MSN Search General Information
MSN claims an index size of over 5 billion pages and currently is reported to have a search share of 12.4%
See the search engine relationship chart to see who MSN supplies search results to and gets results from.
MSN Quirks
MSN will spider and index the first 150 kbytes on any page.
MSN is now using a neural net application to help with page rankings.
MSN Ranking Factors
Page title is a major ranking factor in MSN at this time
Meta description tag is not a ranking factor in MSN at this time.
Meta keywords tag is not a ranking factor in MSN at this time.
Link Popularity especially anchor text is a ranking factor in MSN
Keyword density is a ranking factor in MSN
Searching with MSN
MSN has recently ( June 2005) added new search operators and in addition some of thier operators do not work the same as other search engines.
MSN uses a basic set of Search operators such as:
- +
Finds pages that contain all the terms preceded by the + symbol:
cat +in +the hat
- " Finds the exact words as quoted : "cirque de soleil "
- | or OR Finds pages containing either term: check | cheque, check OR cheque
- - or NOT Excludes pages that contain a term or phrase :
mobile -wireless, mobile NOT wireless - ( )Finds or excludes pages that contain a group of words:
(mobile device) | (wireless device) or (mobile device) -(wireless device) - & or AND Finds pages that contain all search terms: dog & cat
Contains: Restricts results to sites that have links to the specified file type music - contains:pdf
filetype: Restricts results by file extension information - filetype:pdf
language: Restricts results to pages in a specific language (specified by two-character code) - office language:en
link: Finds sites that link to a website or web page - link:www.microsoft.com/security/
linkdomain: Finds sites that link to any page within the specified domain - linkdomain:search.msn.com
ip: Finds sites that are hosted by a specific IP address. The IP address must be a dotted quad address. ip:207.46.249.252
loc:
or
location: Restricts results to a country or region (specified by two-character code) - football loc:uk
prefer: Adds emphasis to a term or other keyword football prefer:language:fr
site: Restricts results to a site device driver site:microsoft.com
url: Returns whether or not a URL is in the MSN Search index url:http://www.microsoft.com
inurl: Returns the occurance of a single word in a url, in order to search for a two word phrase you have to repeat the term in the search:
inurl:search inurl:engine will return results for URLs which contain the term search engines.
inanchor: Returns the occurance of a single word in an anchor in order to search for a two word phrase you have to repeat the term in the search.
intitle: Returns the occurance of a single word in a page title, in order to search for a two word phrase you have to repeat the term in the search.
inbody:Returns the occurance of a single word in the body, in order to search for a two word phrase you have to repeat the term in the search.
Note that at the present time the inurl:, inanchor:, intitle: and inbody: do not work well toghether.
