How To Get Listed in MSN ???

[MrRoy]

Hi

May I know "how to list a site at msn.com" free of cost....

MSN takes results from Looksmart and Inktomi (Please correct me if I am wrong ).

But submitting in Looksmart and Inktomi also takes fees. So how to do that ?????

Also if my site gets listed in msn, does it means that the site will also show up in regional msn ie msn.co.uk etc

Thanks

[merrick_lozano]

There are a few free ways of getting included in the MSN search results, keep in mind they have directory results, web page results, sponsor results ....

1) Submit your site (web page results), I have seen it take around 60 days
http://free.submit-it.com/msnsubmit.htm

2) Get a listing in Zeal in a non-commercial category, obviously this only works if you have a significant area of your site being non-commericial. I have advertising on a site, but the content is free and it is in a non-commercial category.
http://www.zeal.com/

3) Get linked to from a highly linked site on their homepage, if you run a blog then just ping weblogs and that will get a ton of crawlers coming within days, but keep publishing new content otherwise the crawlers will not keep coming as often

[Bernard]

If your site is non-commercial, submit it to Zeal (non-commercial Looksmart database).

If your site is commercial, get lots of high quality links to your site and Inktomi will find you. If you are in a hurry, you'll have to pay for inclusion.

[SubmissoR]

What does "pinging weblogs" mean?

[merrick_lozano]

Blogging software such as MoveableType, Radio, Blogger, B2 etc... have an XML RPC call implemented to ping weblogs.com when their blogging site is updated, which in turn adds their site to weblogs.com recently updated list. This list rotates every day however the crawlers are all over it.

I have setup custom content management systems that ping weblogs.com every time new content is published. Weblogs in turn visits the page I told it has been updated and determines whether or not it has been updated, if so it adds it to its list.

If you publish a few days in a row and ping weblogs.com each time you are almost guaranteed to get all of the crawlers to come to your site within days. If you actively publish, and are a blog there is no need to submit your site to the search engines, just check off ping weblogs.com (also moveabletype.org if you purchase the license key for $20). The same can happen as I mentioned by getting a link from any webpage that has a PR of around 7 or higher.

Hope that helps :)

[esavvy]

Wow - thanks for the information!

[Advisor]

Actually, it's absolutely free to get into Inktomi.

It takes longer, but if you have links from other sites pointing to yours, Ink will definitely find and add you FOR FREE.

There really doesn't appear to be any reason to pay for inclusion in Ink, unless you tweak your pages a lot and want to play with things that way. If you simply put up a page and leave it alone, definitely don't pay.

Jill

[rodman]

Originally posted by merrick_lozano

I have setup custom content management systems that ping weblogs.com every time new content is published. Weblogs in turn visits the page I told it has been updated and determines whether or not it has been updated, if so it adds it to its list.
Hope that helps :)

So I do not need to use this Blogging software such as MoveableType, Radio, Blogger, B2 etc... I can just write small script that ping weblogs.com every time new content is published on my site. Is it right?

Thanks.

[merrick_lozano]

Sure you can, but before you go out and do so, take a look at the weblogs ping implementations (http://newhome.weblogs.com/directory/11/implementations) that already exist. You can use some of that code so you do not have to write your own.

[rodman]

One more question. Do I need to have speciall XML code in webpage to show weblog spider where to fetch?

Thanks

[rodman]

And also which other websites I can ping? If you have list of this websites it would be great.

---------

One thing that I have seen on this different blog websites that they have a very big PR a lot of them have PR 6 and PR 7. And they just have link from other blog sites. So this mean if you have a weblog and you ping weblogs.com and others, you will have a good PR. Very interesting.


Thanks

[merrick_lozano]

Originally posted by rodman
One more question. Do I need to have speciall XML code in webpage to show weblog spider where to fetch?

Thanks

No special XML needed, other than just linking to your RDF feed from the homepage.

[merrick_lozano]

Originally posted by rodman
And also which other websites I can ping? If you have list of this websites it would be great.


Try rootblog (http://www.rootblog.com/Ping/)


One thing that I have seen on this different blog websites that they have a very big PR a lot of them have PR 6 and PR 7. And they just have link from other blog sites. So this mean if you have a weblog and you ping weblogs.com and others, you will have a good PR. Very interesting.

Thanks

Sites like microdoc's were able to reach that mark in months but it because of the value of his content, not just the existance of his blog. Bottom line is build some valuable content and people will link to it.

No problem

[vincentg]

There are a few url's for submission to MSN but I'm not sure if they are all valid. MSN went through changes so other URL's may be left overs from prior methods.

The best one I have found is http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm

This form sends it to Inktomi

The Form has a random number tacked to the url so auto submitters can not use it.

