We have all been busy this holiday season, so in case you missed it MSN is having some major indexing issues. My main business site is gone and it appears this has happened to a large number of sites MSN had indexed. They are just gone. MSN is suggesting that people use their new webmaster tools to determine why their sites are gone- submit their site, submit their sitemap and verify their site then you will be allowed to see what problems there are (most of the time people can’t see this – no info available).
What is really funny is their verification system does not seem to work and most of the missing sites (I have personally checked) are fine on Google and Yahoo. If your site is gone it is not your fault- they just messed up big time and many sites are no longer indexed.
I don’t know why MSN found it necessary to mimic Google’s webmaster tools or to change things. Have they ever heard, “Don’t fix it if it aint broke!”? I liked the results I use to get from MSN and now the results you get are essentially useless. I say suck it up and go back to the previous system. If you go to MSN and ask for help they will tell you to do the whole submit your sitemap and verify your site thing…Good luck! If you can get it verified you still get no info. Even their own people can’t tell you why things aren’t working.
Here is MSN’s webmaster forum.
Melissa- SEOAware.com
Were there any similarities between the sites ie low backlink counts? I tried a few of my sites, and all our client sites still seem to be indexed.
Canada, I don’t know. All the sites I have looked are different, from small business to sites that have 40,000 pages of just stuff to larger resource sites. MSN has given people a lot “no answers”. I think they updated, as they mentioned on their blog on November 15th and the problems began then.