MSN Search to go Live Thursday, Nov 11th

[Dodger]

Microsoft is planning to introduce its long-awaited Internet search engine on Thursday November 11th, a person knowledgeable about the announcement said.

Word of the introduction of MSN Search was leaked (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/technology/10search.html?ex=1100667600&en=9f8a8704983fe4f6&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVER) on Tuesday (November 9th) after Microsoft began phoning reporters offering briefings for Wednesday. A company spokeswoman declined comment on the announcement.

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[Nacho]

Wahhooooooooooo . . . . . .

http://www.ihispanic.com/sewf/msn-butterfly.jpg

[Dodger]

There is also an Associated Press article (http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=239942) that appeared in the ABC News Business section in regards to this. It stated (incorrectly) that Microsoft will introduce a desktop search product by years end. I think they have their wires crossed on this item ... they were first with the report, but did not proof it well enough.

Either way, this is going to liven things up quite a bit and I cannot wait. I feel like one of those Butterfly Cheerleaders that Nacho just showed us. :D

.

[Nacho]

I just tested the techpreview (http://techpreview.search.msn.com/) for a few kws and it returned null for results with "No Results Found".

[Nacho]

More news related articles on the topic:

MSN Search Beta Set to Launch (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1722773,00.asp) eWeek - By Matt Hicks on November 9, 2004

Microsoft to roll out search service (http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7B7BA510BA-40FA-4542-8F6D-6C55CD3A2E0B%7D&siteid=google&dist=google) By CBS MarketWatch. Last Update: 1:14 AM ET Nov. 10, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Microsoft Corp. plans to roll out a preview version of its new Internet search service on Thursday, according to a media report.
Google, Meet Microsoft (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2004/tc20041110_6890_tc024.htm) - BusinessWeek Online. By Ben Elgin on NOVEMBER 10, 2004.

Microsoft to Launch Search, Aims to Double Ad Sales (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=6764958) REUTERS. By Reed Stevenson on Tue Nov 9, 2004 08:20 PM ET.

Microsoft to preview search (http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,11342201%255E15306,00.html) - News.com.au. Correspondents in Redmond on November 10, 2004

And the list goes on . . .Google News for MSN Search (http://news.google.com/news?q=msn+search&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&sa=N&tab=nn&oi=newsr)

[Nick W]

Now the games begin....

[Nick W]

Why the hell am i getting german .de techpreview?

Will this be another MS product launched far to early and full of holes...

Assuming MS's new engine does not turn out to be a monumental **** up, this changes EVERYTHING

[Nacho]

http://www.ihispanic.com/sewf/msn-butterfly-school.jpg

Someone quick teach her a script. :D

[dannysullivan]

There is also an Associated Press article that appeared in the ABC News Business section in regards to this. It stated (incorrectly) that Microsoft will introduce a desktop search product by years end.
That's entirely correct. The desktop search product will be out by the end of the year. I reported this back in August: MSN Desktop Search Still To Come This Year, Despite Longhorn Delay (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/040830-272a).

I've also put up a new blog post (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/041110-071627) with some timelines on this whole move by Microsoft to have its own search engine, starting back in 1998, if you can believe it.

The real question here, as I explore more in the post, is whether the release will go to MSN Search Beta (http://beta.search.msn.com/) or MSN Search (http://search.msn.com/). Whatever the case, we know it will hit MSN Search by the end of this year -- Gates has said (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3376041#Going%20Forward) so.

[James Colborn]

MSN's pending move into the Search Landscape is one that has been talked about for ever! The pro's and con's have been talked about for ages but it really is still open as to whether it will change things.

A great deal of articles on here have talked about the change but this one article from DM News suggests otherwise. http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?article_id=30959

As search marketers we always look for new avenues for expanding our search... I personally believe that the MSN expansion could go two ways 1) there isn't a new distribution being created so in a sense we'll change our tactics and move more money into MSN development and take it away from Yahoo! or, in late 2005, move more budget from Overture to MSN if this proves to be the case. 2) things could change and MSN starts to dominate and people naturally turn to http://search.msn.com to get their results and the other sites start to fall back.

If Longhorn plans to integrate search into the desktop and into products like Office then this might be a different story... however, I'm a Mac user (no Boos please!) and in the latest Office X MSN search is built into office and I must admit I've hardly even given it a second glance still choosing the Google box in Safari.

Could the MSN expansion into search be as much of a anti-climax as the Y2K issues or will it be, as it's been compared to many times, similar to the dominance of IE over Netscape?

JC.

[bethabernathy]

Now the games begin....
Whoooooo Hoooooo :D

[orion]

I just did a search for temporal link analysis (http://techpreview.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=temporal+link+analysis). It is really fast. Guess who are in the top 3 positions? As in Google, damn effect of the forums and network of blogs.

Orion

[SEbasic]

How much interest do you guys think that the service will receive in the run up to christmas?

