first search, and #3 for the second.

If that doesn't happen for others, what would that mean? Somehow the search engine knows what sites we already visit? Or... ?