Increase In MSN Traffic?

[HHI_Golf_Guy]

Has anyone else noted increases in MSN traffic since Christmas?

A friend of mine has an interesting theory on this. A lot of people received new computers for Christmas, and by default any PC using a Windows OS will have MSN set to its default search engine.

I think he's right.

[ctabuk]

And I agree, MSN is beating Yahoo on my stats and is catching up with you know who:

[labeler2003]

We mostly serve the BtoB market that's not effected by Christmas gifts. MSM's share has been increasing. This past month MSN moved into tie for second place with Yahoo.

[mktplace]

And I agree, MSN is beating Yahoo on my stats and is catching up with you know who:

I quit using "you know who" after the Jagger update, when many of my white hat SEO sites got slammed for no apparent reason. I now use MSN and Yahoo, and find the results just as good as "you know who's". I have suggested the same to a couple thousand of my closest friends.

Maybe there are more of us voting with out feet (or mouses as the case may be).

[g7submit]

This is funny, really funny, isn't it?

Microsoft and all they sell to us was something we took reluctantly because there was nothing better to which we are accustomed. But that's changing and our romance with the new kid on the block is becoming stale. The old flame is back on the bed.

MSN's technology has been quite kind to webmasters with genuine content and hence have been returning good results for their efforts.

That "other" search engine is fast becoming like the Microsoft-of-old that people loved to loathe, however, we need to realize that "other" search engine is running scared as well, because of the level of investment and the way Bill Gates is pushing it, while they may have the money to continue to improve, you can only know that sustaining that position is a fickle reality.

Why? Microsoft has been in the fray for quite some time now and a veteran of many battles with the likes of IBM and Apple.

There can only be one winner. The current losers. Who? The search engine marketers! How? Prices will start falling on many expensive keyword terms soon. Not only that, all those "dances" will soon stop or be reduced to just once in a year, as people start voting with their mice and eyes (seeing a reasonable result).

We should not forget, however, that these are still early days for the coming epic battle. Is it going to be bloody? You bet! It's been one-sided for a while, but I can smell the cold-blood of change spluttering everywhere.

I don't use that "other" SE like I used to anymore, sorry,.... I'm actually in love with MSN now.

LOL.

[moredial]

Considering the fact that 'you know who' never sends visitors to my sites and that I have always relied on Yahoo to send my traffic, I find this topic rather interesting.

While Yahoo has been moving sites all over the show over the last 9 months with some sites disappearing for months from the serps and then reappearing at the same or better position without any change to the SEO, it can only be expected to see some variation in the traffice that it sends.

I have been too busy to keep an eye on the search engine wars these last few months. A quick look at stats shows that MSN is now sending about 60% of traffic on all but one site where Yahoo still holds this spot. 'You know who' is being constant at its less than 5%.

That suits me just fine because the kind of people who are too lazy to bother changing from the search engine given to them when that search engine ranks me well, are the kind of people who I want as customers.

Maybe I will do a couple of SEO tweeks to make my sites even more attractive to MSN - those MSN visitors are doing more page loads which can only be better for business.

And, if MSN have the same engineers working on IE7 as their SE, I may just start to say some nice things about IE again. For now, all I can say is that it was IE6 crashing my PC all the time that drove me to buy a Mac.

[HHI_Golf_Guy]

A quick look at stats shows that MSN is now sending about 60% of traffic on all but one site where Yahoo still holds this spot. 'You know who' is being constant at its less than 5%.

Are your SERP's relatively the same across each engine for your KW's? Even with SERP's "about" the same it can be difficult to judge traffic.

Even if you're on the first page, there a big differences in traffic based upon where you fall between #1 and #10.

[damarzee]

I'm happy to see Microsoft stepping in...not so they can monopolize the playing field, but because I believe they will help to equalize the "way too large" share of traffic being provided by "you know who".

I too was severely affected by the Jagger 1 update on Oct 16th and had lost nearly 75% of my traffic and about 50% of my revenue until being reinstated a few days after Christmas. The timing was not the best....but I learned a lot from the experience and have taken steps to not be so desperately dependant upon them or any search engine again.

My hope is that if there is another boss on the field, "you know who" is less likely to play God (especially when entering the largest potential shopping season of the year...Christmas) and may become more friendly again to webmasters.

I don't believe "you know who" will be going away, but a little competition always helps to improve how a company treats the people they interact with. I look forward to the potential improvements.

[Pascal77]

All reply's are from people who lost positions in Google(Spamming?)
It's very natural that you receive more hits from msn when you drop out of Google.(i had this with a local SE ilse.nl)

I think that if the vista project isn't very, very good we soon can bury microsoft.
The unsafenes of microsoft's systems is a very big problem this times. Banking, buying , ... it goes online now. Nobody is gonna keep working with a system which can't garantie that it is safe ...

And now they are focussing on the search business? Wrong idea if you ask me. First they have to assure that the OS and programming tools are safe, don't have to be replaced every 2 years, much cheaper, etc

If they don't do that, i think they are gonna get some punches like Ali gave them to his opponents.

Google has made some very good discissions to assure that they wil stay top in SE(analytics for example), microsoft stil thinks they can do everything with marketing. That isn't so, it's not so new any more, people have experience and learn quickley. They now what they want the next years.
And that isn't a system that has big security-issues, virusses, spyware, ...

And no worldwide selling OS means no garantued succes for msn search

PS : sorry for my bad English :-)

[crankydave]

My SERP's are very similar for Yahoo and MSN. My MSN traffic is around double that of Yahoo. I noticed the beginning of the shift round about time "whosits" sent that Jagger fellow calling. Me thinks he had too much "Bourbon". :)

Dave