Let’s all welcome MSNBC to the game, as the Redmond, Washington-based news arm of Microsoft has decided they should optimize their site for search engines. Until June, the team at MSNBC.com was apparently unaware of this MSN thing on the other side of campus.
MSNBC.com publisher Charlie Tillinghast, who says that site revenue is up 40% over last year, is taking aim at Yahoo! News and CNN.com with a four-pronged attack. The “refocused” campaign includes search engine optimization, content syndication, content personalization, and video.
Until June, MSNBC was using an un-spider-able six digit number to index its stories. Tillinghast, recognizing the power of a high search engine ranking for driving traffic to a website, decided to transcribe those numbers into words to make them more search friendly.
But so far, according to Jeff Meisner, two months worth of SEO hasn’t done the site much good. Meisner quotes Comscore Networks, who says MSNBC.com’s recent changes “showed no discernable movement in MSNBC traffic.
While MSNBC.com is the most popular web news portal, drawing 27 million visitors in August over CNN.com’s 24 million, the cable television presence isn’t doing as well.
Reuters reports that Fox News’ coverage of President Bush’s speech just after the Hurricane Katrina disaster enjoyed the highest numbers of viewers at 3.9 million, MSNBC attracted only 624,000.
Recently, as speculation runs high about a possible merger between MSN and Time Warner’s AOL, the future of Microsoft’s relationship with NBC has come into question. While the online face of MSNBC is popular enough to keep it moving, the cable network is struggling. Making a deal with direct competitor Time Warner could dampen Microsoft’s partnership with GE’s NBC.
