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.