Completely missing from MSN results?

[mryang]

Firstly let me stress I have never used any black hat techniques or cheating or dodgy link farms etc...

However my site which is 7 years old has dropped completely out of MSN's results where we used to enjoy several hundred visitors a day from MSN and have quite a few first page positions for our chosen keywords and phrases.

My site is DVD-and-media.com blank dvd recordable disc and case products for duplication and replication - it is a UK based dot com

We also own the domains dvd-and-media.co.uk and dvdandmedia.co.uk

The only site even showing in MSN is dvdandmedia.co.uk and this we only bought this year so it has no age or PR assigned and it is set up on a permanent redirect to our main site dvd-and-media.com - but rather than indexing and listing our pages in MSN there is just the one page in MSN and that is found by doing a search - site:dvdandmedia.co.uk and one result is found. search site:dvd-and-media.com gives zero results where in the past it gave thousands!

We list well on Google with many top 3 positions and a few No.1's .... why have we suddenly been dumped by MSN??? I have tried emailing MSN and filling out their "I didn't find what I am looking for" forms without any reply.

I have also checked my .htaccess files and apache configuration on the server and everything looks correct for the redirects, our main site has not been offline either.

So I am looking for some help from you guys and girls on here... I have been more of a lurker and learner on Webproworld up until now and hope you can help me out of this dilemma and see my site fully indexed in MSN again.

All help will be most greatfully received.

[DanThies]

Simon, the problem might be the duplicate site that you are hosting at www.gold2012.com.
Just a hunch, though.

[smeatz]

hahaha... you got a good laugh out of me with "that" lil (subtly sarcastic) gem of a reply, Dan

I guess we shouldn't go "too hard" on Simon though... lets face it, he IS in the "duplication and replication" niche!



Cheers,

Smeatz

[DanThies]

I doubt this was intentional, Smeatz. It could very easily just be a server configuration problem, and I think if it were intentional they probably wouldn't be asking questions here. Either way, gold2012.com is indexed @ MSN, and the intended domain is not.

[halfmexi]

Half of my clients sites disappeared in MSN for September - some in the top 5 in their respective search queries... I think they are just re-adjusting their (supposed) new search that is supposed to compete with Google.............. yeah right, I know...

MSN can dream I guess...

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by halfmexi

Half of my clients sites disappeared in MSN for September - some in the top 5 in their respective search queries... I think they are just re-adjusting their (supposed) new search that is supposed to compete with Google.............. yeah right, I know...

MSN can dream I guess...

If their goal is to compete with G by REMOVING useful relevant whitehat pages, they've definitely succeeded and done that even "better" than G. They are a total mess, and thanks to this "Live" search crap of theirs, G has widened the gap.

[KenGalo]

Hi folks,

I have been a reader for years here but rarely post since it's out of my element. I run an office cleaning service and my site L & K Office Cleaning and Janitorial Services was ranking fairly high with MSN for a few years up until this past winter when it completely dropped off to page 30.

Last month I signed up for a few of their contests and the StartupNation site and the Home Based Business contest, within 4 weeks I was back on page 1.

Go figure, because I can't.

[Doolallys]

My site, Online Casinos | Poker | Bingo | Gambling has been missing from MSN since the turn of the year. When I ask what's wrong they just say it's a small problem they have that will be fixed soon.

Personally I think the algo. they use has a flaw that they can't fix.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by KenGalo

Hi folks,

I have been a reader for years here but rarely post since it's out of my element. I run an office cleaning service and my site L & K Office Cleaning and Janitorial Services was ranking fairly high with MSN for a few years up until this past winter when it completely dropped off to page 30.

Last month I signed up for a few of their contests and the StartupNation site and the Home Based Business contest, within 4 weeks I was back on page 1.

Go figure, because I can't.

What kind of contests?

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by Doolallys

My site, Online Casinos | Poker | Bingo | Gambling has been missing from MSN since the turn of the year. When I ask what's wrong they just say it's a small problem they have that will be fixed soon.

Personally I think the algo they use has a flaw that they can't fix.

Yeah, it's like G--they've screwed up something they now don't know how to fix. Both can't leave well enough alone. "Small"?? It's "small" to them as they put it because they are not in the position of site owners that NEED their pages indexed in order to have an income! If they actually admit it, you know it's big.

