Q and A: Is there an MSN version of Google Webmaster Tools?

Dear Kalena...

Just wondering if there is an MSN Live Search equivalent of Google Webmaster Tools?

Jay

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Jay

Somebody emailed me news about this today so I thought your question was very timely. The team at MSN Live Search announced recently in their blog that they are working on an initiative called Webmaster Portal, due to be publicly launched later this year. It will operate in a similar fashion to Google's Webmaster Tools and Yahoo's Site Explorer.

The Webmaster Portal is being hyped as a central place to find all tools and information relating to Live Search SEO, including:

• Troubleshooting tools to ensure MSNBot is effectively crawling and indexing your site
• Sitemap creation, submission and ping tools
• Statistics about your website
• Consolidation of content submission resources
• New content and community resources

This is good news for webmasters, especially since MSN removed the ability to check backward links via the "link:" operator earlier this year.

MSN Live Search is currently offering Webmaster Portal in BETA to interested persons.


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Microsoft and Yahoo Plot to Beat Google

I am toooo tired to process a reader question tonight, so I'll leave you with the latest eye-opener circulated by the rumor mill: Rumors Fly on Microsoft and Yahoo.

A choice quote:

"Microsoft officials said Friday that they would not comment on speculation about an acquisition of Yahoo. But a person briefed on the companies’ discussions said one option that had been considered was the linking of advertising networks to generate additional Web traffic."

Can you imagine Yahoo Search Marketing combined with Microsoft adCenter? It would be PPC on steroids. Might explain the continued delays with the new adCenter rollout.

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Click Fraud on Google Less Than 1%

While interviewing Shuman Ghosemajumder of Google today, Andy Beal was able to expose the fact that the undetected click fraud rate on Google AdWords is less then 2%.

Ghosemajumder showed proof to backup his numbers and then later clarified that those figures included "invalid clicks" so he claims the true undetected click fraud percentage was more than likely a fraction of 1%.

I wonder. I see a lot of "click quality adjusment" credits in my account on a monthly basis. If they are catching this much click fraud, I doubt the stuff they miss is such a small fraction.