Entries from Search Engine Roundtable tagged with 'msn'

We have more MSNBot troubles to unfortunately bring to you. Microsoft Bing's spider, MSNBot, is apparently not listening to directives they should be listening to. In this case, it is the crawl delay command, where a couple users are claiming...

Posted on November 11, 2009 8:49 AM

The buzz of the day is that Microsoft unveiled a new home page design for MSN. You can see the new design at preview.msn.com. Let's compare the current and the preview: Current: Preview: So much more refreshing! As Greg Sterling...

Posted on November 4, 2009 8:56 AM

Most search spiders have been known to get a bit crawl happy from time to time. But the most complaints over time come from MSNBot which tends to often get out of hand and send their spiders on individuals sites...

Posted on October 23, 2009 8:20 AM

With all the on going issues with MSNBot not behaving, I am not too surprised to see more complaints about the little spider. New confirmed reports from Bing Forums shows that MSNBot is hiding itself under the UserAgent of Mozilla/4.0....

Posted on September 17, 2009 8:31 AM

The years and years of Microsoft polluting web logs with fake referrer data, which they have 'fixed' numerous times, including a couple weeks ago. We had confirmed reports from webmasters that Bing was no longer showing up in the log...

Posted on September 10, 2009 8:08 AM

Brett Yount from Microsoft's Bing Webmaster team has commented here and in a Bing Forum thread saying the issue with the fake referrers being generated by MSNBot has finally been fixed. By finally, I mean, an issue dating back over...

Posted on August 31, 2009 7:58 AM

I normally don't get upset when I report about bugs with search engines, it is what I do. But I am really getting upset with Microsoft and their webmaster support with Bing, really. For the umpteenth time, Microsoft said they...

Posted on August 25, 2009 8:06 AM

Last night, Microsoft Bing representative, Brett Yount, said that they have rolled out a fix for the fake referrals or single word query issues people have been noticing. Brett said: We released a fix last night that should take care...

Posted on August 20, 2009 8:31 AM

Last week, we reported on what appears to be more cloaking tests by Bing, where referrer data for websites are being spammed (by Microsoft) with fake data. There have been more and more complaints about this in the Bing forums....

Posted on August 10, 2009 8:30 AM

A recent thread from the Bing Forums reports one webmaster noticing 150 plus referrers from MSNBot with the referring search query of "donate." They always come from a search result of www.bing.com/search?q=donate. The thing is, his site doesn't rank well...

Posted on August 5, 2009 8:45 AM

Shawn Hogan, DigitalPoint's founder, has posted a thread at DigitalPoint Forums clearly showing his frustration with MSNBot, Microsoft Bing's search crawler. He is upset that the bot is crawling too much, too fast - causing an unnecessary spike in load...

Posted on August 3, 2009 8:19 AM

There is a thread I have been watching at the Bing Community where one member said that he had log files that shows MSNBot (Microsoft Bing's crawler) is clicking on Microsoft adCenter search ads, possibly charging him for those clicks....

Posted on July 29, 2009 9:21 AM

There are several reports around the web about a new search bot by Microsoft that is causing major issues for web servers. The bot is named adidxbot and the useragent looks like this: adidxbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm). This bot has been on...

Posted on July 7, 2009 8:08 AM

There has been a lot of Bing buzz on how the 'new' search engine is competing in the search landscape. But is that traffic all legit? Remember, since April 2007, Microsoft has been sending weird referrals to many webmasters. They...

Posted on June 25, 2009 8:23 AM

The wait is over, Microsoft's new search engine, Bing is now live. It was rumored to be going live on June 3rd, but it went live some time early this morning. Techmeme is buzzing on the launch and Microsoft seems...

Posted on June 1, 2009 8:47 AM

The exciting topic from last night was that Microsoft is demonstrating their search engine next week at the D: All Things Digital conference. It is expected that the search engine will go live at the SMX Advanced conference a week...

Posted on May 20, 2009 9:00 AM

Microsoft is having a rough couple weeks. First they shut down their tests that is causing fake referral data from being spewed out and now I am hearing reports that their HTTP headers are malformed. A WebmasterWorld thread reports Microsoft...

