Live.com Algorithm Change Favors Domain Names, Spam, Parking Pages

October 3rd, 2007

Microsoft.com just tweaked the Live.com search engine relevancy algorithm in an attempt to compete with Google, but instead ended up with what I think are some of the poorest search results out there.

It only takes a few searches to realize that the biggest change Microsoft made was to give a heavy weighing factor to domain names and keywords in URLs.

Let’s take a look: Searching for the term text message Live returns a top result of textmessage.cc – a GoDaddy parking page! That’s right, the most relevant result here is a freaking GoDaddy parking page!! You’ve got to be kidding me.

Looking at another result, viagra we can see that the #3 result here is viagra.name – a thin affiliate site! It’s easy to see that adding a product to your cart on viagra.name just takes you to another site with an affiliate ID.

If we were to run a search for another highly competitive term: payday loan we’ll see that every result returned has the term in the URL. This simply doesn’t happen over on Google where the algorithm returns more reputable loan companies (that have physical locations) as well as the ftc’s website and news results.

Clearly, Microsoft still has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to search.

Entry Filed under: Main

1 Comment

  • 1. lovekills_s  |  October 23rd, 2007 at 6:52 am

    Well, I too see that, Nice observation..

    But they arent anywhere near to what google has..Infact they cannot reach the peak where google currently is..

    More over, I notice one more point.. For keywords like “Internet Marketing” internet Marketing Company” the sites are coming on the basis of their backlinks and the anchor texts are generally the Keywords themselves for the backlinks..

    Hence, we can conclude, either buy a KW rich domain (if you are lazy and dont wanna burn up with links building) or get tons of KW rich links..and BAM, rank 1 spot is yours,… till the next Algo change..

    they Need to revise or Roll back stuff..


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