Every search engine works a little differently. By evaluating the output of a search engine in thousands of popular searches through statistical analysis, we can see the unique behavior of each engine. MSN (Live.com) has some very interesting unique behaviors.

The only problem with evaluating the results they serve is filtering out the listings in their results which are not there due to merit. When you have a lot of listings that are not natural, not placed there by the natural algorithm, your statistical analysis gets polluted.

For example, if we look at the straight output of Live.com, it looks like they highly favor URLs that contain a question mark (?). Now, if you were to build a site where all the URLs contain a question mark, in order to rank better in MSN, you’d be in for an unpleasant surprise. The algorithm at Live.com definitely does NOT favor URLs with question marks.

The easiest unnatural listings to filter out of the data Live.com feeds up are any results from msn.com and microsoft.com. That cleans up the data pretty well. MSN.com has a LOT of URLs with question marks in them, so them being unnaturally served up in the results make it appear that they are of benefit.

Other factors that appear to be beneficial in Live.com include short URLs, keywords in your domain, title, and H1 tags. If you’d like to watch a video walk-through of my data for the Live.com search engine, you can see it at SEOClub.com/MSN

My only other concern is for listings in the Live.com engine that I can’t easily filter out of the data. Live.com obviously has no ethical issues with placing their own sites high in their results… what makes anyone think there aren’t other unnatural listings in there? And if there ARE paid placements in there… where can I sign up?

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