Eytan Seidman of Live Search has announced that the link command operator was recently offline due to “mass automated usage for data mining.” He goes on to say that:
So for now, we have made the tough call to block all queries with these operators.
The move has received flak from webmasters. When Google and Yahoo! can handle such queries, what makes Live so handicapped? However, Eytan Seidman hinted that Live Search is working on “a few good ides up our sleeve” to offer better functionality for such queries.
Barry Schwartz has stated that this might be the indications that Microsoft is launching a webmaster tools section similar to Google’s Webmaster Central. Is there a upside to this seeming handicap of Live Search?
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Navneet Kaushal, CEO PageTraffic is a trusted authority in the search engine marketing industry. He is a featured author at Web Pro News, Search Newz, Promotionworld, Website Notes, DevWebPro, SEO Article and Web Help Now among many others.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I have my doubts about Live Search. This week, my doubts were confirmed when I made this observation. Go to MSN.com and search for “terry reeves” with or without the “”. In the first position result is a graphic page with four rollover links that point to four web forms on my site. Not the main page with actual text and descriptions. The first position result has no text on page at all and is 100% graphis with no optimization at all. Seems to me they have bigger problems to correct than the few they are concentrating on.
I am very upset about this decision. I as webmaster have several sites I used live search news RSS feeds on , paying appropiate homage to source… This is the second time all my client news feeds have been “jerked”. For a while it seemed that MSN Live Search was more webmaster friendly than competitors. I am completely distraut… I need a reliable news source that will continue to provide reliable RSS news feeds.
For a while this seemed to be an advantage that “Live Search” had over both Google and Yahoo for webmasters… We were turning over a new leaf there and siding with “Live Search” for good listings and webmaster friendliness…
This decision blew out “webmaster friendliness”… I have several sites, designed to display a few site content relevant news pages for visitors, while displaying the “News Source”… full credit to “Live Search”…
I changed all sites preferring “Live Search” for all RSS feeds on all sites…
and you dropped me like a “hot rock”, like Google would do…
As a webmaster, I need to see advantages you offer over competitors. I do not abuse the RSS services you provided, but now I can’t even find the service!!!
I am going to have to turn to Yahoo…
Maybe someone will understand the importance of stable services for webmasters.
Ken