MSN Beta Search Phenomenon
I don't fully understand the algorithm's involved with the new Beta search from MSN but I have to say as a site owner I love it.

After releasing my new site to the World Wide Web I am already Really impressed with the speed that I got indexed and even more Impressed with the ranking I have been given.

I let my newest site ( www.buy-dvds-online.com ) out of its box Less than 2 weeks ago and I have already attained a position of 3 out of 1,589,310 for the keyword search "buy dvd's online". You can see the results here

How is this happening?

Well I have looked at all sorts of forums relating to MSN Beta and it seems that it genuinely searches for the most keyword relevant site it can find.

The name of the site in relation to the keyword or words searched for has proved as important as ever, when I searched for the keywords "free traffic tips" on msn I got www.freetraffictip.com as number 1 result. When I searched for the same keywords on google the same site came in at number 41.

Further searching for some more obscure phrases seem to show that MSN beta places a high priority on the keyword density and relevancy, this will reward all of us who have keywords relevant to our sites and do not rely on heavy backlinks (although I believe this is vital to get a decent rank with other engines).

The fact that I am ranked at all means that I have escaped the Google "sandbox", I don't expect to receive a PR for at least 2 months and a decent listing for the same period from google.

Lets hope that MSN Beta search is used quickly as a replacement for MSN search, My opinion is that we should all be allowed to get a placement we deserve rather than one we have effectively bought or traded, it kind of gives us little guys a chance. I still love google, it provides us with a challenge and is still the number one search engine but I still want the traffic I get from The smaller engines.
View All Articles by Mark White

Funny somebody getting excited about something still in beta.

Well it is sending us traffic so definitely looking like a good contender. MSN is now my top on all but one site.

"Well it is sending us traffic so definitely looking like a good contender. MSN is now my top on all but one site."

No, it's not. You're still getting traffic from MSN/INK.

i am definatly getting traffic from msn beta, the logs don't lie. ;)

Enjoy the temporary traffic, lookup what beta means ;)

Now where are you at?

http://beta.search.msn.com/results.a...line&FORM=QBHP

Don't see you anywhere.

That's why i thought it was funny. First someone actually writing an article on something in beta and Webpronews actually putting it out. The whole problem with your article, besides it being about something in beta, is the notion that keyword density and relavancy (on site optimization) is all it's going to take. That would be way too easy to copy and the most relevant sites won't get high rankings. Just spammy sites* and sites that can check what the top ranked sites are doing and replicate it.

*these-types-of-keyword-with-the-dashes-spammy-sites.com

Beta or no beta, traffic IS traffic. Microsoft can't seem to get Windows right, so maybe they will make it easy on all of us. :whistle:

Nevertheless, the newest technologies are not so much about keyword density as they are about how all the words relate together. If I make a page rich in the word "affiliate" but a predominate amount of the other words are related to autos (ie car parts, engines, automatic windows, windshield wipers, etc), the beta engines will not give me high ranking "under" affiliate... even if I have the most advanced of spamming techniques.

Moreover, the newer engines are not just looking at words, but also sentences and paragraphs. Every sentence needs a verb, noun, etc... every sentence must start with a capital letter and end with appropriate punctuation, etc... sentences typically have words like "is are the like was"... sentences with the word autos in it will likely have a word they've deemed as related in it (car bumper)... the most important sentence in a paragraph is the first sentence, etc.

In addition, you're also getting your site compared to so many others. If they are considering your site for the word affiliate, but you don't really have any of the same links or words (ie marketing, commission junction, etc) that the other top 100 under "affiliate" do... you likely will not be ranked high.

This discussion, of course, is not meant to ignore incoming links or PageRank... both of which are important.

I agree Tom,
No matter where the traffic comes from the potential for increasing our sales comes from that increase in traffic.
The article i wrote may not be the best written or as in depth and techie as most SEO's would like but the end result is that I have indeed seen a significant increase in traffic because of it.
The word "beta" is also often used to describe a project or process that is being tested, so why should microsoft change this process of listing websites to something else?
I guess we will find out when the new engine is released, if it ever is.

Mark

Oh by the way bubba, this is my point about the importance of words,

You searched for " buy dvd's online" and i was not there.
I searched for "buy dvds online" and i was number 1
http://beta.search.msn.com/results.a...line&FORM=QBRE

mark