Posted on May 4, 2009 8:56 AM

The ongoing saga of Live Search's fake referral data to possibly conduct cloaking experiments has been shut down temporarily. The official Microsoft representative has told us in a WebmasterWorld thread that it has been shut down. He said: I just...

Posted on April 29, 2009 8:17 AM

Live Search Maps is still gaining ground and currently, the only businesses that can verify their listings are those in the US. For US businesses, you can go to Live Search Local Listing Center and update your listings. But if...

Posted on April 24, 2009 8:46 AM

Since August 2007 Microsoft has been sending out weird referrer data to people's log files. The spam like referrers were official cloaking tests from Microsoft and should have been resolved in 2007. But they came back in January 2008 and...

Posted on April 22, 2009 8:39 AM

Bill at WebmasterWorld found a new MSN Japan search engine named Zenbu Kensaku at http://zenbu.jp.msn.com/. I don't read or understand Japanese, so let me quote you his comments: This new search engine beta actually will work with a lot of...

Posted on March 18, 2009 8:47 AM

Microsoft Search, MSN Search, Live Search, Windows Live Search, and now Kumo? Yea, Microsoft is still finding themselves with a brand for search. Currently, Live.com is the search portal for Microsoft, but everyone knows they have issues branding that portal....

Posted on March 4, 2009 8:08 AM

incrediBILL, moderator at WebmasterWorld, noticed that one of Live Search's bots was crawling through his JavaScript. The bot is named MSNBOT-MEDIA and he noticed that it was accessing JavaScript files and AJAX functions. He noticed that the bot was triggering...

Posted on January 2, 2009 7:49 AM

First, we had Microsoft Cash Back where Microsoft paid you to search the web with live.com. Now, we have Search Perks where Microsoft pays you to search the web with live.com ... well, almost. The difference between Search Perks and...

Posted on October 2, 2008 10:42 AM

Six months ago, we reported that Microsoft Live Search was sending spammy types of referrals. Rogerd reports on WebmasterWorld that he's not seeing the same types of referrals we reported back in January, but he's finding some even stranger ones....

Posted on July 24, 2008 9:51 AM

Microsoft has re-announced its ContentAds program last Friday. The program is currently in private beta, as we have reported at the end of 2006, but we have covered it since the beginning of 2006 Microsoft's post seems like more of...

Posted on July 21, 2008 9:51 AM

Many of you probably already know that Microsoft's Live Search has been displaying "Sitelinks" under the first search result for some queries for a while now. In fact, they have been doing this since the Microsoft Searchification Day 2007 in...

Posted on February 20, 2008 7:42 AM

Ever since the last quarter of 2007, SEOs and Webmasters have been complaining about not being indexed in Live Search. In short, many sites that were once indexed and ranking in Live Search were no longer. Plus, many new sites...

Posted on February 18, 2008 7:28 AM

According to Marketwatch, Nielsen is reporting that Google has only captured 56.3% of the US search market in December compared to 57.7% the previous month. The gain seems to be in Microsoft, which captured 13.8% of the search share compared...

Posted on January 21, 2008 9:29 AM

Yesterday, we reported findings that MSN was returning Google AdWords links in their natural search results. Well, Microsoft has responded to this issue on the Live Search Webmaster Central Blog, explaining that it was a complete accident and that it...

Posted on December 20, 2007 9:42 AM

Interested on getting some cash? Well, you may be able to with the new MSN adCenter Affiliate Program. For every advertiser you refer to adCenter, you'll get a percentage of their signups. Cool. It may help others too, as some...

Posted on December 19, 2007 10:29 AM

Wow, talk about strange issues with MSN Live. I just performed a search on Live.com and the 3rd and 4th results were Google AdWords ads as pictured below: Actually, I'm not the one to have discovered this. Michael Dorausch spotted...

Posted on December 19, 2007 9:41 AM

In early November I reported that Microsoft's link command came back to life. But it now seems to be up and down, currently down. The new link command that should work, is the the syntax of +linkdomain:www.seroundtable.com. But as expected,...

Posted on December 19, 2007 7:25 AM

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...

