Legal Search Marketing Blog

How To Get 8 Out Of 10 TOP 10 Rankings at MSN

Getting top 10 search engine rankings is the goal of most search engine optimization projects.  It makes sense that if your in the top 10 for a keyword related to your firms practice, that you will get some traffic from people looking for the type of law you practice. How about if you were able to get ALL TOP 10 rankings for certain keywords!!!

Ive got one client who has a number of different sites including many mini sites that are focused on specific practice areas such as corporate law, tax law, litigation, estate planning and others and most all of them are listed pretty well in the organic search listings.

At MSN for the keyphrase Chicago Tax Law the firm has the first 7 spots and then also the 10th place for a dominating 8 out of 10 top 10 rankings!   Its harder to achieve that at Google BUT they do have 3 out of the top 10. 5 out 10 at Yahoo.

Having multiple sites can be a very good idea and a way to focus on different sets of keywords. Yet its important though to not just repeat the same content on multiple sites, you must have unique content in order to have success. The more unique content, the better, content is and always will be King!

MSN adCenter Update Coming Soon

A new release of the MSN Pay Per Click adcenter is planned for 4 to 6 weeks, but you can play with it today at the adCenter Beta site.

Here is a summary of some of the new features:

1. Cross campaign keyword search: This is a cool feature where you can search for a phrase at a global level, and adCenter will return all the keywords that use that phrase on a single screen. You can then work on and edit those keywords without having to go in an out of the different individual campaigns.
   
2. Pop-up help: Pop-up help will appear next to any item you have questions you have on a topic by hovering over a question mark icon on the screen.
   
3. adCenter now supports Firefox: A great improvement for those of us who use Firefox almost exclusively.
   
4. Expanded Bulk Upload Capabilities: Bulk uploads can now be done at an individual campaign level.
   
5. Tagging and Favorites: If you have a campaign or a set of keywords that need more management than others, these can be tagged so they will automatically show up and be accisble from your initial login screen.
   
6. Breadcrumbing: This is a neat new feature that allows you to hover over the breadcrum bar, and then see a list of peer web pages in a drop down list right there. So if you are in a particular campaign, and want to navigate directly to another campaign, you can do that quite easily.
   
7. New negative keyword management options: Negative keywords can now be specified at the campaign level

Overall some good improvements in adCenter's usability and functionality.

SOURCE: Search Engine Watch

Microsoft Shares Fall Due To MSN Search Performance

TheStreet.com reports that Microsoft's share fell as much as 13% today due to Microsoft's search engine, MSN Search. Microsoft was not prepared for "the rising cost of competing with the better-positioned Net players, notably Google," TheStreet.com reports.

Bloomberg reports that Microsoft may be "investing too much at the expense of profit" in MSN Internet properties, $2.4 billion more, to be exact. TheStreet.com says that MSN Search's search revenues were down in the first quarter and that they expect MSN Search to "lose advertising share" in the 2006 calendar year.

SOURCE: Search Engine Watch

MicroSoft Gets a Chunk of Coal for Christmas, Google Extends AOL Partnership

Reuters reports that Google will renew its partnership with AOL and that MSN is out.

Time Warner Inc. is in exclusive talks with Web search leader Google Inc. about broadening a partnership with Time Warner's AOL online unit, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Microsoft Corp., once considered the front-runner for a deal with AOL, is -- at least for now -- out of the running.

Report: Microsoft-AOL Close To Deal

Report from CNNMoney.com that AOL and Microsoft are close to hammering out an online advertising alliance to challenge Google. MSN would replace Google's search results on AOL.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that under the deal now being discussed, Time Warner's America Online unit would switch to using Micosoft's search engine, and the two companies would set up a joint venture to sell online advertising across both AOL and Microsoft's MSN portal.

The newspaper reports that Google is still involved in talks about the possibility of its own alliance with AOL, although a person familiar with the talks told the newspaper a sticking point so far has been Google's reluctance to guarantee Time Warner a minimum amount of revenue, which Microsoft had agreed to do.

FULL STORY: CNN NEWS

Bill Gates: MSN Search Will Soon "More than Match" Google in Terms of Relevance

Post from the Search Engine Watch Blog about Bill Gates predicting that MSN Search will pass Google in terms of relevance:

In an interview with Information Week, Bill Gates talks about Microsoft Research and speaks briefly about search and of course mentions a competitor that begins with the letter "G". Gates says that coming soon MSN will have "more than matched" Google in terms relevance. Here's the full passage:

Gates says:

Search is an amazing example where we relied somewhat on an outside company, Inktomi, which Yahoo bought, then decided to build our own search effort essentially from scratch. Now, in a very short period of time, we will actually have more than matched the kind of relevance that Google can deliver. The role of Microsoft Research in that has been phenomenal.

MSN adCenter Pilot Program Opening In US

Search engine watch reports that MSN is opening its pay per click program and is now looking for takers. The pilot is invite only, but you can hope to get picked by signing-up here. 

The sponsored ads will rotate in on a portion (25 percent) of MSN's pages, with the rest still coming from Yahoo Search Marketing/Overture.

