10 replies to this topic

[Mark Thomas]

As previously mentioned we are Divine Couture a small bridal company in Singapore serving Singapore AND south east asia. Just to give you a bit of back ground Yahoo is probably the engine of choice in Singapore followed by MSN. The reason for MSN is an awful lot of our target users don't know what a search engine is and just type the words into the IE address line. They are mostly using msn without knowing why unfortunately. Google haven't promoted much and alltheweb doesn'teally exist at all. We have access to both the international and local versions of the search engines. The local version will have more of an in country bias but nobody really knows how optimisation for it works. We are hosted in the US so that may penalise us. Idon't think much of the localisation and i think its lip service by the US companies to the regions governments but thats just my personal beef.

Anyway to the problem. We have paid to be listed in MSN twice.


Once through lycos/ inktomi. After i heard MSN was dumping its third parties once again through bCentral which i just discovered is another front for Inktomi so I got cheated or educated depending on your point of view. But I have paid twice so i guess i can ask for two listings.

When we first submitted via lycos/inktomi we got a listing for the following search string

wedding gowns singapore

In MSN.COM we were number 1
in MSN.COM.SG we did not appear in the top 100

I raised this several times with microsoft and inktomi.
After about two months after I raised it the situation reversed.

In MSN.COM we do not appear in the top 100 any longer
in MSN.COM.SG we are number 2


How do we get listed in both . What is the relation between the two ? Why did it change. The only answers I get from microsoft are that our web design needs to be enhanced but the search string “wedding gowns Singapore” is the same whether you are in Singapore or the USA so why different results ? And clearly somebody changed a flag in a databases somewhere because we fell off the msn.com .

I know that users in Singapore use both msn.com and msn.com.sg. Unlike google there is no autoselect for the local engine you just get what you type . (For those in the USA if i type google.com it automatically switches me to google.com.sg presumably based on my IP address)

Is there a way past the standard boilerplate microsoft support answers to someone who can see the common sense behind this question ?

We are top five in Yahoo, Google,Alltheweb and msn.com.sg so i think we are optimised correctly. But MSN.com we don't make the top 100.

Sorry if this seems long but living where we do it sometimes seems very hard to get Microsoft to listen to the words they just hear the question they want to hear.
I'm hoping someone may have experienced this issue in other country sites.

[Jill]

Don't mean to sound flip, but you really don't think Microsoft will answer that question do you?

If you want to show up there, you'll probably just need to buy Overture ads. Nobody is owed a free listing, so there's really nothing you can do if you feel the site is optimized to be the best it can be.

Jill

[MakeMeTop]

Firstly, this is nothing really to do with Microsoft - so you will get no reply from them. It is more to do with the way that Inktomi has introduced geo-targetting.

Your site has been identified as relevant to Singapore and so ranks well on MSN in Singapore. My own site has been identified as being a UK site, so ranks well on MSN UK but has disappeared into the depths on MSN.com - which is viewed as being a site for US users. This hasn't just happened on MSN, it has happened on all search engines which use the Inktomi database. So HotBot.com shows completely different sites on worldwide searches to HotBot.co.uk. Both will show completely different sites to the pure Inktomi search available at PositionTech. This shows results before geographical tergetting is factored in.

Unfortunately, at the moment, you can't get good listings in more than one regional version of MSN. If your site is a .sg - then you are stuck with being identified as a Singapore site and will rank well in MSN Singapore. If you are a .com, then you can appeal to your PFI provider and state that your target market is the USA and (if lucky) you will drop way down in MSN Singapore and return to your previous position in MSN US. But it sounds like you did this and asked why your site didn't rank well in Singapore. It may be difficult for them to reverse this as you probably stated that Singapore was your target market!

At the present time, the only way to appear in both with decent rankings is to have two sites aimed at the two different markets. I've just had to purchase a pile of .com domains and do sites for the American market because the .co.uk domains have disappeared into the depths for most generic and non-regional specific searches.