Posted on December 3, 2007 9:38 AM

How would you go about submitting a reinclusion request for a site that may have been banned from MSN unfairly? MSNdude says that you can visit http://support.live.com/eform.aspx?productKey=wlsearch&ct=eformts and ask for reinclusion. Forum members at WebmasterWorld are frankly disappointed in MSN's...

Posted on November 26, 2007 7:41 AM

Hitwise, a competitive intelligence service, has released its October 2007 numbers, indicating that Google dominated the search landscape that month with over 64% of searches performed. Yahoo, MSN, and Ask followed, with numbers at 21.65%, 7.42%, and 4.76%, respectively. Is...

Posted on November 20, 2007 8:54 AM

In September, we reported that Microsoft's Live Search spam-like referrals are official tests performed by Microsoft and that blocking them could have you delisted from the search results. A bunch of forum members are still reporting this "abnormal" activity and...

Posted on November 19, 2007 10:20 AM

There are unconfirmed reports from DigitalPoint Forums that Microsoft is going to upgrade adCenter soon to support daily budgeting. Currently, I believe, adCenter only has a way to set a budget at the month level. You can supposedly set a...

Posted on October 11, 2007 7:17 AM

An advertiser using MSN adCenter has a product listed for $69.99. However, he can't actually feature the price in the ad because the number "69" is not allowed. I tried to update an ad this morning with the price of...

Posted on October 4, 2007 8:56 AM

Seems like Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and Microsoft Live Search all are not sporting anything exciting or new for Labor Day. They have not done anything special in the past either, so it is not too surprising. Dogpile is sporting the...

Posted on September 3, 2007 8:55 AM

Last week, Microsoft launched Tafiti, a search engine that is powered by its new Silverlight technology. I played around with the features and have showed some screenshots of the new search engine in action. Once Silverlight is installed, you see...

Posted on August 27, 2007 9:44 AM

Many are excited that Microsoft has announced that they will be building out a webmaster portal. The portal will be similar to that of Yahoo's Site Explorer of Google's Webmaster Central. As Danny Sullivan explains, the portal will help consolidate...

Posted on August 24, 2007 6:10 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread has a member saying he has been beta testing the Microsoft alternative to Google's AdSense program, named ContentAds. He gave the new contextual ad program, from a publisher's perspective, a great review. To be honest is...

Posted on June 28, 2007 7:34 AM

There appears to be some early reports of a Live.com or MSN Search update taking place now. A WebmasterWorld thread has a few signs and signals from the SEO community that such an update is currently underway. It is currently...

Posted on June 22, 2007 7:48 AM

I typically like to wait for Danny Sullivan to do his large chart, plotting all the various metrics companies against each other. But Nielsen//NetRatings released (PDF) a report with new share figures. Here they are: In the number one slot,...

Posted on June 22, 2007 7:32 AM

Moderator: Jeffrey K. Rohrs, VP Agency & Search Marketing, ExactTarget Panelists: John C. Kim, Senior Director, Advertiser Product Marketing, Yahoo! Search Marketing James Colburn, Product Manager, Search Strategy & adCenter Go To Market, Microsoft Tom Leung, Product Manager, Google, Inc....

Posted on June 5, 2007 6:14 PM

Seattle 2007" />Satya Nadella is a 15 year Microsoft veteran, and has recently become the VP of Micorsoft’s Search & Advertising Platform Group. There is a new secret search stealth project going on in San Jose? At the end...

Posted on June 4, 2007 9:14 PM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports a few webmasters received phone calls from Microsoft adCenter representatives. Both webmasters seemed to have set up accounts in the past, but never fully activated those accounts. One said, I signed up several months back...

Posted on May 28, 2007 7:29 AM

Google rises in market share, MSN falls badly and Yahoo just hovers in place. There was a thread this morning on WMW about the April 2007 stats numbers just released by Nielsen/NetRatings. According to them: Microsoft saw its share of...

Posted on May 24, 2007 11:35 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread asks about the Microsoft Live link: operator which is still offline. We first reported about the link: operator downtime on March 26, which was nearly two months ago. A DigitalPoint user references the MSDN blog post...

