Entries from Search Engine Roundtable tagged with 'msn search'

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

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

I am seeing reports at WebmasterWorld of a possible Microsoft update to Live Search. Senior member, bwnbwn, said it looks like Microsoft is jumping back and forth between two indexes. He said: It looks to me that there are 2...

Posted on December 15, 2008 7:43 AM

I spotted two thread this month discussing how little Microsoft is indexing their sites but how often Microsoft's bot, MSNbot, is crawling their sites. A WebmasterWorld thread and DigitalPoint Forums thread has details of the newish behavior from MSNbot. BillyS...

Posted on November 24, 2008 7:42 AM

We have two WebmasterWorld threads and a DigitalPoint Forums thread discussing a brief update and bug with Microsoft's Live Search. We know the last Microsoft Live Search update was about 15 days ago. So it does seem a bit early...

Posted on October 3, 2008 8:34 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread is reporting early signs of a major Microsoft Live Search update. The rankings, indexing and algorithm seems to have updated. First reports came in from senior member, textex, at 9:30am (EST) yesterday. Since then, other members began...

Posted on September 17, 2008 8:28 AM

Since the tide seems to be shifting and more and more advertisers are opting for Microsoft adCenter over Yahoo Search Marketing, I thought I share with you a recent adCenter related thread from WebmasterWorld. Let's say you wanted to track...

Posted on July 17, 2008 8:39 AM

There is some recent additional chatter in the WebmasterWorld thread, that was discussing the Live Search March Update, from late March. It appears from the chatter that Microsoft is either still working out the kinks in the past update or...

Posted on April 15, 2008 7:39 AM

The other day we reported on the March 2008 Live Search update. Most of the feedback was that Microsoft took a step backwards in relevancy and spam and their new index is poor, to say the least. MSNDude, Microsoft's Live...

Posted on March 28, 2008 8:36 AM

It seems like there was a major update over at Microsoft Live Search. The update appears to have begun some time yesterday morning. The update was suppose to loosen up the spam filter a bit to allow the crawler to...

Posted on March 25, 2008 7:25 AM

There are two recent threads in different forums complaining about search engine spiders from Microsoft. A WebmasterWorld thread is specifically complaining about MSRbot, Microsoft's research bot, for attempting to crawl pages that don't exist. The other thread is from DigitalPoint...

Posted on February 25, 2008 7:18 AM

We have been reporting about Microsoft's issues with handling 301 permanent redirects since September 2006. We came back to the issue this past December but still, Webmasters are complaining at the lack of support for 301 redirects in Microsoft's Live...

Posted on January 17, 2008 7:31 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

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

Mid-August I reported about Weird Referrals From Microsoft's Live Search. These referrals typically came from Microsoft's IP blocks but also contained weird referral strings that included adult keywords, pharmaceutical keywords, and other spam like keyword phrases. Last night, the official...

Posted on September 6, 2007 7:52 AM

adCenterEU has updated us on the adCenter bulk import draft problem, saying at a WebmasterWorld thread that the problem will be resolved in a "month or so." Microsoft will be adding new functionality to make it easier and quicker to...

Posted on August 28, 2007 7:52 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

In the Copyright & Trademarks: What SEMs Should Know session from SES San Jose last week, adCenter announced they have a new policy on how they will be handling trademark complaints. Instead of them being the go between, between affiliates...

Posted on August 27, 2007 7:57 AM

I reported this the other day at Search Engine Land, Microsoft Content Ads To Open To All US Advertisers August 29. In short, Microsoft is opting in all US advertisers into their content network (i.e. ContentAds). The only way for...

Posted on August 22, 2007 10:01 AM

adCenterEU confirmed in a WebmasterWorld thread that in the next "couple weeks" they should have an announcement regarding fixing the issue with the draft setting after conducting a bulk import in adCenter. The problem, as summarized in the thread: Loving...

Posted on August 20, 2007 10:25 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread reports several webmasters finding weird referrers from Microsoft's Live Search. I am getting thousands of hits where the items in my log show the referrer as follows; http://search.live.com/result.aspx?q=KEYWORD&mrt=en-us&FORM=LVSP When I load the referred page then I am...

Posted on August 17, 2007 7:36 AM

The official Microsoft Live Search representative at WebmasterWorld said that Microsoft will finally be supporting Sitemaps (for real this time) now. Microsoft will currently support autodiscovery of your sitemap file if it is included within your robots.txt file. I have...

