Surprisingly, Microsoft has been a relative late comer to the self-generated search party. Though originally launching MSN Search in 1998, they didn't get serious about search until after Google had established and proven the business search model.

It wasn't until January 2005 that they formally switched to their own in-house technology from Yahoo!, having up until then relied on partners like Overture, Looksmart, and Inktomi to power their search service. Microsoft finally dumped Yahoo!'s search ad program in May of 2006.

Live Search (formerly Windows Live Search and MSN Search) is the current iteration of Microsoft's web search engine, and lies fourth in the list of most used search engines after Google, Baidu, and Yahoo!. If you only include English language search engines, then the fact that Baidu largely operates in Chinese elevates MSN Live to third in the list, with Ask fourth.

Using search tabs that include web, news, images, music, desktop, local and Microsoft Encarta, Live Search gives users the opportunity to identify a wide range of specific information.

Live Search is accessible through Microsoft's Live.com and MSN.com web portal and includes some innovative features, such as the ability to control the amount of search result information displayed, for example just the title, a short summary or a longer summary. You can also opt to view additional search results on the same web, instead of clicking through results pages. Users are also able to save searches and have them automatically updated on Live.com.

Live Search mobile enables web search from any phone with Internet access, allowing users to find the latest news items, search images and photos, get instant answers for weather, stocks, maps, even product search.

Though Google and Yahoo! are far more popular than the Microsoft product, it still deserves close attention. Set as the default Internet Explorer search engine, MSN Search services over 2.5 billion worldwide queries each month. Their mission statement is to be "more useful by providing consumers with improved access to information and more precise answers to their questions."

ComScore report that MSN searchers are in fact 48% more likely to purchase a product or service online than the average Internet user, less clearly equating to more when it comes to e-sales.

Like all of the major search engines, MSN builds their index of sites using bots to crawl the web to discover new and updated information. Microsoft spiders don't currently index Flash, although this is an area that they are believed to be looking closely at. This information is processed by the MSN servers using secret, complex and MSN-specific algorithms to determine relevant returns. At SEO Consult, a team of SEO professionals use their experience of and insight into the Microsoft algorithms to deliver our clients consistently high search rankings.

We identify themes, differences and similarities that we focus on to get a head start for our clients. Algorithms, while possessing similarities, also reveal unique SEO opportunities. An interesting feature of Live Search is that MSN does not apply the same types of aging criteria as Google and Yahoo!. When content is added or updated, spiders re-index the site rapidly. MSN tends to pick up and credit new content and inbound links very quickly, meaning that with well-deployed tactics a website can be ranked in a short amount of time.

As is the case with all the major search engines, the most important aspect of effective SEO is fantastic content - keyword-rich and ripe for high quality, organic link building. Theme and topic relevance is critical. A well-defined web site, with on-subject topics will without doubt rank higher than an 'all things to all people' effort. MSN Search loves a strong and themed structure, good relevant content, and quality inbound links featuring keyword-rich link anchor text. Deep links from external websites should be from authoritative, theme-relevant sites, since MSN is working with context weighted calculation. Strong conceptual input and application from the beginning delivers long-term rewards.

MSN is sensitive though (much more sensitive than most) to high keyword density. Traditionally, keyword percentage has fallen somewhere around 3.5 to 4% for MSN. Loading pages with irrelevant words in an attempt to increase a page's keyword density, including stuffing ALT tags that users are unlikely to view, can kill your SEO stone dead. Using hidden text or links and techniques to artificially increase the number of links to your page such as using link farms can also prove terminal.

Clean, well-written code is a must with MSN Search, as its spider has a strong preference for high quality and valid code. Poorly written or non-valid coding will lead to MSN Search downgrading the site's search rankings.

MSN places more importance on meta tags than Google and Yahoo!. So TITLE and DESCRIPTION should be there, relevant and keyword-rich, no matter what. Titles are the single most important piece of code on your entire web page, holding great weight in the algorithm and providing a précised window on page content, enticing visitors to click through on your return.

The heading tags prioritise your page information and are given a significant amount of weight in the algorithm, provided that they are not abused.

A clean navigation structure is preferable, with each page accessible by at least one static text link. Internal site links are highly regarded by MSN, allowing the spiders easy access to the whole of your site and in the process feeding them with relevant textual information. Be sure to link extensively within the site, using considered anchor text thematically related to the content of the recipient pages.

There is some evidence that MSN's spider does not dive as deeply as the Google spider, so it is best to keep the site hierarchy relatively flat. Ideally, each page should only be one to three clicks away from the home page. Site maps enable the MSNBot to find all of your pages easily. Links embedded in menus, list boxes and other similar elements are invisible to web crawlers unless they appear in your site map.

Contact SEO Consult today and see how we can help you achieve significant and rewarding profile on MSN Live.