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Could it be? Is MSN.com really first in search? Well, yep you bet they are at least according to Google that is!

Let me explain becaue this is a cute little occurance but it doesn’t mean in any way that Microsoft is winning the search engine war. However, it is kind of funny and there is a huge SEO lesson in it for us to learn.

First, here is what I mean if you run a Google Search for the term “search” you will find that Google ranks MSN Search number one of about 8.9 Billion other websites and they only rank themselves number 3. You can view the result here, MSN First for Search On Google.

Just incase it changes anytime soon here is a screen shot of the google result I took at the time that I authored this post.

Now like I pointed out this is kind of cute and all but doesn’t mean Microsoft has the best seach engine just that Google thinks that seach.msn.com is the most relevent site for the word “search” on the internet at this time.

Now, if we want to learn from this we need to ask a one word magic question. Why?

That answer is really simple, Yahoo was always called Yahoo, Google was always called Google and MSN was has always been called MSN Search. See the difference? So what that means is thousands of site owners over the years have linked to the MSN Search Engine and done so with the anchor text of “MSN Search”.

So when you are starting a new site or branding effort you really need to think about what you call anything you are going to attempt to develop links for. I mean you really need to think about what your key branding phrase is going to be, because most of your links will have that in the text. So if you pick some cutting edge abstract concept, you might win an award but your SEO results will be less then stellar.

I would say this alone is a case for advertising companies to work with a good SEO Firm.

There is a second lesson here many people already know but it is kind of interesting to see it driven home this way.

Take a look at this if you search for the word search on each of the major search engines you get the following results for MSN Search…

1. On Google (MSN is ranked #1 for “search”)
2. On Yahoo (MSN is not in top ten for “search”)
3. On MSN Search (MSN is not in top ten for “search”)
4. On Ask.com (MSN is not in top ten for “search”)

Now isn’t that interesting? So whats the deal?

Simple, Google is applying more weight to links in their ranking then any of their competitors. It would actually be more accurate that Google is applying more weight to authoritive links then any of their competitors. So if anyone needed any more proof that links are more important then content to Google I think this is yet another confirmation of that fact.

What do you think about MSN being number one for “search” on Google? Do you think this makes a good case for SEO firms working closely with traditional advertising and branding agencies?

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: msn, google, yahoo, seach, seo, search results, msn search, microsoft, microsoft search, live search, ask.com

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