What is up with MSN??

[pennyloafer]

Wow, I am sucking wind after checking MSN this morning!! I am hoping that whatever is going on is temporary as now it is not even registering that any of my sites are in their database, but a few days ago, they were ranking #1

Is this just a shake up that is in progress do you think or am I dooooooomed?

[tamecrow]

I'd sit tight for a little while. There's been a shake-up, but it's impossible to tell if it's just turbulence or something greater.

[erikko]

msn like other SE's are making its updates so i guess they are into site repairs or something. just take it easy and wait

[cw1865]

I have one site that is flopping between being on page 5 for a certain keyword and not being found at all.

[Akashic]

What a way to start the day ... I just had a look and I'm sure msn have decided that my site barely even exists ... it used to be there ...

[thepoacher]

I've got a similar situation with MSN - my google rankings have gone through the roof but MSN has plummeted. What are they doing in there?!

[tamecrow]

Out of interest, chaps - how old are your sites which have taken a slap from MSN? From what I've seen so far, it's the newer sites which are being moved down - a real u-turn from MSN.

[caravan]

I undertake the search engine optimisation for several of our clients and this week I've noticed this worrying trend with 3 of the sites we look after. Previously they have all had good positionings with MSN but this month they've dropped off for all terms. The other search engines are fine and Googles results are doing well.

In all SEO work I undertake I always endeavour not to do anything that could be seen as black hat and try to focus on good keyword placement in titles, meta tags and content. All the sites have a robots file with the XML sitemap referenced in it. So this is something that has got me stumped. I've always found it relatively easy to get good placements with MSN.

Judging by several posts recently I'm not alone but having read these posts there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer. Is there any word from MSN on any possible changes? Could it be that this phenomenon is temporary and the results will come back if we sit tight? Has MSN changed it's algorithm's? Should I resubmit the sites for re indexing?

Finally, is there a webmasters control panel similar to google's and yahoo's which would give details on problem areas, backlinks etc?

[wige]

I know MSN is making some changes to their search currently, but not much information is available at this time. MSN is creating a webmaster panel, but this system is currently in a closed Beta.

[sacada2]

Msn has change it's algorithm similar to Google. Msn is no longer "easy to manipulate" engine as other webmasters branded them. All my entries to an Seo competition was lost. Title tag, meta descriptions, meta tags cannot trick Msn anymore.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by sacada2

Msn has change it's algorithm similar to Google. Msn is no longer "easy to manipulate" engine as other webmasters branded them. All my entries to an Seo competition was lost. Title tag, meta descriptions, meta tags cannot trick Msn anymore.

Are you saying you were trying to trick MSN?? If so, then it's YOU us white-hatters have to blame for their recent algo screw-ups!

[sgsmorgan]

This is weird. At the moment we have a whole bundle of sites for a number of clients (about 60 in total) and its as if they have ceased to exist (literally) as far as MSN / Live Search is concerned. Rankings are slowly climbing with Google and Yahoo but with MSN/Live Search it is as if we have been red flagged or banned. As far as site:url is concerned we don't exist

[mit]

too many giz-zags for my websites too...

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by sgsmorgan

This is weird. At the moment we have a whole bundle of sites for a number of clients (about 60 in total) and its as if they have ceased to exist (literally) as far as MSN / Live Search is concerned. Rankings are slowly climbing with Google and Yahoo but with MSN/Live Search it is as if we have been red flagged or banned. As far as site:url is concerned we don't exist

There's also something wrong with their Site:URL command. I've gone from about 350 pages to over 1350. Obviously that's a bug unless someone has added about 1000 pages to my site of which I'm unaware (which did not happen). So how are they now seeing over 1300 pages on a site that has less than 400??

[incrediblehelp]

Clint those link operators have never been that accurate.

[Clint1]

Well with G no, never been accurate. But they've always been accurate with Y and MSN, at least to within 3-5 pages.....in my experience with it. I've seen them vary by 5 links or pages at the most over a period of hours to weeks, but to see MSN go from ~345-355 for a year+, then to over 1300 suddenly and remain like that to within ~100, isn't right. They've trashed one of their main operators like G did, I forget now which one it was, I think it was the allinurl operator. So it wouldn't surprise me if they've also trashed the site:domain.com operator to make it return faulty results to make site owners think they've gotten more pages indexed when the reverse is probably true!

[incrediblehelp]

I agree with you on Yahoo. They have always been close but I have seen issues with MSN and Google. Clint maybe these changes have to do with MSN Webmaster Tools Beta being released?

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

I agree with you on Yahoo. They have always been close but I have seen issues with MSN and Google.

I guess it could depend on the site and how many pages, but MSN has always been stable with my sites, at least as far as page count goes. That could change I guess for sites with thousands of pages. G of course has never been accurate with anything. Let's hope they are far off now with their site: operator because if not then they've just trashed another ~50 of my webpages.

Clint maybe these changes have to do with MSN Webmaster Tools Beta being released?

Interesting, could be. If that's the case, then I hope these "changes" (i.e. seriously way off inaccurate site: operator results), don't reflect any potential inaccuracies of their webmaster tools area!

Have you signed up for it yet, can anyone sign up for it or does that "private" mean just that? I'd be a bit scared though to try it fearing it may do something to my site in their index. Beta can't be trusted of course to not do anything harmful.