__/ [davidof] on Tuesday 13 December 2005 19:32 \__
> Mommens Francois-Louis wrote:
>> davidof wrote:
>>
>>> davidof wrote:
>>>
>>>> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> It's as though they have the same 'knowledge', but the knowledge it
>>>>> is rarely sought by the users.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Or their results are poor - they have trouble exploiting their
>>>> knowledge?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I should really say it could also be that they are returning more
>>> relevant results which don't include our sites. However one
>>> non-technical site I run sees vastly more traffic through Google even
>>> where the same keywords return similar or better results in MSN so I
>>> think the main problem Yahoo! and MSN have is lack of searchers and a
>>> horrible interface that is confusing for users. MSN now seems to be
>>> making money so maybe their strategy is correct?
>>>
>>> MSN in particular seem to have made very little headway in their
>>> battle to the death with Google. Their algorithmic search engine was
>>> going to bury Google in six months - it is over a year since it went
>>> live and they only just show in my statistics - 0.08% of referrers as
>>> opposed to nearly 10% for the various Googles. Their results are
>>> horribly messy with sponsored links everywhere. It is just not a user
>>> friendly search engine IMHO.
>>
>>
>> My site is French. And the search engines market shares are not the same
>> in France :
>> google: 60%
>> msn: 9.3%
>> yahoo: 7.5%
>> voila: 7%
>> which doesn't relate to my own statistics:
>> google: 86%
>> voila: 10%
>> msn: 1%
>> yahoo: 0.4%
>> and means there's really something wrong with my site and msn and yahoo.
>>
>> Furthermore, the site is not technical. It's a shopping engine
>> specialized in health and well-being and personal care, and most of the
>> site's content consists in product descriptions.
>
> We are seeing very similar results viz Google and MSN searches. Even if
> MSN has a 9.3% market share it could be that a lot of their searchers
> are clicking on the sponsored links which are much more pervasive and
> prominent than the actual search results. This would suit MSN as they
> make money off these and don't (won't) have to pay out any cash to third
> parties through their equivalent of AdSense.
>
> Let's take a random example, I search for the keywords:
>
> Santé & Beauté
>
> On Google.fr your site is 7th
>
> On MSN Search.fr your site is 2nd so you would expect more traffic from
> MSN Search for those keywords.
>
> However with the very prominent sponsored links your site is effectively
> 5th on MSN Search - there ain't much you can about that except pay Bill
> Gates money and no-one in their right mind wants to do that.
>
> Okay that is just one example but why don't you look through your stats
> and see what keywords people use to arrive at your site? Then see how
> you rank for those keywords. My bet is that you will rank as well in MSN
> Search and that the reason no-one is arriving at your site is that
> people don't use MSN Search or don't click on the algorithmic search
> results as I claimed already.
>
> To sum up, Microsoft just don't get search, although they may get making
> money. MSN Search is just a bunch of keyword related ads with a few
> search results as filler.
For whatever reason, minmalism has never been Microsoft's game. Whether
it's the bloated interface of their Web-based mail services or even the
operating system [1], bandwidth and CPU are no priority. Vista is said to
be a factor that will force many businesses to buy new hardware [2]. Like-
wise, in a world where Microsoft dominate the Internet (hypothetical
statement), dial-up users will be deprives.
Roy
[1] http://blogs.zdnet.com/Murphy/index.php?p=459
[2]
http://www.xyzcomputing.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=411&Itemid=26
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