It has been reported for quite some time that MSN/Live does not handle 301 redirects gracefully. Whilst putting in a 301 redirect is picked up in Google within days and Yahoo within a few weeks, on MSN it might never be interpreted correctly.

As search engine optimizers something we often do is recommend 301 redirects - perhaps because a page has moved, or search engine friendly URLs have been implemented using rewrites. It is a key tool in the SEO armoury.

There is some additional discussion at Sphinn from various SEOs, but if you are moving a site, or considering moving one, here is a great guide from SEO Book How to Move a Website... Should You Fear 301 Redirects Hurting Your Rankings? This post goes through the process in detail.

Clearly there was a traffic loss from MSN, but then again, how much traffic are you going to miss out on anyway? This was addressed in my previous blog: If You Don't Rank in MSN/ Live Search How Much Traffic Are You Missing Out On?

Generally, the gains in Google will be much greater than the losses in MSN, so this is a case for making the changes to gain the extra visitors you need for your business objectives, and not worrying about dropping some MSN traffic along the way. This non engine-specific approach was covered recently by SEOMoz on why we don't target individual search engines.

There has been some recent anecdotal evidence that MSN may have wised up but others have said that they are not seeing the same thing. Only time will tell. Additionally, there has been a recent change of version for MSNBot but there is no indication in this interview whether 301 following has been addressed, although it is good to know that the crawler will be more gentle on bandwidth.