Microsoft Kumo Search Engine Test - Kumo Online Search Engine!

Microsoft to Launch new Online Search Engine "Kumo.com" Kumo is under testing and is available only internally to Microsoft employees

According to reports there is a new search to appear in the Net business. Kumo, which means spider or cloud in Japanese, would replace Microsoft's LiveSearch.

According to the screenshots, Kumo is a three-column web page with search results in the middle and Google-style text ads related to your search terms in the right column. On the left side is the search categories. Interestingly Kumo uses categories directly related to your search

According to Hitwise UK SEARCHES

UK Google search 61.49% of UK searches

MSN.co.uk for 7.07%,

Ask.co.uk for 6.05%

Yahoo for 5.3%.

In the U.S Google was used for 72.11% and Yahoo for 17.52%.

These were the screenshots - Do note the Kumo search engine is still under testing and has not been released yet

Robots Exclusion Protocol for Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft

Robots Exclusion Protocol for Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft

Common REP Directives
The following are all the major REP features currently implemented by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!. Each of these directives can be specified to be applicable for all crawlers or for specific crawlers by targeting them to specific user-agents, which is how any crawler identifies itself. Each of us also supports Reverse DNS based authentication of our crawler, and you can use this validate the identity of any crawlers claiming a particular user-agent.

1. Robot.txt Directives

DIRECTIVE	IMPACT	USE CASE(s)
Disallow	Tells a crawler not to crawl your site or parts of your site -- your site's robots.txt still needs to be crawled to find this directive, but the disallowed pages will not be crawled.	'No crawl' pages from a site. This directive in the default syntax prevents specific path(s) of a site from crawling.
Allow	Tells a crawler the specific pages on your site you want indexed so you can use this in combination with Disallow. If both Disallow and Allow clauses apply to a URL, the most specific rule - the longest rule - applies.	This is useful in particular in conjunction with Disallow clauses, where a large section of a site is disallowed, except a small section within it.
$ Wildcard Support	Tells a crawler to match everything from the end of a URL -- large number of directories without specifying specific pages.	'No Crawl' files with specific patterns, for eg., files with certain filetypes that always have a certain extension, say pdf; etc.
Sitemap Location	Tells a crawler where it can find your sitemaps.	Point to other locations where feeds exist to point the crawlers to the site's content.

2. HTML META Directives

These directives can either be placed in the HTML of a page or in the HTTP header for non-HTML content like PDF, video, etc. using an X-Robots-Tag. The X-Robots-Tag mechanism allows these directives to be available for all types of documents -- HTML or otherwise. If both forms of the tag, HTML META and X-Robots-Tag in the header are present, the most restrictive one applies.

DIRECTIVE	IMPACT	USE CASE(s)
NOINDEX META Tag	Tells a crawler not to index a given page.	Don't index the page. This allows pages that are crawled to be kept out of the index.
NOFOLLOW META Tag	Tells a crawler not to follow a link to other content on a given page.	Prevent publicly writeable areas from being abused by spammers looking for link credit. By NOFOLLOW, you let the robot know that you are discounting all outgoing links from this page.
NOSNIPPET META Tag	Tells a crawler not to display snippets in the search results for a given page.	Present no abstract for the page on search results.
NOARCHIVE META Tag	Tells a search engine not to show a "cached" link for a given page.	Do not make a copy of the page available to users from the search engine cache.
NOODP META Tag	Tells a crawler not to use a title and snippet from the Open Directory Project for a given page.	Do not use the ODP (Open Directory Project) title and abstract for this page in Search.

source : ysearchblog

MSN Guideliness Updated

MSN Guidelines Updated

Technical recommendations for your website

• Use only well-formed HTML code in your pages. Ensure that all tags are closed, and that all links function properly. If your site contains broken links, MSNBot may not be able to index your site effectively, and people may not be able to reach all of your pages.
• If you move a page, set up the page's original URL to direct people to the new page, and tell them whether the move is permanent or temporary.
• Make sure MSNBot is allowed to crawl your site and is not on your list of web crawlers that are prohibited from indexing your site.
• Use a robots.txt file or meta tags to control how MSNBot and other web crawlers index your site. The robots.txt file tells web crawlers which files and folders it is not allowed to crawl. The Web Robots Pages provide detailed information on the robots.txt Robots Exclusion standard. This site may be available in English only.
• Keep your URLs simple and static. Complicated or frequently changed URLs are difficult to use as link destinations. For example, the URL www.example.com/mypage is easier for MSNBot to crawl and for people to type than a long URL with multiple extensions. Also, a URL that doesn't change is easier for people to remember, which makes it a more likely link destination from other sites.

Content guidelines for your website

The best way to attract people to your site, and keep them coming back, is to design your pages with valuable content that your target audience is interested in.

• In the visible page text, include words users might choose as search query terms to find the information on your site.
• Limit all pages to a reasonable size. We recommend one topic per page. An HTML page with no pictures should be under 150 KB.
• Make sure that each page is accessible by at least one static text link.
• Keep the text that you want indexed outside of images. For example, if you want your company name or address to be indexed, make sure it is displayed on your page outside of a company logo.
• Add a site map. This enables MSNBot to find all of your pages easily. Links embedded in menus, list boxes, and similar elements are not accessible to web crawlers unless they appear in your site map.
• Keep your site hierarchy fairly flat. That is, each page should only be one to three clicks away from the home page.

Items and techniques discouraged by MSN Search

The following items and techniques are not appropriate uses of the MSN Search index. Use of these items and techniques may affect how your site is ranked within MSN Search and may result in the removal of your site from the index.

• Loading pages with irrelevant words in an attempt to increase a page's keyword density. This includes stuffing ALT tags that users are unlikely to view.
• Using hidden text or links. You should use only text and links that are visible to users.
• Using techniques to artificially increase the number of links to your page, such as link farms.

source : msn

MSN News Update: MSN Info

MSN news updated: Microsoft adExcellence Accreditation Program

MSN has updated with AdCenter specially for Advertisers. The beta is coming so wait for MSN to come in - by seo pravish


Announcing the launch of the Microsoft adExcellence Accreditation Program We're excited to announce a new source of helpful educational materials now available to our adCenter advertisers. Designed especially for our advertisers, the Microsoft adExcellence program offers free training to help you become a Microsoft adCenter expert. Check out our new adExcellence classroom and start learning more about how to get the most from your adCenter experience.

Register for the adCenter Add-in Beta for Excel 2007 The adCenter Add-inBeta for Excel 2007 is coming…and we're so excited to be building new tools for our customers that we couldn't wait to share the news!


Microsoft adExcellence program offers free training to help you become a Microsoft adCenter expert.

Training also prepares you for the Microsoft adExcellence accreditation exam, enabling you to increase your industry recognition and help improve the overall ROI for you and your customers.


This new tool will be available in mid-winter. The adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007 is a no-cost keyword research and optimization tool that integrates into Excel 2007.

The Add-in can help you: Easily extract keywords from any website, just by entering the URL Quickly understand keyword popularity and trends Gain valuable insight on the demographic and geographic information of actual search queries Register for the Add-in at by filling out this form.



source : adcenterblog.spaces.live