I read a fascinating post over at Seeking Alpha's Blog detailing his research on, what appears to be, Microsoft screening websites utilizing Adsense and Google's Search Box on their sites. I included the full post below so you could read, but I also ran my own tests which I wanted to share as well.
As you read this blog, you can see Adsense on the right hand side as well as in between posts on the homepage so this site would 'qualify' for MSN screening if this were true. That being said, I did a search for 'Search Marketing Blog' in both Google and Yahoo and achieved top 20 rankings for both (click on the links to see the search results - #13 & #17 respectively from my data center).
I then proceded to search for the same term in MSN - nothing!! This is an extremely competitive keyword with over 18 million pages being returned in Google and 174 million in Yahoo. My blog should be SOMEWHERE within the top 100 in MSN!!! But it isn't! What gives?
Without further ado, please read the full article below and please post your thoughts on the matter!
I think I might have stumbled onto one reason why Google hit a wall with AdSense - the same reason why the proposed acquisition of Yahoo (YHOO) by Microsoft (MSFT) should be opposed.
