Rankings flux at MSN

Hi,

I have been watching my sites at the new MSN and see a lot of flux in the SERPs. It seems that their SERPs are either "dancing" or they are intentionally shuffling sites through the top 30.

Anybody else seeing this?

ABIT YES!

CRITTER

EGOL any take on the current Google updates?

I see quite a bit of movement on MSN. I suspect MSN will need time to get settled.

Dave

EGOL -

My guess is that a lot of the shift in MSN's rankings right now is because of their spidering ability - I see them adding thousands of pages for search terms every day, so the link calculations and popularity calculations are probably influenced by all the new pages that enter their index all the time.
They may also be playing with the algo too, in order to stay ahead of the spam curve and provide the best possible results during the ad blitz they're running.

I'd have to agree Randfish they are sucking up the pages. Myabe algorithm related, though I haven't seen any shifts at all for 7 KW I'm now tracking from solid #2 to solid ones . On two minor phrases I am watching I have seen a 1 to 2 position swing about but still top 5. Sometimes 1st, sometimes 5th and in between.


All I know, after the G fiasco, thank god for MSN and Yahoo or I'd be like an unidentified body floating in a river...lol

Cheers

I dropped a page for a few of my keywords.. bummer, but i could have expected it.

Not seeing "too much" flux. A little here and there. Our MSN results have been pretty consistent for the past couple of weeks.

My rankings are jumping around all over the place everyday. I'm on the first page for one of my main keywords which supposedly gets 2000+ searches a day, but I am not seeing very much traffic coming in.

I've bounced between #18 and #28 a couple of times on MSN since they went live. I was tempted to "un-do" my most recent site tweaks, but decided these position changes were not my doing.

At least MSN dosn't bounce me from double digit to triple digit positions like a certain other G-wiz search engine.

Ed

pretty steady for the most part....jumping up and down within the top 10 for 4 kwords.

Had a very competitive #1 since Nov. Rock solid. Never moved. Not once.
Dropped to #5 last Friday.
New #1 is a heavy hitter and advertiser with a whopping 2 (count em, two) occurrences of main keyword (of phrase) in page!
Really makes me wonder why instant #1 w/o any keyword density, less keyphrased anchor links and smaller site than my previous #1.
Other 3 of top five just optimized for MSN recently, and are understandable why they jumped.

Plus I have seen many top 20 with prominent located AdSense. How ironic.

Also, for conversation, during the Super Bowl, the bottom ticker has references to "use keyword 'Super Bowl' on msn.com".
Keyword? Throw back to AOL.

Now consider this. MSN has a new engine buts does not have AD revenue, contracted with Overture through 7/06.
Why not sell a 'keyword'.
They can control the SERPs and generate considerable revenue buy selling the top position as a 'keyword'.

Seeing very stable and consistent results for the last 1-2 weeks.

I think the time between the spider collecting the data and the the server processing that data is super fast compared to anything we have known previously. I find it refreshing.

It seams to me like they are switching between two data centers. For a secondary term my new site comes up 3rd some of the time then drops to 5. When I am in the 5th place the 2nd and 3rd results are totally irrelevant pages (www.ratethenet.com and www.aol.com). When I am in the 3rd place the ones above me are better and more rellevant pages.
Funny thing is MSN keeps visiting me, it use to update the cache pretty frequently, but it hasn't updated my cashe since the 31st.
raz

I've seen quite a bit of flux on the MSN SERPs in the last day. MSNbot just gobbles up pages compared to the poor Googlebot. Lets face it, MSN seems to have more power behind it, and as such, can update much quicker and more seemless than Google.