Posted on July 25, 2007 7:54 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

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land Matt Cutts, Software Engineer, Google, Inc. Peter Linsley, Senior Product Manager for Search, Ask.com Tim Mayer, VP of Product Management, Yahoo Aaswath Raman, Program Manager, Live Search, Microsoft Q: What are you doing...

Posted on June 5, 2007 6:03 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

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

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

A DigitalPoint Forums thread points out that MSN Search was unavailable briefly during the morning. A user reports: Just tried Msn and yes search is not working. They might be changeing site but seems like some other problem. Msn is...

Posted on April 2, 2007 6:56 AM

The other day I reported that Microsoft Live Search Link Command Operator Offline. You can not longer use the link:, linkdomain: and inurl: operators at Microsoft's Live Search. It is official, Microsoft has informed us that they removed it because...

Posted on March 29, 2007 7:36 AM

Since yesterday morning Microsoft's Live.com has been having issues with their link command. Microsoft does have a comprehensive link command feature but right now, it appears to still be offline. A search on link:www.seroundtable.com would normally return results but now...

Posted on March 26, 2007 8:02 AM

On November 15, 2006 Google, Microsoft & Yahoo! Back SiteMaps Protocol and Microsoft posted about it back then that they are supporting it. We are 100% behind this protocol - this kind of collaboration will help improve the search experience...

Posted on March 20, 2007 7:36 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

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if reinclusion requests at Microsoft's Live.com Search works. Like with Google reinclusion requests, some go heard and some go unheard. For example, one WebmasterWorld member has yet to hear back from Microsoft and his site is...

Posted on March 6, 2007 8:10 AM

This is funny, remember the huge adCenter overcharge bug a couple weeks ago? Yea, they did refund adCenter advertisers very soon after. I am now spotting reports at the WebmasterWorld thread that they refunded advertisers too much! Well, we were...

Posted on March 6, 2007 7:53 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

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

The Live Search Blog announced that they have renamed and taken out of beta, their search API the other day. The new name is Windows Live Search API, lovely. They also gave it a bit of an upgrade, adding: More...

Posted on February 7, 2007 7:45 AM

Microsoft officially launched their search product on November 11, 2004, almost two years and three months ago. A WebmasterWorld thread asks, "so after two years has MSN finally got it right?" So far, Webmasters are saying no. Here are some...

Posted on February 5, 2007 8:13 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread has continued discussion over the past week or so, of the Microsoft Live.com page submission tool being broken. Microsoft has numerous page submission pages depending on the geolocation of your site. There are various reports of the...

Posted on January 29, 2007 8:20 AM

Yesterday there was some confusion on if Microsoft adCenter Advertisers Being Forced into Content Network? The official adCenter representative at WebmasterWorld, adCenter411, has replied with more details, to clear things up. A select number of adCenter customers are being migrated...

Posted on January 19, 2007 7:27 AM

A WebmasterWorld thread reports Microsoft adCenter advertisers receiving emails saying that they may undergo an account audit. I suspect these account audits are random and allow Microsoft to see if there advertisers are complying with their terms of service. The...

Posted on January 18, 2007 7:32 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

A WebmasterWorld thread shows an issue where an advertiser saw his average position drop from position five to position 195.6. adCenterEU, an official Microsoft representative explained that this is indeed a bug in the system and Microsoft is working on...

Posted on December 14, 2006 7:52 AM

WebmasterWorld adCenter moderator Receptional, has an excellent post at WebmasterWorld where he goes over tips and common pitfalls you may experience using Microsoft's adCenter. In his detailed and easy to read post, he goes over the editorial process, the acceptance...

Posted on December 12, 2006 7:53 AM

A huge topic at the SES conference last week was duplicate content. The definitions and how search engines handle duplicate content has changed a lot over the past few years. So that is why I dated the title of this...

Posted on December 12, 2006 7:35 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

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

Reports via WebmasterWorld that Microsoft released a new update for its MSN Search, Windows Live Search product over Thanksgiving weekend. Senior member, crobb305, was the first to report it, stating; In the top 20, on a financial term I watch,...

Posted on November 27, 2006 8:13 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

We all know MSN Search is now Windows Live Search, but does that mean lose our MSN representative in the forums? MSNdude, who patrols the Microsoft Search forum at WebmasterWorld has not posted a reply or thread since October 17th....

Posted on November 21, 2006 7:15 AM

A Search Engine Watch Forums post has the first documented, public, case, that I have seen of someone receiving an email from the Live (MSN) Search team for being banned for using link exchanges. Here is the email as reported...

