The Technical Reasons Why MSN has a PageRank 2
- By: The Founder [privmsg - website] On 20th Oct 2005 In
As it stands now www.msn.com has a whopping 8 backlinks in Google and a Pagerank of 2. I spent about 10 min researching it and found the following: Currently MSN is using a 302, or temp redirects. Using this [url=http://www.yooter.com/spider.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.msn.com ]HTTP header spider[/url] it plainly shows that the 302 (as of today) is being used.
This would explain why the huge drop in PR as well as the lack of backlinks.
- Y! MyWeb
You're right The Founder
Uhm, you're right The Founder. But part of the story is that recently there has been a change in the way they do these redirects, as GoogleGuy noted in msg #26 here.
Also, these chains of 302-to-302-to-whatever means that it's not the real backlink count that you see (not the real PR either).
it might have been smart if
it might have been smart if msn did this on purpose in order to highlight certain google issues
they didn't do this on purpose
this is from the same company that has given us blue screen for heavens sake!
can of link spam?
I'm not positive this is a canonical issue. Have you seen Google treating 302s from non-www to www like this (which is pretty common) also result in a PageRank drop? Also, wouldn't more people be linking to www.msn.com if that is what the URL always displays?
View source in your browser on the unfiltered links listed here. http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=link%3Awww.msn.com&FORM=QBRE Could this be the reason for the PageRank drop and the heavy link filtering?
It's the 302's
Though I see what you are saying..those backlinks look like they hired a shady SEO ...
However in my professional opinion it's the fact that they are running 302 redirects all over the place on their site is the reason for their 'spam site pagerank'
The problem is that since they are using 302 redirects rather than 301 redirects, they are using same 'Hijacking' method that took 1st spot in Google during the last update for term 'google adsense'
MSN is not 'hijacking' anything, but Google's solution to the 302 'hijacking' problem was to effectivly delist and penalize anyone using a 302 redirect.
I tell you what though, if it wasn't for the 302 redirects, looking at their backlinks your idea would of been a close second :)
MSN back to PR9
If anyone cares. MSN