More re MSN....reviews, forums and opinions
MSN"After 14 months of work and a $100 million investment, Microsoft rolled out a test version of its new search engine late Wednesday night"...Even with its own search technology, Microsoft will continue to rely mostly on Yahoo's Overture Services for paid search listings. Their agreement runs through June 2005. "I think that's absolutely going to change," said Nate Elliott, an analyst with Jupiter Research, who thinks MSN will offer its own paid listings program. "That's where the money is."
SiteProNews: MSN Search Launches
"SiteProNews:comments on guidelines"
MSN say: Use only well-formed HTML code in your pages: this means all pages/ sites should be W3c Validated. Maintain links & make sure that all tags are closed or MSNBot may not be able to index your site effectively.
MSN say: use URLs that are simple and easy to read: could mean url syntax has implications for ranking as well as making them easy to crawl. MSN bot also respects the robots.txt file See MSN bot FAQ
MSN also say: keep your URLs static...Complicated URLs, or URLs that change often, are difficult to use as link destinations..could be to avoid link decay in their index
MSN say: Limit all pages to a reasonable size...under 150 KB...without any images... One topic per page. Could the latters mean MSN bot/ algo is pretty basic?
Rob Sullivan at Search Engine Guide reckons Microsoft have been palying a waiting game: " wait until others build it, and let them work out the kinks and bugs. The others make it popular, and then Microsoft sweeps in and takes over."
In MSN Search's Beta Blunder he concludes:
"Microsoft, earth's largest software company. And it trumpeted this test launch with a public-relations campaign to ensure that users around the world knew the service was ready for widespread use. So when MSN Search went down, a bit of Microsoft's credibility in the search-engine business went with it.
That's not to say that MSN won't eventually give Google a run for its money. In addition to Encarta-aided searches, MSN Search comes up with results for musicians, with links to listen to songs and Web sites featuring the artists. And MSN Search is available in 26 markets around the world and 11 different languages"
All they have to do is show them how easy it is to use, and how relevant the results are. They can do a side by side comparison with Google, but they don't really have to. They just have to convince the average Joe that Microsoft search is good. It may take a couple of years, but by then they will have enough people convinced, so that when Longhorn comes out with integrated search, they will be so happy with Microsoft search that the extended benefits of Longhorn and MSN search tied together, that there will be no alternative.
Google will still be used by us geeks, but we don't rule the search world. Your parents do, in the end.
Microsoft Launches New Era in MS Search: Web Master World forum with appeparances by "Googleguy" and "MSNdude".
posted by Jen @ 9:21 PM
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