Time Warner, Microsoft in talks on AOL-source

Reuters article about the possibilty that Microsoft and AOL might team up.  Though the article states the sale is at least two months from completion - and thus not a done deal - the potential of this merger could be a big play in the industry.

MSN Paid Search Details Emerge

ZDNet Asia reports on MSN Paid Search that details the launch in Singapore, with France to follow and a MSN Keywords pilot in the US in October. 

According to Eva Balan, MSN's international marketing manager for MSN adCenter, advertisers pay a one-time subscription fee of S$5 (US$3) for MSN Keywords.

For each keyword, they bid a minimum of S$0.10 and pay for the number of times search users click on their advertisements, which appear as sponsored links alongside search results. The placement of the links will depend on the bid price, click-through rate as well as the types of user profiles captured by the system.

MSN Crawling RSS Feeds for Breaking News

MSN announced on its blog that they are crawling certain feeds in order to index breaking news as quickly as possible.

One of the key elements of having a great index is having fresh content.  If someone searches for Vista on the day that we announced the name for the next version of Windows then they should be able to see relevant results. 

This means that we need to have the content in our index within minutes of these types of events happening. In order to do this we built a simple crawler to get News and Blogs that break this type of news.

Search Engine Penalties at Yahoo & MSN

Search Engine Watch has a post about penalties imposed at Yahoo and Msn for spam like activities, which can get your web site banned. I personally dont think Yahoo or MSN is doing enough because I see spam like sites all the time in those seach indexes.

In Yahoo's guidelines pages for webmasters, the following is considered spam:

• Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
• Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page
• Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
• Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
• Lots of pages that were automatically generated or of little value
• Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
• The use of text that is hidden from the user
• Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees
• Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity
• Pages built primarily for the search engines
• Misuse of competitor names
• Multiple sites offering the same content
• Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
• Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience

The bottom line is that you should never do anything that any of the search engines might consider spam. You really don't have to because as long as your site is search engine friendly and optimized, has good content and has links from other related sites, then you should be able to get good listings for your legal site.

MSN Keywords: New Ad Product from MSN

The WSJ reports that next week MSN will announce a new ad program called MSN Keywords and this is another example of how MSN is trying to mimic Google and encroach on its search territory.

Microsoft next week will announce that an invitation-only test of MSN Keywords will begin in October with 500 advertisers and search-engine marketing specialists. The service will move MSN closer to how Google handles advertising, by using live auctions of keywords. MSN Keywords is one tool of a broader set of new advertising services called adCenter that Microsoft is building on MSN. Microsoft executives say they hope the tools will allow companies to tailor advertisements by giving them more detailed information on Web users than is currently available.

Judge puts hold on ex-Microsoft exec work at Google

Reuters reports that a Washington state judge temporarily blocked a former Microsoft VP from starting work at Google.

A Washington state judge on Thursday temporarily blocked a former Microsoft Corp. vice-president from heading up rival Google Inc.'s new research center in China.

The ruling by Kings County Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez marked a small victory in a wider battle to keep Kai-Fu Lee from working at Google.

Microsoft sued Lee and Google last week, claiming the former head of its Beijing research and development center had violated his employment contract by agreeing to take a job at Google.

MSN Search Gains Ground

The Seattle Times has a nice summary of the new MSN search engine. The report looks at the many failures, successes and the continued developments.

I like MSN and think its a solid search engine but feel it has a long way to go before it can ever close the gap with Google. This report seems to confirm that. Here are some interesting quotes from the MSN summary.

- A few months ago, when asked why the company had used technology from rivals to run its search engine, he admitted something rarely heard from Microsoft's top brass: "We were stupid as hell."

- Microsoft didn't just miss the boat in search technology. It missed the dock.

Critics seemed to like MSN's offering, but most acknowledged that it would take more from MSN to topple Google from its perch.

"It's a good product, but it is not at the same level as Google or even Yahoo yet," said Safa Rashtchy, an analyst covering the search industry for Piper Jaffray. MSN needs to boost the relevancy of its search results even more, he said.

So far, MSN's new search engine hasn't caused a vast market shift, but it appears to be growing in use faster than Google. From January to March, according to research firm Nielsen/NetRatings, Google's market share went from 47.1 percent to 47.3 percent while MSN's went from 12.8 percent to 13.6 percent.

Put aside for a moment the features and technical competency of each, and MSN has another barrier to hurdle: People are deeply devoted to Google.

Google has what Rashtchy calls the Kleenex factor: It is so well known that people say "Google" when they mean "search."

Microsoft Catching Up on Google

Business 2.0 talks about MSN Search's recent market share growth and how much they have committed to this new advertising campaign.

According to Internet measurement firm Nielsen/NetRatings, MSN's share of the booming search-engine market jumped in February from 12.8 percent to 14.2 percent. That gain came at the expense of market leader Google (GOOG), which saw its share fall from 47.1 percent to 45.9 percent. (Yahoo (YHOO) held steady with a little more than 20 percent of the market.)

Its early and you would hope that MSN would gain some increased share because they spent $150 million dollars advertising the new MSN search engine. So I'm sure many people are now aware that Google isn't the only search player, but its hard to make people switch over in the long run.

