My URL http://www.mhc.se/software/plugins/ isn't listed at all on MSN Search
for my main keyword, but it's in the top 10 on many other search engines.

However, the site's in their index, because if I search using a search phrase
which is very rare and matches only a handful of sites, including mine, then
it appears. So it's definitely in their index.

In addition, MSN Search use the URL as the title, in their listing, and not the
site?s title tag.

Any theory why?

Joey

Joey wrote:
> My URL http://www.mhc.se/software/plugins/ isn't listed at all on MSN Search
> for my main keyword, but it's in the top 10 on many other search engines.

While it could be argued that in a perfect search world all general
purpose SEs would return the same results based on relevancy they are
all different. There is obviously something about your site that MSN
Search didn't like.

Lets get back to basics. Have you access to your log files? If so see
which pages the MSN robot has fetched. This link will give you some
ideas about Traffic Analysis of log files:

http://www.abcseo.com/seo-book/traffic-analysis.htm

I noticed that the text on your home page is almost the same as this page:

<http://www.gearjunkies.com/product_info.php?cPath=1_10105&products_id=13201&P HPSESSID=552a3868954db2**1b863265b62e0edc>

Maybe MSN search has a clever duplicate content algorithm although I
would list that at the far end of reasons.


>
> However, the site's in their index, because if I search using a search phrase
> which is very rare and matches only a handful of sites, including mine, then
> it appears. So it's definitely in their index.

When I checked with the site: operator it only returned the home page:

site:www.mhc.se

I would first of all change your 302 redirect to a 301 redirect from

http://www.mhc.se/

to

http://www.mhc.se/software/plugins/

Indeed I wouldn't do this at all but use server side aliasing if you
want http://www.mhc.se/ to map to another directory.


----------------------
http://www.abcseo.com/

> When I checked with the site: operator it only returned the home page:
>
> site:www.mhc.se
>
> I would first of all change your 302 redirect to a 301 redirect from
>
> http://www.mhc.se/
>
> to
>
> http://www.mhc.se/software/plugins/
>
> Indeed I wouldn't do this at all but use server side aliasing if you
> want http://www.mhc.se/ to map to another directory.
>

This is interesting. I have used URL rewriting in the .htaccess file.
Exactly how do I control which codes (302 or 301) that are sent?
Is it possible? Should I use some other technique rather than
URL rewriting in the .htaccess file to redirect the user?

Thanks
Joey

Joey wrote:
>>When I checked with the site: operator it only returned the home page:
>>
>>site:www.mhc.se
>>
>>I would first of all change your 302 redirect to a 301 redirect from
>>
>>http://www.mhc.se/
>>
>>to
>>
>>http://www.mhc.se/software/plugins/
>>
>>Indeed I wouldn't do this at all but use server side aliasing if you
>>want http://www.mhc.se/ to map to another directory.
>>
>
>
> This is interesting. I have used URL rewriting in the .htaccess file.
> Exactly how do I control which codes (302 or 301) that are sent?


Have a look at this link, you need to scroll down a bit:-

http://www.abcseo.com/seo-book/unifo...e-locators.htm

> Is it possible? Should I use some other technique rather than
> URL rewriting in the .htaccess file to redirect the user?

Aliasing, because rewriting and redirects involve the user and robot in
an extra request and so are wasteful.

I'm not saying this is 100% your problem with MSN Search, but the fact
that just the home page that is indexed makes me wonder. Did you check
you log files as well?

> Have a look at this link, you need to scroll down a bit:-
>
> http://www.abcseo.com/seo-book/unifo...e-locators.htm

Thanks.

> > Is it possible? Should I use some other technique rather than
> > URL rewriting in the .htaccess file to redirect the user?
>
> Aliasing, because rewriting and redirects involve the user and robot in
> an extra request and so are wasteful.

I've changed to a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file. Thanks for the tip. Is 302 default,
if the type is left out?

> I'm not saying this is 100% your problem with MSN Search, but the fact
> that just the home page that is indexed makes me wonder.

Yeah, it might be the problem, since it hasn't even got to the point of reading
the content of the title tag on the main page. So it definitely sounds like the
problem you describe.

> Did you check you log files as well?

I've checked the log and the msnbot has been there. However, I'm not sure which
pages it visited if any at all, or if it just got the 302 code and then quit immediately
instead of spidering the whole site.

It's worth a try. Thanks for the good suggestions.

Joey