Scott Hendison (who I met at a variety of search conferences and will see at Pubcon -- hi!) blogged about MSN ignoring 301 redirects: a site he had that ranked #1 in MSN was completely gone. After investigation, he found that the 301 was being ignored:

So domainname.com had a 301 redirect on it to domainname.com/directory/, but instad of following the 301, the MS Live bot just completely ignored the server directive, and cached the server page.

Over at Sphinn, it's not a shock. Apparently MSN has been doing this for years. Yahoo and Google took awhile to sort out their redirects. The question is: does Microsoft know about it and do they intend to fix it?

Some suggest that they don't:

It's been a known fact that Microsoft prefers making new standards rather than follow it.

Well, what's the new standards for a permanently moved page?

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

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