I have seen an increase in traffic from all of my sites at MSN over the last month, so no doubt MSN is working better. They are a serious player and will give Google a run, but its hard to envision them getting that much more then the current 14.2% market share.  Either way, its important for all legal sites to be included in not only Yahoo and Google, but MSN Search.

Microsoft Claims Edge in Paid Search

Article from AlwaysOn says that Microsoft is already in a good position to challenge Yahoo and Google in the paid search arena.

In its bid to challenge Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. at their own game, Microsoft Corp. says its entry into online advertising technology will offer marketers a "one-stop shop" that's far more comprehensive than rival services.

MSN, with a 16 percent share of the paid-search market, is in third place behind industry leader Google , at 35 percent, and Yahoo , at 31.8 percent, according to research firm comScore Networks.

Microsoft officially announces its own advertising network

MOVE HEATS UP RIVALRY WITH GOOGLE AND YAHOO

Stepping up its efforts to compete directly with Google and Yahoo, Microsoft's Internet division said Tuesday that it plans to enter the lucrative search-engine-advertising business.

Microsoft said it is building its own advertising network to display ads alongside its search-engine results.

Microsoft is being conservative in its roll-out of the new system, dubbed ``MSN adCenter.'' The company will launch a pilot of the program in France and Singapore in the next six months, said Adam Sohn, director of global sales and marketing. He gave no timeline for a U.S. launch.

SOURCE: Mercury News

Microsoft Plans Service to Sell Internet Search Ads

Bloomberg news reports that Microsoft is going to unleash a new pay per click program, similar to that of Googles adwords. 

MSN right now is still using Overtures pay per click sponsored ads and have a contract with them through June 2006. The article states that this new MSN pay per click will not be fully ready for 6-12 months.

New MSN Search Engine a Flop?

Andy Beal of the Search Engine lowdown has a good post today about the new MSN search engine and how many in the search engine community consider it a flop and "that MSN Search's "marketing and attempts to connect just suck" and "my gut feeling is that they've blown it".

Andy Comments : Come off it! They only launched it a few weeks ago and they have 5 years of catching-up to do. I know for a fact that they are still working on refining the search engine and have efforts to reach out to the search marketing community. It may take a few months for them to gain traction, but don't write them off in the first inning (remember the Red Sox vs the Yankees?).

I would agree with Andy here and I think so far that the MSN search engine is better then it was. I think it has a long ways to go to beat Google but I wouldnt count Microsoft out here at all.   

I think the results of the new search engine are better and I like a lot of the new features it has, not to mention that most all my sites are very well ranked!   I like the new feature at MSN where you can ask it a question, like "Who is the president?" or "What is the NRA?" and get the correct answer.   Google is still king but MSN and Yahoo are gaining.

MSN Partners with Picsearch for Image Index

Picsearch announced today that it has entered into an agreement to supply the new MSN Search service with image search services. Picsearch already provides the pictures seen when you conduct an image search at Ask Jeeves or Lycos Europe. The addition of MSN Search, is a big coup for the company.

Nils Andersson, CEO of Picsearch, said "I am very excited that Picsearch's technology will be used to find images on the Web for this worldwide service. MSN shares our desire to be at the forefront of the net search market. Picsearch will continue providing the highest quality image search service in the world. New features are always being developed."

Adding a comprehensive database of images is just one of many crucial steps MSN Search must take, if they are to compete with Google and Yahoo.

"The new MSN Search service offers a large index to help consumers quickly and easily find the information that is of interest to them," said Justin Osmer, product manager at MSN. "MSN is proud to team up with Picsearch to offer a vast index of high-quality images that are relevant to our consumers' queries."

SOURCE: Search Engine Lowdown

Bill Gates: We're David and Google is Goliath

Bill Gates' Microsoft in "Battle" with Google
ABC's Peter Jennings tonight interviewed Microsoft founder, Bill Gates. Mr. Gates offers his thoughts on a number of topics, including the challenges it faces trying to compete with Google.

Smiling, Gates tells Jennings that companies like Google and Apple keep MS on their toes. He says they're "fantastic" competitors.

"Well, I have a meeting today with our people doing search. And that's an area where Google has got out in front, does a very good job. We're sort of the David vs. Goliath in that (chuckles) particular battle so we'll have fun talking to them about their progress."

"I think we're actually one of the few companies that can say with credibility that we'll give Google some competition. And that's great for everyone."

Microsoft Announces release of new Internet Explorer

Microsoft Announces New Internet Explorer
Susan Kuchinskas looks at the recent announcement by Microsoft, that they will be launching IE 7.0 soon. She questions whether the new browser will include an integrated MSN Search toolbar.

There's another good reason why Microsoft should do more than add security to IE 7.0, according to JupiterResearch analyst Joe Wilcox: Search rivals Yahoo and Google are both rumored to be working on their own branded browsers...A browser can be a powerful delivery mechanism for searchers, Wilcox said. "To change search services, you just type in a new URL. But when you get attached to one browser, you'll stick with it," he said.

MSN launches new search engine

MSN has launched a new search engine and so far, it seems much better then the older version of MSN.  It has many new features and produces very good results for most of the searches I ran.