Until now, few people have had a chance to see Microsoft's new search technology, which is expected to have major ramifications in the search engine marketing industry. While the importance of the technology is yet to be proven, Microsoft's marketing muscle is without question. MSN ranks alongside Google and Yahoo as part of the "Big 3" in search. However, MSN has tended to trail behind in many user satisfaction and search relevance studies. Last year, Microsoft signaled its desire to change direction. It has feverishly been trying to play catch-up this past year by developing its own search technology in lieu of licensing results from third parties.

Personally, I continue to remain surprised that Microsoft has not already acquired or announced the development of its own pay-per-click engine. Google has AdWords to serve its sponsored results. Yahoo has Overture. Yet, Microsoft continues to support Overture, owned by its competitor, with no visible replacement strategy. However, displaying those sponsored search results is where the money is, just as commercials pay for free television. Logical acquisition targets might be FindWhat, LookSmart, or an array of smaller pay-per-click engines. After all, if you're a major player, why develop your own organic search engine and not have a solution for paid placement?

Curious to see what Microsoft has come up with so far? An MSNBot preview site is now available for you to give their new ranking technology a spin. Don't delay too long since the preview site warns that it may only be up for a limited time while they collect feedback. They have even posted Webmaster guidelines for how to help MSNBot crawl your site. Most of the guidelines are about the same as you will see at Yahoo, Google, and elsewhere.

Among the guidelines, Microsoft reveals three items it labels as spam:

1. "Using hidden text or links. You should use only text and links that are visible to users."

   This is certainly a broad statement. Taken literally, microsoft.com itself is using hidden text all over its home page and would be in jeopardy of spamming. Areas like meta tags, ALT tags, javascript, and so forth are all hidden to the user and often contain keywords, even on Microsoft's own site. In reality, there's nothing inherently wrong with most types of hidden tags. It depends upon how you use them.

   In all likelihood, Microsoft's biggest concern is that you will hide keywords not relevant to the rest of your page. Supplementing what the user sees on the page with similar keywords in meta tags and elsewhere will not automatically label you a spammer. If it did, the majority of the 1 billion pages in its new index, including Microsoft.com, would not be there. Practicing moderation and keeping your keywords relevant continues to be the key to responsible search engine optimization.

2. "Loading pages with irrelevant words in an attempt to increase a page's keyword density. This includes stuffing ALT tags that users are unlikely to view."

   Microsoft's second statement goes back to my point about keeping your keywords relevant to your site's content. While it's unlikely Microsoft will penalize you simply for using ALT tags, the keywords in them must be relevant. ALT tags are useful for a variety of reasons. For example, sight-impaired users rely on software to read the words out loud in ALT tags to explain the purpose of images on a site. Graphic intensive sites use them to add text to the page that cannot otherwise be seen by a search engine. Google uses them to aid in searching for images by keyword. The key is not to stuff long lists of irrelevant junk keywords into your ALT tags, particularly for images that are hidden.

3. "Using techniques to artificially increase the number of links to your page, such as link farms."

   This is a rule that Google has been adamant about enforcing in recent years. There's nothing wrong with swapping links with Web sites that offer complimentary content to your own. This can provide beneficial information to your Web site visitors. However, you should be careful of sites organizing link exchanges in some kind of automated fashion. Otherwise, you run the risk of Google or MSNBot discovering that list of organized sites and banning them. The question to ask yourself to determine whether it's a form of link spam is this: Are the links beneficial to a visitor to the site or are they solely a tactic to increase link popularity?

So when does this new MSNBot go live? According to Microsoft, it will be "in the next year." The engine is currently in alpha testing, so expect many changes before its final release. Still have questions about the MSNBot? Check out Microsoft's new FAQ page.

For tips and strategies for top placement on today's MSN search engine, see WebPosition's Page Critic. The Page Critic advice is updated every month and produces custom-tailored reports based upon your particular Web site, keyword, and preferred search engine.

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