Another thing, I have roughly 400 pages and now MSN shows (get this) about 1200 pages indexed. WTF??? Did someone upload about 800 pages to my site of which I'm unaware?? So it would seem their site: operator also isn't working......along with their submit URL page which also isn't working.

[Drake]

Maybe MSN is try to do something similar to Google with the paid link penalties now? Seems like a lot of people all over are losing rank unexpectedly.

(I'm referring to the tons of articles talking about the new Google paid link penalties for having site advertising, like this one.)

Not really sure, as I'm not an search expert, but it came to mind when I was reading this.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by Drake

Maybe MSN is try to do something similar to Google with the paid link penalties now? Seems like a lot of people all over are losing rank unexpectedly.

(I'm referring to the tons of articles talking about the new Google paid link penalties for having site advertising, like this one.)

Not really sure, as I'm not an search expert, but it came to mind when I was reading this.

Could be, and if so, also like G, they too are screwing site owners that don't even have paid links nor advertising! I'm one of them.

[mryang]

Hi guys,

Thanks DanThies I hadnt even considered that Gold2012.com was somehow causing duplicate content. Seems this could be down to an error in my htaccess and forwarding! Gold2012.com is just another unused domain on my server and brings up my main site - Dam!!!!! If I correct it now how long do you think it will take for things to come right again?? Any ideas?

[Clint1]

I seriously doubt that's your problem. Yes, it's a good idea to fix it, but this is happening to too many other people without any dupe content problem. Plus MSN doesn't really care about that like G does.

[leesw]

Where are you supposed to talk to MSN? I've got a site that is not a duplicate, does no black hat and ranked fine until about 8 months ago and it was dropped completely. I've emailed them twice and they have not responded. Maybe I'm using the wrong information to contact them?

Also, what contests did KenGalo sign up for?

[DanThies]

MSN's instructions are here:
Site Owner Help: Request that we reinclude your website in MSN Search results

[DanThies]

Clint, MSN does care about duplicate sites, especially when they're on the same IP address.

Clearly they have a lot of things forked up right now @ MSN, but the reinclusion process does work... just slowly.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by DanThies

Clint, MSN does care about duplicate sites, especially when they're on the same IP address.

Clearly they have a lot of things forked up right now @ MSN, but the reinclusion process does work... just slowly.

I should have said dupe pages and not dupe sites. They may "care", a little, but not to the effect that G cares about it.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by leesw

Where are you supposed to talk to MSN? I've got a site that is not a duplicate, does no black hat and ranked fine until about 8 months ago and it was dropped completely. I've emailed them twice and they have not responded. Maybe I'm using the wrong information to contact them?

Also, what contests did KenGalo sign up for?

I don't have the time now, but I posted several MSN email addresses on some other thread. It was within the past 2-3 months. I think it was on another MSN thread here, but I can't be positive about that. You can search my posts and probably find it.

[noel_x99]

We've seen the same kind of problems on MSN over the last month or more. We've designed many sites that generally performed well in MSN with no particular effort. If we did decent on-page optimization, these sites worked well in MSN. All of these sites have disappeared.

I was checking on one site today. This site does well in Y and G. It's in the top ten for many of the major keyword phrases we've targeted.

Not in MSN...If I searched MSN for the company name, the company site did show up at the top of the SERPS - So I would think that means they have at least indexed some part of the site. HOWEVER, if I search for an extremely unique 8 word phrase, the site doesn't show up in the top 50. If I put those same 8 words in quotes, my page (or references to my page) are the only things that show in the serps.

Obviously, other than searches for the company name, we've had no traffic from MSN on this site.

I'd check on that possible duplication problem. Other than that, sit tight and wait for MSN to do something right.

[KenGalo]

StartupNation Home-Based 100

StartupNation Home-Based 100

StartupNation Home-Based 100

StartupNation Home-Based 100 Vote for me if it's still open! L & K Cleaning at the bottom of page 5 is my site. Thanks!!!



I also signed up for their newsletter, don't know if that helped either, but I'm back.

[mryang]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

I have identified the duplicate sites being indexed by MSN. They appear to have been

DVDandMedia.co.uk
Gold2012.com
dvd-and-media.co.uk