Have you noticed a dramatic change in the MSN search results? If so, you are not the only one.

MSN pushed out an algorithm change last week that has really affected their search engine results pages. It seems that the magnitude of the changes in results vary from vertical to vertical, with some being more pronounced than others.

Checking the vertical I am most familiar with, insurance, it looks like the search quality has gone down a great deal. Why do I say this? Because this is the #1 result for the term "auto insurance" right now:

http://auto-insurance-quoting.blogspot.com/

That's right, an auto insurance spam blog built on Google's Blogger domain. The content itself is basically a call to action and a list of state names - leading me to believe that on-page content is not much of a factor in the new algorithm.

And it seems pretty obvious that this site is benefiting greatly from being on the blogspot.com domain—something MSN needs to learn to filter out.

Looks like MSN has got their work cut out for them. Luckily, it looks like things can only get better.

For more opinions and observations on the new MSN algo, check out the thread over at Search Engine Watch.