The Microsoft adCenter Code Blog

This blog is really about Microsoft Search Marketing but I think this is a great article and begs the question of when Microsoft is going to get into the publisher market in earnest. You can read the article on Comtech News at the following link. -  Google Punches Yahoo in the Face

Technorati Tags: google, yahoo, search, seo, sem, search marketing, search engine, search engines, customized search, web2.0

- Google Custom Search on Google Co-op
- Announcement on the Jensense Blog
- Announcement on the Google Blog

Microsoft Search has just done something that should help win them some friend’s amount search engine marketers.  They have introduced a new search command called, LinkFromDomain.  It works fairly strait forward, simply enter the command LinkFromDomain:domainname.com and you will see all the sites the domain links to.

This allows site owners and competitors both the ability to sort of “complete the puzzle” and it is also a very nice way to check your site to see if anyone has hacked it and hidden links in it.  This is far more common then many think!

For a complete review of this service see my article “Microsoft Link Search Command Reviewed” on ComTech News.

Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: microsoft, msn search, live.com, office life, seo, sem, microsoft search, microsoft online, search engine optimization, linkfromdomain, link from domain, msn, search engine marketing, optimization

Yep you bet they are, well at least according to Google that is!  Let me explain becaue this is a unique thing doesn’t mean that Microsoft is winning the search engine war at all but it is kind of funny and there is a huge SEO lesson in it for us to learn.

First, here is what I mean if you run a Google Search for the term “search” you will find that Google ranks MSN Search number one of about 8.9 Billion other websites and they only rank themselves number 3.  You can view the result here, Google Results for Search.

Just incase it changes anytime soon here is a screen shot of the result I took at the time that I wrote this post.

Now like I pointed out this is kind of cute and all but doesn’t mean Microsoft has the best seach engine just that Google thinks that seach.msn.com is the most relevent site for the word search on the internet at this time.  If we want to learn from this we need to ask a one word magic question.

Why?

It is really quite simple, Yahoo was always called Yahoo, Google was always called Google and MSN was has always been called MSN Search.  See the difference?  So what that means is thousands of site owners over the years have linked to MSN (now Live.com or is is it Microsoft Search or still MSN, evil grin) and done so with the anchor text of “MSN Search”.  So when you are starting a new site or branding effort you really need to think about what you call anything you are going to attempt to develop links for.

There is a second lesson here many people already know but it is kind of interesting to see it driven home this way.  Search for the word search and you get the following resultsfor MSN Search by each major engine,

1.  Google #1
2.  Yahoo (not in top ten)
3.  MSN Search/Live.com (not in top ten)
4.  Ask.com (not in top ten)

Now is that not interesting?  So whats the deal?  Simple Google is applying more weight to links in their ranking then any of their competitors.  Or more accurately they are applying more weight to authoritive links then any of their competitors.  So in anyone needed any more proof that links are more important then content to Google I think this is yet another confirmation of that fact.

What do you think about MSN being number one for “search” on Google?

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: msn, google, yahoo, seach, seo, search results, msn search, microsoft, serps, live.com, office live