I have no doubt that MS will be doing their best to increase awareness of the and improved service that their search engine is now offering, but my main question is this...

Have their been any studies made into brand loyality in terms of online services?
Over the years, search engines have come and gone, and Google is now the most widley used service (clearly).

In your opinion, does Google have too strong a brand to lose users to MSN?
Will MSN throw so much advertising money at the new service that domestic users will HAVE to have a look and see what all the fuss is about.

Do you think domestic users share the same views of MS and Google as many of the web developers out there? (MS - Big corporate money making machine... Google - A couple of friendly guys who started a search engine and now even appear in Playboy)

Cheers

Oliver

[Nacho]

I just did a search for temporal link analysis (http://techpreview.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=temporal+link+analysis). It is really fast. Guess who are in the top 3 positions? As in Google, damn effect of the forums and network of blogs.

Orion
I'm glad MSN fixed it. It was not working last night. I took a snapshot just in case, but that doesn't matter.

YES! It's lightning fast! Will it be this fast when millions of users query it at the same time?

[copsewood]

The MSNbot generated so much traffic it brought down my webserver. I've excluded this menace using my robots.txt file. I don't expect the kind of people who are likely to use this search engine to generate intelligent or useful enquiries on my site, so as far as I'm concerned, providing pages to the cancerous corporation behind this thing is a waste of bandwidth.

[St0n3y]

Will MSN throw so much advertising money at the new service that domestic users will HAVE to have a look and see what all the fuss is about.


Let's hope this is the case.

[Phoenix]

I just tried Orion's temporal link analysis search just to see who was first. However, getting error messages in about 7 different languages. Quiet before the storm tommorrow?

The MSN Search Technology Preview is currently unavailable. The site may be down for a short while due to scheduled maintenance. Please try again later.

You can send your comments to MSN Search Feedback, or perform a search at the MSN Search home page.

[mochant]

Danny:

Excellent analysis, as always. One omission on your timeline that I suspect will have quite an impact on the eventual desktop product was the MSN purchase of Lookout earlier this year. At the time of the purchase, many wondered why the Office group wasn't acquiring this startup. Don't be surprised if some of the Lookout technology/integration shows up in the MSN Desktop Search tool.

[zengray]

"I don't expect the kind of people who are likely to use this search engine to generate intelligent or useful enquiries on my site"

Depends on the type of site I guess. I find myself in the odd position of hoping that MSN does help break down the Google dominance of the search world, too bad it wasn't another company that decided to do that.

I don't see very much difference between MS and Google, both were started by a couple of bright ambitious guys, both are for profit enterprises, from almost day 1, only Google enjoys a much better PR image, maybe because it's name and slogans are cute, it's hard to say. Both would really like to dominate their sectors completely.

I like what I see so far in the new MSN, for obvious reasons. Hopefully yahoo will get a little more serious, MSN will have some success, and Google will lose some of its market share.

[seobook]

I think everyone is missing the big issue here...

how much do they have to pay people to wear those ugly butterfly outfits?

[5starAffiliatePrograms]

Great - right before the holiday shopping season hits hard. Hope this does not goof up all of our affiliate's traffic. Oppps I'm being pessimistic. Guess it could actually help. Will be interesting to see what happens.

[Dodger]

That's entirely correct. The desktop search product will be out by the end of the year. I reported this back in August: MSN Desktop Search Still To Come This Year, Despite Longhorn Delay (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/040830-272a).

Thanks Danny. I remember that now.

[mcanerin]

Apples to apples?

Search for the word "the" today.

Google: 10,930,000,000 (this is way more than yesterday, btw)
MSN: 301,180,742
Yahoo: 1,680,000,000 ("Now with over 1 billion images" on the front page)
Teoma: 1,031,210,000
MSN Tech Preview: 2,000,000,000

Looks like the new war is partially over number of pages indexed.

Ian

[orion]

The new MSN seems broken for some queries. I still can get results for "temporal link analysis" without quotes.

BTW, I can force MSN to return 100 results using the name=value pairs
first=1
count=100

as in

"http://techpreview.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=temporal+link+analysis&first=1&count=100&FORM=ZZRE6"

Copy and paste into browser location (without the quotes, of course)

Orion

[Jeff Nienaber]

It looks like someone at MSN Search has a little crush on our boy Danny...
http://techpreview.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=search+engine

[hiero]

Always nice to have more "Playa's" in the arena.

[AussieWebmaster]

The wheels are really off this bad boy.... the listings grab very bizarre descriptions and in some cases they have no reason for them being there.

[Nacho]

The wheels are really off this bad boy....
YES it is!!

Chirs Sherman has made an excellent review titled, "Microsoft Unveils its New Search Engine - At Last (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3434261)" (November 11, 2004 )

Great article Chris!!

Now, please come discuss the New MSN Search (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=2691) in this new thread.

- - THIS THREAD IS NOW CLOSED - -