Posted on May 16, 2007 9:23 AM

I reported this at SES NY but I have now found a thread confirming this at WebmasterWorld. adCenterEU confirmed there will be some type of accreditation program for adCenter managers. Thanks for your interest in the adCenter accreditation scheme. We...

Posted on May 16, 2007 8:00 AM

If you are a Microsoft adCenter advertiser, I recommend you login to your account and check to make sure that the conversion tracking part is set to the way you like it. Two advertisers noticed over the weekend that the...

Posted on May 14, 2007 8:02 AM

After several months in beta, a brand new MSN Live Hotmail was released to the public yesterday. A DigitalPoint Forums thread highlights the launch and links to the TechCrunch coverage of the release, which includes screenshots of the AJAX interface....

Posted on May 8, 2007 9:37 AM

The official Microsoft adCenter representative has confirmed that they are using Intellitxt ads "to drive trial and interest in Live Search itself." Intellitxt is a contextual product that shows ads within the text you are reading for the those keywords...

Posted on May 7, 2007 7:04 AM

A Cre8asite Forums thread tells the perfect story of someone who wants a page they own to be removed from the search engines. One of my clients is an attorney and all of his partners have their own biography page...

Posted on May 1, 2007 6:57 AM

I reported earlier this week that adCenter advertisers noticed a drop in traffic, which we later found out was due to them adding a quality factor to the ads displayed in live.com. Microsoft claimed that "this improvement will ensure that...

Posted on April 19, 2007 7:49 AM

Update: The adCenter blog posted that they made an update to the algorithm that ranks the ads. They now take into account relevancy and quality factors such as "content of the ad and landing page, keywords that an advertiser selects...

Posted on April 17, 2007 7:51 AM

Numerous reports from users in the WebmasterWorld forum say that the MSN reinclusion process is taking a long time. One member says that he tried to email webspam@msn.com and it got bounced back. According to msndude, a Microsoft representative, that...

Posted on March 30, 2007 9:43 AM

Tamar reported yesterday here that MSN Prepopulates their UK Search Box with "The Apprentice BBC". But it does not appear to just be prepopulated with "The Apprentice BBC". Last night they began showing "Euro 2008 results" in the search box,...

Posted on March 29, 2007 7:22 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread reports a possible Microsoft Search, Live.com Search, update. Is anyone else seeing this? It seems like a BIG update, and lots of old problems fixed. Our website is finally showing #1 (after being pushed down by spam...

Posted on March 19, 2007 8:05 AM

There are two separate reports from two different threads that Microsoft adCenter's conversion tracking is inflating their figures. First, what is adCenter conversion tracking? The adCenter Conversion Tracking help says: Converson tracking is a free feature provided by Microsoft adCenter...

Posted on March 1, 2007 8:20 AM

The huge adCenter overcharging bug this past Friday was patched towards the end of the day Friday. Microsoft promised to refund all the overcharging that occurred throughout the day in their blog post. After reviewing the threads at DigitalPoint Forums...

Posted on February 26, 2007 8:23 AM

digg_url = 'http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/012501.html'; Fixed: The adCenter representative has notified us via the two forums and the adCenter blog that the overcharging has been fixed and that they are now working up a plan to reimburse advertisers. Update: This is...

Posted on February 23, 2007 8:25 AM

If you are an advertisers on Microsoft's Live.com adCenter, and you noticed your reports not being updated, you are not alone. A WebmasterWorld thread has details of adCenter reports not updating since 7:00 am EST on February 11th. adCenter411, the...

Posted on February 13, 2007 8:16 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has a theory that smaller pages tend to rank better in Microsoft's Live Search (MSN Search), than larger pages. Senior member, crobb305 explains: Has anyone else noticed that very small pages rank highest in MSN? This could...

Posted on February 12, 2007 8:28 AM

Ben reported that MSNDude Still Missing, I think he heard us and came out of his hub to inform us he is still around... In a post at WebmasterWorld (post number 3216990) he wrote; Rest assured, MSNDude is, and will...

Posted on January 14, 2007 3:41 AM

There is a WebmasterWorld thread where folks are reporting that MSN Search is indexing a bit too much. Reports suggest that MSN is crawling and indexing the content found on pages which are excluded via the robots.txt directive. Normally, if...

