Whilst the Flexitank websites receive a lot of traffic from Google searches like “4wd tanks“, “pillow tanks” and “marker buoys,” they have practically disappeared from Microsoft Live Search.

We notified Microsoft’s Live Search support team and the response was that there wasn’t a problem with our site.  They reassured us that the problem would be looked at - no guarantees of course. It appeared to go no further.  

Digging deeper, we found that Microsoft have been radically overhauling their Live Search algorithms and spiders. A new blog, a forum and tools for webmasters were launched which would initially seem like a good move.

Unfortunately for Microsoft and, more importantly, website owners it appears that there are some serious problems at Microsoft Live Search…

Many of the hundreds of posts on the Microsoft Live Search Webmasters forum relate to websites that have recently disappeared from Live Search. The responses by the Microsoft reps to the pleas for help are canned and monotonous. It’s certainly not a reassuring read.

It’s not that the forum administrators don’t want to help, it genuinely appears that they’re being silenced or kept in the dark.

The forum admins are dutifully feeding lines such as:

• Your site has disappeared from Live Search because it doesn’t have good enough backlinks
• You should join an association or start a blog / participate in a blog to get better backlinks
• Our index isn’t big enough to fit everything in, so we left your site out because it wasn’t good enough . . . because of the backlinks.

Not big enough… 

The size issue is something I find particularly strange. It raises a number of questions for me:

• Isn’t the index actually shrinking from disposing of all those good sites that don’t have enough good backlinks?
• Is Microsoft’s technology not big enough for the task that Brin and Page performed with Linux and Pizza Boxes?
• Are the technicians at Live Search feeling Google index envy?

Google have a much better way of dealing with this, called the supplemental index.  Google know that just because a site does not have many good backlinks does not mean that it has no value. Supplemental results are returned in search results by Google all day every day.

It appears that Microsoft are taking a “head in the sand” attitude to this problem. They’re not acknowledging it or addressing it (at least publicly). Instead they’re blaming their problems on webmasters.

That’s not going to help them to gain, or even hold their dwindling market share. Instead of having a shiny new algorithm to brag about, it’s looking more and more like a bomb that’s just not up to the job.

According to Hitwise, in December 2007 Live Search carried less than 6% of the world’s searches. Compare that to the 65% stake that Google is growing.

From the author: As a web programmer I have been involved in developing several content management systems. I was hands on in developing our own content management suite called eComMetrix®.

What I know from working on hundreds of lead generation and eCommerce websites over 11 years is that there is something far more important in creating a website than the system that you use. It’s your conversion rates and it’s a measure of how effectively the content of your website engages with your website visitors.

We know that to achieve high conversion rates and sales from your website you need a team that includes seasoned marketers, web designers, web programmers, copywriters, editors, bloggers and search engine gurus. That’s why we created Bitemark™.

And yes, we can get your website to number one in Google too !

Contact us on 1300 248 362to find out how you could boost the conversion rates of your website.