live.com

[SimonW]

Usually I'm not a Microsoft fan, but seems they are sending me half my traffic for a small test site I did. Seems I'm ranked one for a common search phrase.

Now of course I'm curious as to why.

The front page "description" of the site (in a subdomain that matches a keyword) matches the search string exactly.
The page is correctly marked-up (W3 loves me).
The page complies with the usual search engine optimization ideas for content.
Proper meta-tags, proper alt tags etc etc.
But surely everyones pages look like that now?
Hardly anyone links to the page

However Google and Yahoo seem to have managed to put the provider for whom I'm affiliate ahead of me in the search results for the same phrase.

I can only assume that live.com is placing a lot of weight on good matches in the domain name, or the front page description. But no one seems to care about live.com, despite it being where all those who can't use (or install a better browser) a browser search.

Is it that simple -- a good description match for the search term? I can see a lot of very similar pages "appearing" if that is all it takes.

[Brendon]

>> Is it that simple -- a good description match for the search term?

Mostly - exact match keyword stuffing can take you a long way in MSN

[zaggernaut]

Ya I can pretty much say that in terms of relevancy and on-page optimisation LIve is the best engine. The AdCenter is actually manned by human editors for each and every ad thats submitted to them. So, basically if you work hard on your on-page optimisation and optimise relevant keywords, title,headings and keyword density, LIve would give you better result than Yahoo or Google. I can't say whether you would get more traffic in terms of numbers though.