If they went through this much trouble then it must be the right place to submit.

Vin

[Advisor]

The best one I have found is http://submitit.bcentral.com/msnsubmit.htm Inktomi's spider, Slurp, picks up pretty much every page in site these days. You really don't need to submit it anywhere or pay for it. Ink will find new pages very, very quickly if they are linked from any other page in their existing index.

Jill

[esavvy]

We have many sites that have over 350 pages indexed in Google - and one page listed on Inktomi (MSN) (the one we paid for) This has happened on over 2 dozen sites of ours. Google page ranks of 5 or 6 - yet Inktomi is unable to index them.

I have wrote letters trying to find out why to no avail.

No spam on the sites. Everytime we pay for a listing - the rest of the pages do not get indexed.

Bcentral says the pages are not indexable:

Format of url is: http://www.site.com/index.php?html=faq

or http://www.site.com/index.php?html=contactinfo

[projectphp]

http://www.site.com/index.php?html=faq
Put the ACTUAL URL and we can help out, otherwise, we are blind. Many times, the URL you wrote WONT exist, cause you redirect users etc. I say, post the actual URL, otherwise we just can tell you.

[esavvy]

http://www.esavvymarketing.com/index.php?nic=services

(actually MSN doesn't index any of above site)

[projectphp]

Well, no reason why that sit can't be indexed. Returns a valid HTTP 200 response.

However, on that page I get
"Warning: Failed opening 'service.html' for inclusion (include_path='') in /www/hosts/com/e/esavvymarketing/ www.esavvymarketing.com/docs/index.php on line 411"

Could that explain why?? Worth looking intoi, anyway.

I got at least one other page indexed, see here: http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.esavvymarketing.com%2Findex.php%3Fnic%3Dlinkpopularity&FORM=SMCRT&x=0&y=0

Or try This query (http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=%22Every+interaction+you+have+with+your+target+audience+is+a+chance+for+you+to+impress+them+and+win+their+trust.+Email+marketing+is+an+effective+way+to+&FORM=SMCRT&x=0&y=0)
BTW, this is worth looking at, either you are stealing his content, or he yours!!!!He claims "Since 1997", you "since 1999". Seems a bit fishy to me....

So, in short, you are there, maybe you just don't rank very well :)

BTW, MSN DOES NOT index, it just uses Inktomi's database. that is were your problem lies. A bit weird you don't know that, being an SEO and all ......

[esavvy]

I guess I don't understand the error? There is an error on this page?
http://www.esavvymarketing.com/index.php?nic=services ????

My point is - I have over 100 sites that use this format -- many of them 300 - 1000 page sites with high ranking - yet INKTOMI does not get them indexed.

PS: I do not do the content (just optimization) - I will research that. Thanks for the info.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by esavvy
Bcentral says the pages are not indexable:

Format of url is: http://www.site.com/index.php?html=faq

or http://www.site.com/index.php?html=contactinfo Two things to remember.
1. Pages put into Inclusion programs are indexed differently and by a different spider than regular pages.
2. Indexable could mean the links to the pages aren't indexable which is true of Slurp and scooter from what I've read and been told by insiders.

Usually a partner (PositionTech) has a spider that does the indexing. The biggest difference between the regular spider and the inclusion spider is the Inclusion spider doesn't follow links, it may index them for use in link analysis but doesn't follow them. The other big difference is the Inclusion spiders are more current and do handle querystrings in URLs however since it doesn't follow them it is useless to use Inclusion to get deeper indexing.

The answer about not being indexable is true of the regular spider Slurp. Slurp and AV scooter are the only spiders which would not index these pages simply because they wouldn't find them by following the link to them because of the qstring.

The page content is indexable but wouldn't be found to index it. Hence it is an all or nothing where Inclusion is concerned. Put all pages you want indexed into the program. Inclusion does not follow links!

[esavvy]

Thanks for the response! The bottom line -- these pages are not indexable by Slurp? as I thought.

Bcentral will not take them. - So my only alternative is to pay $25.00 x 300.00 pages per site - or forget it.

bummer

[Webmaster T]

Indexable by Slurp? Probably they can index them. They don't follow the link and index it which is very different from can't index it which implies they can't index the page if it were the only page on the site. I keep making this point because the problem isn't indexing the page it is really finding the page which is the problem. So you address this problem in two ways go the inclusion or trusted feed route or you make your urls indexable (ability to follow).

Making links indexable is just a matter of removing programming parameters from the link (querystring) to embedding them in pages or using something to parse a SE friendly link/request and pull the parameters. Either is easily done with either PHP, coldfusion or .asp. Problem is the site has to consider this during development rather than after the fact.

