New MSN Search Goes LIVE in Beta!

[orion]

My Lord! Look what I got for

mexican food
tortillas tamales

Now, where did I hear about these terms?

Congratulations, Nacho.


Orion

[Nacho]

Shhhhhhhh........ I forgot to put on my shark repellent today

[zareef]

Here MSN beta is working only for some selective words like free.
I think they are yet to complete thier archieve.

[Chris_D]

Hey guys - just chill.

Redmond has chosen to make search an issue - I've been a critic a while - all they have done is issue press releases.

But - credit where credit is due - there is now a BBQ at MSN - not just 'sizzle'...

MSN's '3rd' major search engine is live - you guys need to see past a pimple on its butt!

B - E - T- A Whats that mean?

"Mostly working, but still under test; usu. used with `in': `in beta'. In
the Real World, systems (hardware or software) software often go
through two stages of release testing: Alpha (in-house) and Beta
(out-house?). Beta releases are generally made to a group of lucky
(or unlucky) trusted customers.

Competition is good. Good for the industry - good for advertisers - good for everyone.

[orion]

Originally Posted by orion

Will they drop my other test pages that are not new? Will see if MSN pass these tests.

Stability Test: Yesterday #1, Today #20 for business rumors (an old page), all others the same.

Originally Posted by nacho

Shhhhhhhh........ I forgot to put on my shark repellent today

Don’t worry. Content is King.


Orion

[Nacho]

Originally Posted by orion

Content is King.

Words of wisdom. It seems that MSN Search (beta) is exactly what it loves the most, because the pages you pointed out (along with other examples I have tested) demonstrate that.

Knowing my web site inside and out. I would have NOT placed those to pages as #1 and #2 on the "mexican food" query. On the "tamales tortillas" query, it's right on target.

[orion]

Well put and confirmed with mexican recipes. #8 out of 7,085,823.


Orion

[Nacho]

That is a pretty fair SERP for that query. We still have room for improvement on that section.

[Nacho]

Over at WebmasterWorld, GoogleGuy made a great post about MSN Search (beta)'s functionalities and things to watch out for, including serious reverse-engineering on MSN's algorithm. In this post, he mentions:

Originally Posted by GoogleGuy

Most search engine optimizers will be fascinated by the ability to play with sliders and try to reverse-engineer how Microsoft is ranking

Totally agreed. This is a great treat for our savvy SEO/SEM group.

I wouldn't be surprised if the number of users that eventually use this feature will be counted in the low hundreds, rather than the hundreds of millions of REAL users when it hits search.msn.com. So, did MSN develop this tool for us or for the general population? Anyway, thank you MSN for this very kind treat for us to get a better picture of your algorithms as it will help us do our work more efficiently with our clients.

Other things to watch for, as he pointed out from the new MSN Search Blog are these comments they made about how they're doing focusing on these main areas:

• UI suggestions & ideas
• Developer API requests
• News Integration
• Availability
• Relevance

I continue to find it all very exciting, as GoogleGuy suggests, this is like a once in a long time comet that very few get to appreciate when it passes by.

There are still some un-answered questions about how MSN build their index, as they have been discussed in this thread: Microsoft Scraping Google and Yahoo! SERPS?. Since MSN Search Blog reports that they are carefully reading our threads at SEW, perhaps MSNDude can swing by and clear this up a bit more.

[orion]

Great finding, Nacho.

Originally Posted by GoogleGuy
Most search engine optimizers will be fascinated by the ability to play with sliders and try to reverse-engineer how Microsoft is ranking

(Emphasis added)

This from the G boy sounds to me more than an invitation.

With this statement, looking around and reading between lines across blogs and certain sites, it appears to me there is a bit of an orchestrated interest from some bloggers, G boyscouts, and interest groups in not letting MSN beta fly. The usual suspects, at large.


Orion

[Nacho]

Originally Posted by orion

With this statement, looking around and reading between lines across blogs and certain sites, it appears to me there is a bit of an orchestrated interest from some bloggers, G boyscouts, and interest groups in not letting MSN beta fly. The usual suspects, at large.

Reminds me of being a "freshman" then growing up to be a "senior" and looking down at the "freshmen" back in school. I believe, we called this "Freshman Initiation".

We all learn to grow up I guess.

[Lance Housley]

Originally Posted by Nacho

I wouldn't be surprised if the number of users that eventually use this feature will be counted in the low hundreds, rather than the hundreds of millions of REAL users when it hits search.msn.com.

Like so many people here, I thought these sliders were really great. Since then, I've been racking my brains to work out when I might use them - or even what they mean.

Static vs Recently updated makes a sort of sense, if one could be sure that the search engine could reliably recognise the difference between updating content and merely tweaking layout or updating a link. On the other hand, most reference information - like encyclopedia and dictionary entries - are failrly static, and I do wonder how many people would make the mental leap away from our "new equals better" culture to thinking "I need solid facts that can stand the test of time, so I need static entries".

Aproximate match vs Exact match. An interesting proposition. Are we talking fuzzy logic or fuzzy concepts here, or maybe just "Ah ain't ver' good at expressin' mahsel' an' ah needs sum help fer gittin' what ah needs". Maybe it's just that the product is still in development, but I certainly have not been able to convince myself that I can see what the difference in results really is.

Very popular vs Less popular. "Less popular" - now that's different from unpopular, is it? Geek? Rabid individualist? And what about "More popular"? A polite way of saying "I follow the herd"?

Now, I could see the point of selecting or de-selecting "Commercial" or "Academic" or "government report" &c. One of the disadvantages of the old MSN search has been its tendency to serve up shopping pages regardless of what one wants. I see that a review of the beta has criticised it for serving up a "Buy my photos" page instead of a history of photography.

One of the factors that may convince me to use Google for a particular search is that it does tend to promote official reports and research literature. One way to focus on hobbyist and personal sites (or on pop music, for that matter) has been to use MSN Search, but I hesitate to call that kind of material "more popular" since statistics show that the most popular SE is Google.

Now, I note that there are some metasearch engines that allow the searcher to select which group of niche SEs to query. Profusion, for example, offers Arts and Humanities, Business, Career, Developer Toolbox, Discussions, Downloads, Education, Entertainment, Finance, Government, Health, International, Legal... and so on. Vertical search engines have always had a valuable but largely unrecognised role that the general search engines like Google have been less able to fulfill.

So where does that take us? Are the sliders little more than a gimmick?
For my part, I can see a great use for that kind of feature, but perhaps using criteria other than the ones chosen for this beta, and certainly with clearer labels, to allow the general search engines to mimic the focus of the specialist SEs.

[Artyom]

The main difference I can see at SERPs at Google, MSN and MSNbeta is a total web results quantity which they return fo the same keyword I'm using.

flash animated website designs (pretty target keyword)

MSN returns - 27878
MSNbeta returns - 785,165
Google returns - 978,000

general keyword - animated website

MSN returns - 742758
MSNbeta returns -13,753,427
Google returns - 8,270,000

My thoughts about these SERPS comperation

1. MSNbeta has much bigger index then MSN has

2. My site is number one for both keywords at MSNbeta and as I can see it's because these keywords are at my site title and MSNbeta considers it as a key factor. But as long as I can't see the same sites which Google returns me (with these keywords within titles) at MSNbeta SERPs I believe MSNbeta index is smaller then GG index.

3. It considers keyword existence at title as a heavier factor then current MSN version

3. Perhaps I've lost at my assumptions, but I think MSNbeta has a simpler ranking algoritm then GG has and potentially when it'll go from beta to replace current MSN it'll be a bit easier to get higher ranking at MSN then at current MSN and difinitely easier then with Google.