About 3 months back, Myspace.com started to put their own version of link condoms on all external links using a redirect method. All links left in a comment would go through msplinks.com before hitting the destination site.

A month ago, all profiles on Myspace.com were also converted to using the redirect method. Shortly after, bulletins were included too. This meant that not only was most of the SEO value gone from any Myspace link but Myspace had the ability to shut off any one link and block it with one push of the button.

People in the Myspace community started to wonder if the Myspace direct would eventually outrank all the resources sites for main keywords, considering so many anchored text links like “Myspace Layouts” now pointing directly to Myspace.com from within all the myspace profiles. Now on msn, msplinks.com is ranking #1 for “Myspace Layouts“. Whether or not we will see a similar fate for Google is unlikely. Hopefully Google can realize that people looking for myspace layouts aren’t looking for the myspace homepage, which is where  msplinks.com redirects to.

Some people in the Myspace resource communtiy are starting to fear Myspace starting their own resource site. Some people are forgetting they already own the largest one, Photobucket.com . Essentially what Myspace has done with this msplinks.com redirect, intentionally or not, is allowed millions of users do the seo for them. It does really show the power of links from one authority site in such a great number - at least in msn.

While this does look bad for those in the myspace resource industry, at the end of the day it is Myspace’s own site and they will do with it as they please, intelligent or not. That’s why it’s best not to have all your eggs in one basket.

(archived)

MSN used to rank new pages very quickly, however, lately this is not the case. I know backlinks rule in MSN and it is filled with spam, yet one of my sites that has done 100k uniques organic visits this month from Google alone, has seen only 3 MSN hits.

I suspect there is some type of problem going on indexing new sites, or their algorithm simply does not index new sites quickly anymore, which many people have suspected for some time now.

I will keep you updated on this website situation. I should mention that old sites I have and am editing, the changes do show up in MSN serps within a couple of days. This adds to my suspicion this only affects new sites and or pages.