MSN and Looksmart - please help

[webgator]

I have been following these forums for several months and I have finally came across a situation that I am unable to find an answer to. We submited a site recently to Looksmart, mostly in hope of it showing up at MSN search, since few people actually search at Looksmart. I have followed all the advice about optimizing the description for the appropriate key words. The keyword we want to get top 10 rankings for is fishing charters, which theoretically should have been helped by the fact that the term is part of the company's name so the title includes that word as well. Everything is pretty much fine at Looksmart, and we currently rank #2 for that word. But at MSN they butchered our description and changed fishing charter to fishing-charter. Does anybody know why they added the hyphen and what we can do about it. Is there any way to appeal to MSN. Fishing-charter isn't even a real word as far as I can tell. Any advice is really appreciated.

[MsSearch]

Is your description for MSN the same one Looksmart gave to your site?

If it's the same, I would ask for a description change since you said you recently submitted your site to Looksmart. Send them an email in response to the acceptance email they sent you and politely explain why you are requesting the change.

In my experience, some Looksmart editors like to hyphenate words that don't usually appear with hyphens and everytime I requested a change, they've edited my listing to my liking.

[webgator]

No, the descriptions are different. Here is our looksmart description:
Site offers resources for fishing charter operators and their customers. Search for and book sport and deep sea fishing charter boats around the world.

And here is the MSN description:
Offers resources for fishing-charter operators and their customers. Search for and book sport and deep-sea fishing boats in areas around the world.

Since when does MSN edit looksmart descriptions and what can I do about it?

[markymark]

Ditto that. LS editors seem to be reasonable people and reasonably responsive to this type of request.

I haven't looked at your site but do you refer to fishing-charter (hyphenated) on your contact us or about us pages and is it spelled this way in the logo ? This may be the reason as LS uses these spellings for the title of the site. If not, I expect you will have no problem getting it changed.

Secondly, to the best of my knowledge, MSN never changes Looksmart listings when included them in the directory part of their index.

[MsSearch]

I do see the 2 descriptions (#60 on MSN and #2 on LS)..I've never noticed MSN giving any of my sites slightly different descriptions before.

However, the wording is the same but MSN does rank sites according to their own algo so that could be why you don't rank as high in MSN. I always thought - (dashes) were seen as spaces by SE spiders.

Did Looksmart originally put hyphens in your description when your site was first accepted? and then you appealed? if this is the case, then MSN may not have updated the change yet...

You could try to request a description change to Looksmart..reword the description but still using your main keywords ...and wait for MSN to pick up the new description....hopefully without hyphens...

Anybody else experience this before?

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums WebGator! :hi:

That is strange. MSN has never changed a description that LS gave that I no of. LS probably gave you the description with hyphens first, and then changed it. MSN picked up your old description and have not updated it as MSsearch said.

BTW, MSN results are Not the same that LS's are. MSN uses an algo and depends on what LS passes off to MSN about the site. THey consider quality, the kewyords, how well optimized, etc.

[webgator]

We submitted to looksmart using the 2 day submit just last week. The site is brand new so there shouldnt be a previous description at Looksmart. Is it possible that one editor put up our site and then another editor changed it and during this interval that MSN took the new looksmart results? The description they gave us there was fine so we didnt appeal it.

BTW, what other factors does MSN use to rank sites?

[ihelpyou]

I do not know what could have happened. You might send LS an email and explain.

MSN has an algo just like any other engine. Your site must be optimized first before MSN gets hold of it. Everything else I said above also applies.