Posted on November 20, 2006 7:40 AM

A Cre8asite Forums thread asks, how do you know if a search engine has penalized your site? With most engines, the quickest method of checking that is to see if the engine has you in their index. How do you...

Posted on November 13, 2006 7:07 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

Microsoft launched Ms Dewey, it is basically a very cool Flash application where you can ask Ms. Dewey questions, she will keep you entertained while Windows Live Search brings back results. For example, if you enter in iPod, she just...

Posted on November 8, 2006 7:13 AM

There are reports of Live.com / MSN Search search results and backlinks updating. There appears to be enough discussion and buzz to consider this a true MSN update. There is not much for me to add here. Forum discussion at...

Posted on November 3, 2006 7:44 AM

The Live Search Blog announced that they have launched a live search box feature at http://search.live.com/siteowner. Honestly, they don't make it as easy as Google or Yahoo! does, at all. Why, one thing they ask the webmaster to do on...

Posted on November 1, 2006 7:41 AM

Reports via WebmasterWorld that Microsoft's Live Web Search is ranking blogspot blogs that have redirects to adult sites for some popular debt keyword phrases. At WebmasterWorld you are not allowed to list examples, so I tried to dig some up....

Posted on October 31, 2006 8:25 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

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 Live.com search launched a new search operator named LinkFromDomain that shows you "all sites that are linked from a given domain." In short, if you plug in LinkFromDomain:seroundtable.com it should show you all the links I have placed on...

Posted on October 17, 2006 10:50 AM

I am trying not to take this out of context, but MSNdude at a WebmasterWorld thread, in my opinion, goes out on a limb. In response to a question that states; We used to get tons of traffic [from MSN]-...

Posted on October 17, 2006 7:46 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

In response to Marcia (SEW mod, old time WMWer) for getting booted from MSN Search or Live.com Search in a WebmasterWorld thread, MSNdude sheds some details of Live.com's handling issues of 301s. The one place we know we need to...

Posted on October 3, 2006 7:59 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread reports that MSN Search (aka Live.com) is indexing permanent 301 redirects. What this means is that if you search on a term or command that triggers the domain that is 301ed to show up, it will...

Posted on September 29, 2006 7:15 AM

On September 15th we reported that Live.com Is Not Passing Referer Information, then on September 18th we reported that MSN Says Live.com Referral Bug "Not By Design". Today I am happy to report that Microsoft has fixed the referral error,...

Posted on September 21, 2006 7:56 AM

So Microsoft launched a new engine last week, well, not really - they just redirected MSN Search to Live.com. And now people are asking if this is going to pose a threat to Google... - MSN Search results are pretty...

Posted on September 19, 2006 7:25 AM

Friday we reported that Live.com Is Not Passing Referer Information, the realization about this in the SEO and Webmaster community sent ripples throughout many of the forums. MSNdude replied to the thread at WebmasterWorld stating that this was a bug....

Posted on September 18, 2006 7:56 AM

Last night, MSN Search began redirecting to Live.com. Try it, go to http://search.msn.com/ and notice the 302 redirect (a.k.a temporary redirect) pointing to http://www.live.com/?searchonly=true. So what is done is done... or is it? i.e. 302? :) Forum discussion at DigitalPoint...

Posted on September 14, 2006 7:31 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

Friday, we reported that Microsoft released an MSN Search update. It caused some obvious and surprisingly weird bugs at MSN. It turns out that MSN has rolled back that update Friday evening. MSNdude says; We rolled back the recent update,...

Posted on August 28, 2006 6:47 AM

The MSN Search bug we reported yesterday where MSN Listing Same Top Five Sites on 1st & 2nd Page Search Results seems to have been caused by an MSN update that took place the night before. MSNdude confirmed last night...

Posted on August 25, 2006 6:54 AM

This is something weird I found at DigitalPoint Forums, where MSN Search is listing the same top five results (in terms of sites) on page one of the search results, when compared to page two. Search on background check and...

Posted on August 24, 2006 8:58 AM

A DigitalPoint Forums thread shows that MSN UK Search is possibly testing a new layout. Here is a screen shot of the before and after. Let me note that I personally do not see this new layout, the image was...

Posted on August 23, 2006 8:00 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

A thread at WebmasterWorld has MSNdude, MSN's official search rep, trashing on some Webmaster's sites. Check out this quote: I'm not sure why so many people seem to think the "spam look" is in this year (maybe it's a fashion...

Posted on August 11, 2006 7:58 AM

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

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