MSN Dramatically Improved Redesign

Microsoft has introduced a dramatic new look and feel for the MSN portal. The redesign simplifies and cleans up most elements on the site. Among other things, it makes video more central, incorporates Facebook and Twitter, creates a dedicated new local area and emphasizes search.

MSN, which Microsoft says now has 600 million users globally (which would make it larger than Yahoo), is a huge asset for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it drives roughly 45% of Bing’s queries. Even a cursory look at the old and new MSN homepages reveals the superiority of the new design:

After users log in and grant access to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, the activity streams of both sites appear in the lower right of the MSN homepage (the blank area above):

The new local edition does a nice job of aggregating a range of local content (e.g., restaurants and entertainment, news, film, traffic, gas prices, etc.) and presenting it in a direct and accessible manner, with maps and local search functionality as well.

Microsoft told me that the redesign was prompted by user feedback and a growing internal sense that the old design was cluttered and had grown stale. When I met with Microsoft we also discussed and compared the Yahoo homepage redesign of several months ago. The most prominent feature of the Yahoo homepage redesign is the left column of widgets or apps, which ask users to select and personalize the page accordingly.

Microsoft expressed skepticism that lots of people will in fact get involved with a high degree of explicit personalization like this. There will, however, be personalization on MSN but it will not be as obvious to end users as the personalization elements on the Yahoo site. Microsoft will be offering “smart headlines” based on user location, behavior and demographic segment.

The new MSN will roll out globally over the next several months. Interestingly the look of the MSN portal may be slightly different country to country, depending on variables unique to each local market. Microsoft also says that it will bring the new MSN experience to mobile devices as well.

I haven’t systematically gone through every link and page in the new MSN site but from what I’ve been able to look at, it’s a big improvement over the former design.

If Microsoft enjoys success with the new MSN site it’s likely to directly benefit Bing. Previously many users were reportedly abandoning MSN for Google to conduct search queries. That’s probably less likely to happen now. But we’ll see what transpires over the next month or two. Regardless the new design makes MSN a much better place to visit.

Portal Drives Nearly 50% Of Bing Queries

Search Marketing Basics

Why Search Marketing is important … and difficult," we examine what search marketing is all about. We look at the way search usage is exploding and why search marketing is so valuable to your organization how it can drive visitors to your Web site. You will be convinced that your Web site cannot ignore Web searchers any longer. But before being overcome by irrational exuberance, we also take a cold look at why some companies find search marketing so hard to do and why the larger you’re Web site, the tougher it is.

"How Search Engines Work," dives into how search engines work what happens when someone is looking for a word, where the results on the screen come from, and how your Web site can show up right on that search results page. You will take a guided tour of the leading search engines and learn which ones to pay attention to.

We dig into search marketing methods. We teach you the three basic search marketing techniques, pointing out the benefits of each, so you can start thinking about which ones are most important to you. We also explain how each technique works and review which search companies you will work with for each one.

Peek inside the mind of the searcher. Find out what these folks are really looking for when they type in one or two words. Learn to use your knowledge of searchers to your advantage.

Link Bait in Search Engine Optimization

When trying to create the most trust-worthy link content, imagining outside the box and making a document, tool or service that's truly radical can provide a necessary boost. Even on collective image or branding sites for small parties, a single, stimulating piece of content that gets picked up en masse by your web community is worth a small chance in public relations and exposure. Better even, the links you earn with an exciting publish stay with your site for a long time, rendering search visibility long after the event itself has been forgotten.

With content that gives links becoming such a valuable trade, creating solely for the purpose of gaining links has become a popular practice for talented SEOs. In order to capitalize on this development, it's necessary to brainstorm. Below are some initial ideas that can help you build the content you need to generate great links.

• Relinquish Tools
  Automated tools that query data sources, combine information or conduct useful calculations are eminently link worthy. Think along the lines of procedure calculators and site-checking tools, and then expand into your particular area of business/operation.

• Web 2.0 Application Program
  Although the term Web 2.0 is more of a buzzword than a technicality, applications that fit the feature set described by the O'Reilly document do get a wonderful number of links from the web community and followers of this veer. Think mashups, maps, communities, sharing, tagging, RSS and blogs.

• Cooperative Work Documents
  working in design with others is a good way to produce capacity more quickly and with higher quality. If you are unable to get high-profile executive or several known persons in an industry to co-operate, your chances for developing "link-bait" considerably gain more.

• Top 10 Lists
  Numbered lists (of tips, links, resources, etc.), particularly those that rank items, can be a great way to generate buzz. These lists often promote discussion and thus, referencing.

• Follow-Ups of Events
  Industry gatherings, from bar shop to leagues to speeches and conferences, can all collect great links with a well-done review. Write professionally, as a diarist, and attempt to use as many full names as possible. It's also wise to link out to all the folks you mention, as they will see the links in their referral logs and come check you out.

There are lots of other great ways to get bloggers, writers and website editors in your field to add links to your site. Think yourself as an industry blogger, looking for to cover the most stimulating, unique trends and pages in the sector. If this single stumbled across your content, would they be likely to write about it? If the answer is yes, it qualifies as link-bait in search engine optimization.

Search Engine Operations

Search engines have a short list of critical operations that allows them to provide relevant web results when searchers use their system to find information.

Crawling the Web
Search engines run automated programs, called "bots" or "spiders" that use the hyperlink structure of the web to "crawl" the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web. Estimates are that of the approximately 20 billion existing pages, search engines have crawled between 8 and 10 billion.

Indexing Documents
once a page has been crawled, its contents can be "indexed" - stored in a giant database of documents that makes up a search engine's "index". This index needs to be tightly managed, so that requests which must search and sort billions of documents can be completed in fractions of a second.

Processing Queries
When a request for information comes into the search engine (hundreds of millions do each day), the engine retrieves from its index the entire document that match the query. A match is determined if the terms or phrase is found on the page in the manner specified by the user. For example, a search for PC Magazine at Google returns 155,000,000 results, but a search for the same phrase in quotes ("PC Magazine") returns only 4,990,000 results. In the first system, commonly called "Find all" mode, Google returned all documents which had the terms "PC" and "magazine" (they ignore the term "and" because it's not useful to narrowing the results), while in the second search, only those pages with the exact phrase "PC magazine" were returned. Other advanced operators Google can change the results as search engine will consider a match for a given query.

Ranking Results
once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the query, the engine's algorithm (a mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query. They sort these on the results pages in order from most relevant to least so that users can make a choice about which to select.