Posted on January 5, 2007 7:07 AM

There are two recent threads that I found at forums I typically do not cover much on the topic of pay per post reviews. The posts are at HighRankings Forums and at SEO Refugee Forums. I am going to pull...

Posted on December 27, 2006 2:04 PM

An Adam Lasnik post in Google Groups sprung a post at Cre8asite Forums explaining that if you have bad HTML, Google will be OK with it. Yes, that is the case, your code does not need to be 100% validated...

Posted on December 25, 2006 8:09 AM

The eleventh edition of the Search Pulse has now been archived. We were able to discuss in detail about half of the topics I wanted. We discussed SES Chicago, Andy's click fraud rate, AdWords quality score tests, holiday updates by...

Posted on December 13, 2006 11:17 AM

Reportedly, via a WebmasterWorld posts, there has been a significant drop in ad impressions noticed from sources in the Mid Atlantic to the Northeast areas of the US. There are literally a couple threads on this at WebmasterWorld, including here...

Posted on December 8, 2006 7:30 AM

The eleventh edition of the Search Pulse has now been archived. We were airing this live at SES Chicago, during the cocktail hour last night. We had hundreds of special guests all around us, some that got on the air...

Posted on December 6, 2006 5:00 PM

Microsoft has jumped on the bandwagon for allowing you to verify if the useragent, MSNBot, that is crawling your site, is truly from Microsoft or being spoofed by some content scraper. Google has released information in the past for verifying...

Posted on November 30, 2006 8:17 AM

I often hate reporting on threads that do not have any direct link to examples but sometimes you have to trust certain members. A thread at WebmasterWorld has senior member crobb305 claiming that for many searches he is finding "loads...

Posted on November 28, 2006 7:45 AM

Last week, I was nervous that possibly Did MSNdude Get Fired? Darren commented saying that MSNDude is "Greg H." and that he was promoted. He said; The very active & helpful msndude was Greg H. He said msndude is a...

Posted on November 27, 2006 7:55 AM

AussieWebmaster posted a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums with a link to a blog post named How to remove your competitors from MSN Live! In short, the "hack" is to generate enough duplicate content on your competitors site, so...

Posted on November 10, 2006 7:12 AM

A relatively old thread at Search Engine Watch Forums discusses what the benefits of subdomains are in terms of SEO. There are many examples given, including that subdomains are often considered separate sites by Google and the other engines. That...

Posted on November 6, 2006 7:24 AM

The seventh edition of the Search Pulse has now been archived. This show was jammed packed with coverage from the past three weeks. We introduced the show with a look at how the industry including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Ask.com and...

Posted on November 1, 2006 2:33 PM

Microsoft has updated their adCenter Labs tools including; 4 million new keywords added to the Search Funnel 1.5: They added Keyword Forecast that shows "the impression count forecast and demographic predictions of your search terms." It is pretty cool. I...

Posted on November 1, 2006 7:49 AM

AussieWebmaster at Search Engine Watch Forums records an email sent to him from Microsoft about a new ad campaign they have launched October 27th to "promote Microsoft Live Search." Here is the email; I wanted to make you aware of...

Posted on October 30, 2006 7:04 AM

Big conference is taking place now, named eComXpo. In any event, a bunch of PPC engines are there giving away coupons. One accessible coupon for you is from MSN adCenter, they are giving away $50 in free clicks for new...

Posted on October 26, 2006 7:45 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has tips on how to rank your pages well in Microsoft's Live.com MSN Search. These SEO tips are being debated in the thread right now. They go through subjects such as: Importance of Content Importance of Freshness...

Posted on October 25, 2006 8:06 AM

Microsoft's new browser, Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), is now available for download here. I installed it on my MacBook Pro running Parallels and it works just fine. Danny Sullivan has THE article on the search side of things, i.e. the...

Posted on October 19, 2006 10:29 AM

Sometimes it is hard to find the different supported Meta tags to help control where Live.com (MSNbot) can crawl on your site and what content they should cache. I dug up the resource on MSN's Site Owner Help section that...