[esavvy]

You have been wonderfully helpful. Thank you. How do I find out more about the trusted feed route?

I have changed one site in the manner that you suggested -- changed the URL's from:

www.site.com/index.php?nic=file

to:

www.site.com/file.php


Hopefully they will be found!
Mary

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by esavvy
You have been wonderfully helpful. Thank you. How do I find out more about the trusted feed route?PositionTech (http://www.positiontech.com/tf_overview.htm)
Note that there must be anywhere from 500-1000 pages on the site before these can be used. It depends upon the engine. The only two you should consider are AV and Inktomi since the others do follow links with querystrings.

[esavvy]

Thank you! (wow.. expensive)....I think we have to rewrite some sites until that new MS Prototype crawler goes into production!
Mary

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by esavvy
Thank you! (wow.. expensive)....I think we have to rewrite some sites until that new MS Prototype crawler goes into production!Mary, remember that the MS protype may just follow querystring in url in fact I'd be surprised if it doesn't. If it doesn't then it likely has been done to force people into inclusion programs that would IMO, be the only reason not to upgrade the crawler to do it. Also keep in mind that Inktomi could end up being a part of Yahoo! There are far too many unknowns at present to hope or do much of anything other then to work within the current known capabilities of SE and known SEO methods to improve indexability.

Prepare for the future and act accordingly when things are more clear. However now that you have identified the problem you can be more pro-active in seeing that these programming methods are thought out before development begins rather than after when they are a royal pain to fix.

[projectphp]

All this stuff about "can not read" is rubbish. Here is a URL in Inktomi's index:

www.flexirent.com.au/page.asp?channel_id=20

There are MANY others. You site IS indexed, that is NOT your problem. I am assuming that you just rank poorly.

My point is - I have over 100 sites that use this format -- many of them 300 - 1000 page sites with high ranking - yet INKTOMI does not get them indexed.
Perhaps THAT is your problem. Not spamming the index now are we??

[esavvy]

Webmaster T is correct.

I just went to Bcentral and tried submitting this page:

http://www.esavvymarketing.com/index.php?nic=services
........Got this response:

Sorry, Urls containing question marks (?) will not be crawled.

The company that I develop code for has over 300 clients - different hosts etc.. -- so the sites are all unrelated .. not spam -- sorry!

[Advisor]

They probably say that so you'll pay for inclusion.

They WILL crawl you if you have links from elsewhere and don't pay for inclusion. I would wait and see what happens.

Jill

[esavvy]

Thanks for the response Jill. We have a few sites - 3 years old; 700 backlinks (400 from outside) 300 internal pages - not one page indexed except for the page we paid for (index).

I think that once you pay for a page - they won't include the other pages unless you pay. Thats the only conclusion that I can come to.

Any comments on this? I have written them to ask why - with no response.

[rasputinj]

I just rewrote my sites URLs to have friendlier .html instead of ?wjwjsjdsl.php, I have had more spidering through my links with scooter since I have done that, I just need to wait for Altavista to update their Db with my new info. I am hoping I will get a lot more pages indexed.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by Advisor
They probably say that so you'll pay for inclusion.

They WILL crawl you if you have links from elsewhere and don't pay for inclusion. I would wait and see what happens.Jill, If the links do not contain qstrings then yes they will index them. If they have a qstring you are dead because Slurp doesn't handle the querystring. PositionTech has a test for it.

PHP the only way that example is proof of anything is if you know for a fact it isn't in an Inclusion program which I have noted 3 times the spider for Inclusion does handle the qstring! It could be that they don't fix Slurp so it will support qstrings to force people into Inclusion programs. But Slurp is old and in this regards IMO, badly in need of an upgrade.

[Advisor]

Kinda weird, cuz I coulda sworn that Inktomi was one of the first to list dynamic looking pages with query strings...

But of course, they want people to pay, so it would be easy enough for them to turn that function off for the freebies.

Jill

[JuniorHarris]

Originally posted by Advisor
Actually, it's absolutely free to get into Inktomi.

It takes longer, but if you have links from other sites pointing to yours, Ink will definitely find and add you FOR FREE.

There really doesn't appear to be any reason to pay for inclusion in Ink, unless you tweak your pages a lot and want to play with things that way. If you simply put up a page and leave it alone, definitely don't pay.

Jill

Great advice! :thumb:
As of late, it appears to take even less time....


>I think that once you pay for a page - they won't include the other pages unless you pay. Thats the only conclusion that I can come to.

I use paid inclusion [PositionTech (http://www.positiontech.com/)] and have had no problems getting other pages indexed and listed, albeit it may be slow to happen.

Lately Inktomi has been very aggressive indexing new sites and/or pages with or without paid inclusion! ;)