Motivation via MSN Search

I haven't done my blog justice in the past month or so, but I have been checking the traffic to the site. I have my blog linked to Statcounter.com, and have been keeping an eye on the comings and goings.

I was surprised to see that most of the traffic thus far to my blog comes from people using MSN's Search tool. I had to see for myself, so I typed in some terms germane to my site. I first tried "cleaning clutter" (no quotes) and a blog entry from my site came up 5th out of 343,485 results. Next, I typed "clutter." My site first showed up on page 10 of 2,131,528 results. Finally, I typed in "cleaning up clutter" (with quotes), which was 1st of 1,556 results. I was extremely impressed, given the fact that I hadn't updated my blog in over a month!

After the swelling subsided from my inflated ego, I decided to check Google's results from the same terms. Let's just say that it was not what I had hoped. Here's the results:

"Cleaning Clutter" (no quotes) - maxed out at 50 pages with no entry - 1,980,000 results
Clutter - maxed out after 61 pages with no hit - 40,7000,000 results
"Cleaning up Clutter" (with quotes) - maxed out at 14 pages with no results - 11,500 results

What does this all mean? I'm not sure. Should I pack up and move over to MSN Spaces? Well, not yet. Google's blog search tool helped me fare better with results, but I would've expected that. I know that search engines use algorithms to order their results, but how can the two be so diametrically opposed to one another?

Anyway, I would like to thank Microsoft and MSN for directing people to my site. I would also like to thank the people that searched through MSN Search and decided to check out my blog. I actually feel like I let them down by not giving them something fresh. I do intend to change that.
Hopefully, my future diligence will improve my standings with other search engines, resulting in even more traffic.