Microsoft's ComScore Numbers Have Been Changed To Hide A Massive Traffic Decline

Microsoft redesigned its MSN web portal, the default Internet Explorer homepage on the 400 million new Windows PCs that are sold each year, in September. In recent weeks, sources have told Business Insider that the redesign had a drastic negative effect on visitor numbers not only to MSN itself but also Microsoft's search engine Bing (MSN used to send users to Bing results when they clicked on article headlines.)

The first verifiable evidence of our sources' claims was due to be revealed in this month report from research company comScore, which would have revealed separate worldwide traffic figures for Bing and MSN. The theory was Bing was being severely hurt by one of the changes, which saw MSN curate more stories from news sites and was seeing people click through direct to competitor websites, rather than through to a Bing search as it had done previously.

But this month, following the site redesign, Microsoft has asked comScore to bundle all its web products - Bing, Skype, Outlook and so on - under one MSN banner, the research company confirmed to Business Insider. So now it is be extremely difficult to quantify just how badly the MSN redesign hit Microsoft. Business Insider has contacted Microsoft for comment about its request to comScore to reclassify its online traffic under the MSN banner. This article will be updated once a response has been received. ComScore is one of the most trusted sources of web traffic data around and the majority of major publishers use the company's reports to sell their advertising and size themselves up versus competitors.

MSN's newly organized total unique worldwide visitor figure for October was 6.77 million, according to comScore. In September, without the added help of other properties like Bing and Skype, MSN's unique worldwide visitors totaled 3.79 million. No longer is it possible to compare apples with apples with the comScore data on MSN.

ComScore does, however, still provide Bing data. Its worldwide unique visitors dropped from 271 million in September to 267 million in October, according to comScore.

Separate US-only data from Compete, a Millward Brown Digital company, appears to show the drop-off in visitor numbers following MSN's redesign more starkly. Look how the uniques fell from September (when the redesign launched) to October.

The same pattern follows for Bing.com

One source close to Microsoft told Business Insider: "The reasons [for changing how MSN's visitor numbers are reported by comScore] are obvious, that is for sure…MSN is down 20% to 60% on page views depending on the country…rumors persist that they will shut it down."

"Shuttering MSN would be fairly simple for Microsoft. Bing already has a news section and is already programming news on their homepage. They also have links to Microsoft's other services. So it can serve as the consumer default homepage for Microsoft.

"With the fall in page views and click through rates on MSN, Bing is actually a better option for Microsoft strategically to gain any search share. So it makes sense to send all of that default traffic to Bing instead of MSN. This is the key reason MSN has struggled for so long. Microsoft really doesn't care about that business."

Separate sources have previously told Business Insider there is a showdown of sorts between three powerful Microsoft executives: Terry Myerson, the man in charge of Windows, Derrick Connell who runs Bing and Qi Lu, the man in charge of most of Microsoft's consumer online services, which includes MSN and also Bing.

The fight is about who gets to control the default home page of Internet Explorer. All three want to claim the home page as a lucrative marketing spot for their own divisions.

Microsoft told Business Insider last month that Bing and MSN are performing well and that the newly redesigned MSN is a success, referencing older US-only comScore data for October.

In a statement the company said: "As the most recent [US] market share data indicates, Bing and MSN both continue to grow. We are seeing a great response to the new MSN, which we just rebuilt to combine content from the world's leading media outlets along with easy access to tools such as Office Online, Skype and Bing. Similarly, we're pleased to see Bing gaining traction both as a standalone search engine and as the intelligence platform powering experiences inside and outside of Microsoft, including Cortana on Windows Phone, Siri and Spotlight from Apple."