Posted on October 6, 2006 7:54 AM

This is shocking, if true. A Search Engine Watch Forum thread has two accounts reporting the same issue. I decided to use Phrase match for the whole campaign except one keyword. To my surprise, their system automatically added the Exact...

Posted on October 5, 2006 6:55 AM

Tracking your metrics is vital in today's world of marketing, no one would argue with that. But when it comes to tracking PPC campaigns down to the phone call, it can get expensive and cumbersome. Discovery, Moderator at SEW Forums...

Posted on September 26, 2006 7:16 AM

WebmasterWorld has a new Microsoft representative named adCenterEU who will be the European arm of adCenter411. adCenterEU explains his/her role... I've just joined the Microsoft adCenter Community Team and will be based out of our London office. The idea is...

Posted on September 21, 2006 7:17 AM

The third edition of the Search Pulse has now been archived. In this show we covered the Live.com launch, AdWords tests, Yahoo!'s marketing blitz, Google & Intuit's partnership, Google's supplemental command, the Belgian court ruling, OneBox spam, Adam Lasnik on...

Posted on September 20, 2006 1:19 AM

Microsoft announced that search.msn.com will be soon replaced by www.live.com, and that live.com is out of beta. Whooopeee, being sarcastic. Ok, past the press release, what does this mean for search engine marketers? Well, not incredibly much. First we have...

Posted on September 13, 2006 6:59 AM

A Search Engine Watch Forums thread accounts a Microsoft adCenter advertiser getting billed over $1,500 after having paused an ad he was running. Not only that, he paused the ad over 60 hours ago and the ad has yet to...

Posted on September 11, 2006 7:19 AM

After tons of speculation, Microsoft has finally come out to say that Microsoft adCenter Content Ads program is expected to be launched early Fall. As an FYI - I have asked to beta test it, so I hope to hear...

Posted on August 30, 2006 9:05 AM

Tuesday we reported that MSN Now Goes Beyond 250 Results from their previous state of only showing 250 results per search query. But I just read that thread and noticed an update, stating that although the web search front end...

Posted on August 24, 2006 7:22 AM

Often SEOs notice that a search engine may test various result sets in the search results between a search update and an other search update. It appears from one of MSNdude's most recent postings that MSN does not do that....

Posted on August 23, 2006 7:37 AM

Until some time recently a search at MSN only went up to 250 results displayed. For example, if you searched on "web" you would get up to 250 listed results, and nothing beyond that. Today, if you search on a...

Posted on August 22, 2006 7:19 AM

There are some discussions in WebmasterWorld and some more recent discussion in DigitalPoint Forums about an MSN update taking place still. Many Webmasters are noting changes to their rankings, most are saying they are seeing a drop in their rankings....

Posted on August 21, 2006 7:58 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread points out an issue at MSN Search, where subdomains that are excessively linking between each other, tend to rank well in MSN Search. Well, MSN is aware of it, according to MSNdude; It bothers us too, and...

Posted on August 17, 2006 8:10 AM

Ever wonder if you are stepping over that gray line of spam with the search engines? Well, if you feel you are doing anything excessive, then don't, according to MSNdude at WebmasterWorld. In a post MSNdude made yesterday, he said;...

Posted on August 16, 2006 8:33 AM

Detlev Johnson is moderating this new session. Can you rank well in all the search engines? Or do you need to pick and choose. This session will be a SEO session on that topic. Aaron Wall from SEO Book is...

Posted on August 8, 2006 12:48 PM

Every now and then on an off day, I revisit the Big Blue Pineapple Chair page I have on this site. Why? Well, it gives me an idea of how well (1) this site is doing in the various search...

Posted on August 6, 2006 9:54 AM

AussieWebmaster started a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums listing some of the features we should expect from the August 5th upgrade. - Now, use Microsoft adCenter with the Firefox 1.5 browser! - Daily, weekly and monthly data will be...

Posted on August 1, 2006 8:20 AM

How cute, seriously, MSN has finally given names to their baby crawlers. You know, Google names their crawlers, i.e. GoogleBot, MediaBot, etc... Yahoo has Slurp, etc. Now MSN has named their crawlers. The MSN Shopping bot is msnbot-products. The MSN...

Posted on August 1, 2006 7:36 AM