The Blog over at Microsoft’s Bing recently announced that they will reduce the time frame for their stored search data, from 18 months to 6 months.

Bing said:?? Specifically, we are reducing the amount of time we store IP addresses from searchers to 6 months. Currently we keep that information for 18 months before we delete it. Generally, when Bing receives search data we do a few things: first, we take steps to separate your account information (such as email or phone number) from other information (what the query was, for example). Then, after 18 months we take the additional step of deleting the IP address and any other cross session IDs associated with the query. Under the new policy, we will continue to take all the steps we applied previously – but now we will remove the IP address completely at 6 months, instead of 18 months. We think this gives us the right balance between making search better for consumers (we use the data to improve the service we offer) and providing greater protection for the privacy of our users.

Actually, I think what this means more is there is no room in the budget for more servers to keep the data for as long as they wanted. It is no secret that Microsoft is hurting financially due to the change in the landscape the have dominated for two decades.

It is rare that I praise MSN for something related to search, but their PPC portal I have always liked. The issue has always been they just don’t have the market share to make it really worth it. They posted on their blog about new quality reports they have available.

When you log into your account the clicks that have been made are categorized as either “standard quality” or “low quality”.

What exactly is a “low quality” click to Microsoft?

Low-quality clicks are clicks that adCenter classifies as non-billable, including those that adCenter has identified as:

* Invalid clicks
* Clicks that have characteristics of low or unclear commercial intent
* Clicks that exhibit patterns of unusual activity
* Clicks that originate from spiders, robots, questionable sources, or test servers
* Clicks that should be filtered out for other reasons

Some traffic that adCenter has flagged as low quality might ultimately result in conversions for you, which is why the label “low quality,” rather than “invalid,” provides a more accurate description of this class of traffic.

Let’s hope that I’m wrong on this and the numbers are closer to 14%.

Now it is REALLY making sense why many of my contacts and old friends have left Microsoft within the last year. They still don’t get it. While there is still talk of a merge/buyout with Yahoo! to better compete with Google (wait, together you don’t have enough market share to even make Google nervous, why do you think that would change working together?) Microsoft continues to act like a child with ADD.

Seriously distracted.

Instead of focusing on fixing their worthless search engine that is now more than two years old and still doesn’t work, they go out and launch another one. Oh yeah, and that one is broken too. Empty pop-ups that display, overwritten search results with overlaying ads, poor results, etc.

If it wasn’t obvious they hired the wrong people before, it is really obvious now. If I was hired as the lead consultant, I would offer the same advice to Microsoft as I would to Yahoo!. “You don’t have the right people and you don’t have the time to hire the right people and start over. Dump the organic search and move to a strict paid model.”

They could also offer a model where based on monthly spend they could submit “x” number of pages through an XML feed to be indexed for free to help “back fill” searches that do not have advertisers. While small business would “cry fowl” that they can’t compete with big business, it is time for them to wake up anyway. Know your market and how to achieve the market share you can fill properly. Usually big buisness is too stupid to know of the right market.

A line in this mess has to be drawn somewhere.

Eytan Seidman, the Lead Programmer for MSN Search reported on their blog that due to a few data miners lifting the back links from MSN Search, they decided to pull the plug on the functionality.

And thus solidified the death of MSN Search.

So, instead of plugging the hole in the service, they pull it completely. I can’t say that I am surprised … disappointed is a more appropriate word. I have serious doubts MSN Search will ever launch with the decisions coming down from above.

Checking backlinks in MSN today resulted in a blank page. My contact at Microsoft stated that there was an update currently happening and there should have been an “out of service” message, but obviously it didn’t post. This is highly unprofessional and just another reason why Microsoft continues to trail – even after two years from launching their own search engine.

I am sorry, but when I saw this story the only people I could think of was Beavis and Butthead. You know those two idiots who would do the commentary during the videos on MTV back in the 90s. Yeah. THOSE guys.

I remember an episode when they were watching Jeopardy and Butthead says towards the screen, “You Dumbass” at the precise moment Alec Trebec corrects the contestant, “Remember to answer in the form of a question.” To which Butthead responds, “What are you, a dumbass?”

Classic. Even if it is classic idiotness, which is exactly what Microsoft is these days.

Are they serious? Have they gotten this stupid? Apparently so.

The summary is basically this: Microsoft felt there were some inaccuracies in some posts on Wikipedia that had to do with OpenSource. Microsoft felt those articles were written by people with strong ties with IBM or by IBM directly. Microsoft claims that they tried to go through and get the articles changed, but when they weren’t, they offered a Blogger cash to change them.

That is funny, damn funny if you ask me. I mean, this is as close to a “Godfather” payout as you will get in the search world, but the way that Microsoft went about it was as if they wanted to get caught. You can liken it to performing a drug buy in front of the police station.

Not a good move.

While the writer is claiming no money changed hands, I don’t buy it. They can tell the press whatever they want – and the writer is down in Australia.

Now, if you think I am calling Microsoft “dumb asses” for trying to edit the Wiki, you are wrong. They are dumb asses because they got caught.

How do I know this? Simple. I know personally a greatly respected white hat SEO who is a complete Spammer. Yet he/she is smart enough to cover their tracks so they can’t be detected. You mean to tell me with all of the resources and money that Microsoft has they couldn’t have kept this quiet?

I know many of you right now are editing sections of the Wikipedia for your own gain, or the gain of the products you market. Did you get caught? Of course not.

Maybe you can send your resume to Bill and tell him with your help, he can get his edge back, because he has definitely lost it. If I can quote David Lee Roth of Van Halen, “Big Bad Bill is Sweet William Now.”

You can read the complete article here.

One of the biggest complaints about MSN was the amount of Spam that was present. Especially Sub-Domain Spam and Blog Spam. Thus, MSN Live was born. And of course, Blog Spam has creeped back in and is flooding the top ten results.

For example, Debt Consolidation is an area where I am an affiliate, and a search for “debt consolidation” is riddled with Blog Spam. The best part is these Blogs are using redirects to send to PPC hosted pages for monetization.

It looks like using sub domains in the new MSN is being treated the same way as in Google – as a separate domain. We will continue to test this.