MSN: do we really care?

[omeomi]

I wake up. I make myself a coffee, sometimes I have cereal, sometimes I have a bacon roll. Then I have a shower, shave, and head off to work. It takes me about half an hour to drive in to work, and I have to park away from the office as I don't have a designated space. It then takes me about ten minutes to walk to work. When I get to work I turn my computer on, fire up the monitors, and make another coffee. The first thing I do is check my e-mail, the second is checking my ranking in Google.

Does anyone think that MSN search is more relevant to SEO than that paragraph? Because I don't.

[AndrewX]

MSN is lately a friend to the SEO of new websites.

I've found MSN to be the first engine to send visitors to some sites, and even once Google and Yahoo catch-up, MSN can still send more visitors if the site happens to also be ranked well.

Also I've never seen SEOs so excited about a new engine...

Where do I want to go today?

The bank. ;)

[PizdusInc]

The most important thing about MSN is that it is integrated into the Windows OS and many people just use it by default because they don't know any better. Next thing is that Microsoft has loads and loads of money, and looking at their history they have crushed almost everyone who "challenged" them. They will do everything in their power to become and stay #1. So, I would say better start tuning your MSN SEO'ing skills now...

[omeomi]

I am not even in the first hundred for the pages/keywords I'm concerned with in MSN, but I am for Google, I find it hard to justify spending the time on it when the same time on google can bring so much more traffic.

MSN seems to allow more spammy technniques. We'll see, I know a lot of SEO's are really excited by the new engine, maybe I just haven't seen the benefits yet.

In the future there will be robots.

[montytx]

For those of us in the sandbox MSN in about half of my traffic. They are by far the fastest and most up to date engine. I would say if your ignoring them you are going to miss a shift in the market. I think MSN search will double their market share this year from the wobbling Google. Just my 2 cents.

[chiron]

MSN I agree seems to index quite often, and has no obvious penalties for new sites and even for most white-and-gray area SEO from what I can tell.

I've been as a result quite pleased with them, but it's only a matter of time before, with such an open-door policy, MSN is flooded with spam and crap and old sites much as Google so often seems to be these days. I figure, whether they gain market share or not (they will, is my guess), there will come a point where they are forced to install some delays or penalties of some kind, or they'll end up being as irrelevant as I find Google to be on certain searches at times. Note to Google, good lord people, tried to find an image, and like, 80% are bad links - spider that from time to time, eh? And yeah I know images come and go, but used to be better than that... cache the suckers and all is well...

[nickberry]

MSN seems to allow more spammy technniques

I've seen so many of keywords hijacked by irrelavant sites on google lately it's hardly worth my time optimizing for them. Although the more I spend optimizing our MSN, the better my SERPS are becoming for google as well.

[toddieg]

MSN Search is here to stay... Microsoft has so much money and everytime I turn on the TV or visit a website I see some kind of advertisment promoting the new MSN search. They are even advertising via Google Adwords (which is funny how google allows that just to make a buck)

My opinion: Despite the dispute on the 'quality' of results, MSN Search will become more and more popular do to Microsoft's persitence and aggressive advertising techniques. They will soon capitalize on Google's marketshare and will keep tweaking their algorithm to provide higher quality results. In addition, Google will continue to upset webmasters by implementing crazy algorithms and having inconsistent SERPs. MSN will be the engine of the future.

[tomzo]

I am getting more traffic from MSN now than I've ever received from google, and I think more and more people are moving to search with MSN.

Google seems to have forgotten that webmasters use search engines too, and googles behaviour towards new websites lately, has driven many people towards MSN.

MSN is on the up!

[Jade456]

I can't say that MSN has made a big difference. I have the exact ranking on Google and MSN for Las Vegas Real Estate. Looking at my logs, Google sends at least 5 times the traffic to me on that term. I like that fact that MSN seems to update its serps quicker, but for me at least, they just don't send the visitors.