I would expect Inktomi PFI to allow you to add-on additional regions you wish to appear in (apart from the default region) for an additional fee in due course. Something AltaVista introduced over a year ago

While agreeing that this is not exactly what you want to hear, I'm afraid you are not alone with your problems.

[Dragon]

I love this forum....everytime there is a question or challenge I am facing with my current sites...it pops up in this forum!!

I am currently on a mission to try & understand MSN - Google I would like to think I understand, but MSN...?! Some of my pages rank well & others do not rank well at all - not even in the regional version!

Does anyone perhaps know where a good reference site is to check overall traffic of MSN vs Google...? & perhaps even for specific terms searched....(Not specifically to my site...as I do have a programme running for that..) I would like to determine if I am losing out (or how much I am losing out on MSN....

This would be so much appreciated!
Thanx in advance if anyone knows :-)

[MakeMeTop]

On the 200 odd sites I monitor the MSN average is around 14% of all SE traffic. The thing to be concerned about is when/if Inktomi powers Yahoo and Yahoo regional sites - which drives another 12% (on average). This will lead to around 25%+ of all SE queries being driven by Inktomi.

[Dragon]

Very interesting MakeMeTop - as that is a very similar stat to what my sites receive from msn - although they are not ranked very well....

Ink still provides results to msn though as well, does it not..?
(I think I read somewhere that it will until the end of December 2004...or am I getting very confused with Overture now...?!)

And Yahoo, well with Overture & Ink in its backpocket....I think the holes in my backpocket will very much widen when that hits full swing.....ouch!

I guess the underlying question is: Do you start paying for your results now with both Overture & Ink to (for now) rank well in MSN & later be prepared for the face-off between Yahoo & G...?!

[glengara]

There seems at first glance to be a connection between Inktomi geo-targeting and regional MSNs.
Take Ireland and Pakistan, both could be termed English language but neither has a country specific MSN.

On a search in Ink for "search engine marketing ireland" the first result was an .ie, the fourth a .co.uk (MMT!) and the rest a general mix, with both Irish and non-Irish.coms/.nets, and I found broadly similar results for "search engine marketing pakistan".

MSN on the other hand seems to have their own filters that downgrade the .co.uks that featured in Ink.

[Dragon]

I just checked Overture press release re MSN dated 10/17/2003 - which does state it will serve MSN results until June 2005...have not found confirmation of my Ink statement....yet..

[MakeMeTop]

Regional specific searches seem to work fine regardless of the MSN portal. I rank fine for search engine marketing uk on MSN.com and UK - but rank OK for search engine marketing on the UK version and nowhere in the first hundred on MSN.com. The same on Hotbot.com and hotbot.co.uk.

Incidently, you can play with the geo-targeting filter on hotbot.co.uk by choosing custom web filters and ticking "region". This appears to be something like the control interface MSN and other portals can use.

Quite an interesting way of working out what geo-targeting settings have been used by which portal

[Mark Thomas]

Jill

"Don't mean to sound flip, but you really don't think Microsoft will answer that question do you?"

Regarding our site no i dont we are obviously not important at all to MSN. . But since we paid for the listing twice and presumably microsoft get a cut i would expect a better answer than this one I just got. I would expect the support group to understand the relationship between the local and international msn search engines and be able to give some advice on optimisation it seems others here have the same problem.

MSN is claiming 20% of so of searches but they only reason they get that is they are the default search engine in windows.

Response from microsoft.

"Submit It! includes MSN (http://search.msn.com/) in the list of its supported search engines. However, MSN Singapore (http://www.msn.com.sg) is not included in the list of Search Engines that is currently supported by Submit It!. Is it possible that you submitted your site to MSN Singapore using a different search engine submission service? Since MSN Singapore is not included in the list of search engines that is currently supported by Submit It!, we can't tell you exactly the reason why you have different results in MSN and MSN Singapore. "

From this i conclude microsoft have no idea how their own search engines work and are happy to take credit cards from people in singapore even though they readily admit they cant deliver the service.

[MakeMeTop]

Certainly, the people at Submit-It don't have a clue.

But then, I've known that for a while!