New MSN Algorithm

As most of the webmaster had probably noticed already MSN had changed their global search interface and with that also updated their ranking algorithm. Although this new algorithm still suffers from lack of spam filters and "Trust Ranking" methods, it seems to handle quite well with many spammers which MSN had become their main target so far. The new algorithm is based on a new technology MSN had been trying out called clustering. The clustering method defines categories to each search result so that a site position is no longer defined only by the amount of IBL (In Bound Links) with the keywords in the anchor text, but from now on the source of the IBL will have to come from a site which related to your site category in order that it will have a value for you. The on-page optimization of the MSN search algorithm had not changed, but with the new ranking algorithm comes a new factor that from now until further notice will count more, the URL: Websites with a certain keyword in the main domain URL (www.Keyword.com) will rank higher from similar websites that do not have that keyword in the URL. With that the importance of inner pages had been reduced in favor of the URL's main page. Example to this theory, which is based on a study of the current search results and on the following MSN beta site: http://wsm.directtaps.net/default.aspx, we can see by searching for the phrase "Online Casino BTDino" in MSN. The results of this search, current to February 17th, 2006, will now show up 2 websites which did not appear in the first 50 results until this change. In the 9th position you can see the site: www.btdino.com/winners.html - If you perform the following search: link:http://www.btdino.com/winners.html you will see that although this website hardly has IBL, all his IBL are from solid Online Casino BTDino related websites/pages, which favors it on websites with mixed IBL, which come from different websites in different categories. You can see previous search results for the online casino btdino keyword at: http://www.internet-casinos-information.com/online_casinos.html . With the algorithm change, MSN had also updated their datacenters, which cause a great change in the search results numbers, some keywords that until the change had returned over 2 million search results, are now returning only 1 million search results and other keywords that had returned 30,000 results are now returning 45,000 for example. Trust Ranking - although the clustering got some results in basing a "trust ranking" that brings back somewhat moderated search results, MSN is still missing a factor that will cut off websites which use spam methods such as "comments spam" / trackbacks / guestbooks, etc. As it seems to me, websites that have done well so far in Google, but were a little down in the results with MSN will now get an improved ranking position over some spam sites that got kicked down.