MSN Search Has Come Home
After weeks of beta testing and industry raves, MSN has just officially gone live with the new “we’re gonna kick some butt” version of MSN Search – showcasing their search engine’s own technology. I’m honestly a fan of MSN Search and its search relevancy sliding, dynamic results, and integration of multiple MSN Channels across the board. Some in the search engine industry have charged that the new MSN Search, like Yahoo, is quite link-farm and “heavy search text” friendly. However, like any good search engine should, MSN is bound to change their algorithms over time, keeping the SEO industry on its toes – something we’ve needed since Google’s Florida update.
So, those are my thoughts on MSN Search. I like its speed and easy search capabilities – however, I’m not a big fan of MSN and feel that Bill Gates is going to have to try extra hard to lure me and other users over to MSN’s advertising heavy network. Gates and company are starting already with a planned TV and Superbowl commercial blitz along with public relations campaigns. Just wait until they release their own paid search technology this summer, then we’ll be taking MSN a bit more seriously.
As a marketer, I’m happy to see that one more search engine is entering the field. Not only does it give me and other search marketers a new toy to play with, but also a legit and “average Internet user” reaching marketing tool. Like Yahoo, MSN users tend to be more product and consumer oriented, making it more of a B2C marketplace than B2B – and referral stats are lighting up with new MSN Search traffic already!
Fellow search engine enthusiasts and publishers are also sounding off about MSN Search and its search functionality and new offerings. Here are a few:
Sushubh Mittal of TechWhack reviews MSN Search: The new MSN and the MSN Search Engine are very unlike Microsoft. The sites are lightweight and actually work decently across all browsers for a change. Microsoft apparently tried this new theme first on MSN Music, which is now being spread across all of their sites. Very decent indeed. Reminds me of Apple.
They launched a beta of this search engine quite sometime ago. It had a shaky beginning as the server responded with errors quite regularly. However, these are now things of the past as Microsoft seems to be quite satisfied with what they have to offer with their latest search engine. It has now replaced Yahoo’s algorithm and search results as they are completely running their own engine for the searches on MSN.com. However, Microsoft is still using Yahoo’s sponsor advertisement mechanism powered by Overture.
Gary Price of Resource Shelf and Search Engine Watch enjoys the MSN Answers option as an alternative to Google.
When MSN rereleased their search beta last November, they joined several other general purpose web engines offering direct answers on search results pages. At that point, these types of results seemed to appear for very few queries but with today’s official launch, I’m noticing many more direct answers.
MSN offers direct answers for several types of queries on search results pages. Material comes from their Encarta encyclopedia. Here are a few examples.
