More column inches have been written about how to please the search engines and persuade them to bestow favour on your website than almost any other internet-related topic. But as far as I know no-one has previously tried to understand their gender: do they behave more like a man, or more like a woman? Understand their gender can surely help us to gain a better insight into how to appeal to them.
MSN is very clear: MSN is a man. Everything about MSN is straightforward: do the right thing and you will be recognized. Follow the advice of the experts and you will surely rank highly on MSN as long as your competitors are less diligent in this respect than you. Good content, relevant titles, keyword-related metatags, loads of quality inbound links, varied keyword anchor-text, a good smattering of deep links and a #1 ranking will be your reward. I have gained #1 positions on MSN for moderately competitive keywords within a week of trying. What you see is what you get with MSN: he is a man.
Is Yahoo a man or a woman? I find it hard to decide. Perhaps it is a serial transsexual, or maybe just androgynous. Sometimes Yahoo is as straightforward as a man: do the...