Microsoft Looks At Other Search Engines

ZuperDee writes "It looks like Microsoft is now looking for another search engine to buy. They are looking at Ask Jeeves and Looksmart, but they recently dumped Looksmart, after deciding that its results don't stack up well. So would anyone be surprised if they bought Ask Jeeves? It can't hurt that according to Netcraft, they already run Microsoft IIS."

Comments

BS based on rumors

[melted]

Come on folks, RTFA. The article is just a bunch of rumors carefully worded to sound believable.

Re:Why not ask Jeeves

[sosume]

According to this link, AskJeeves and Look Smart are the same company...
so is this a marketing hype to keep Google stocks cheap for a hostile takeover??

Microsoft COULD Make it Work!!!!

[ZuperDee]

I think I should also point out that Ask Jeeves also own Teoma, which is absolutely nothing to be sneezed at.

Not only that, but Microsoft has a world-class research arm with Microsoft Research. With Microsoft Research's world-class research, and Microsoft's deep pockets, you can bet that any improvements Teoma would need to compete with Google WILL be made.

Re:But does anyone use them?

[BadCable]

But then google is also starting to suck. People are learning how to cheat their page ranking system, more and more "trap" sites exist which do nothing but link to a central site while also linking to each other. (For example, try finding jewlery sites - at least 30% of the responses will be fake sites that point to ONE site.) Sure Google isn't "dead" and it's not "dying" but it's certainly becoming more vulnerable to abuse and less accurate than it once was. With the millions that MS has to invest in an engine it's likley that they'll be able to provide just slighly better results than Google and use the "default page", "page not found" etc traps to promote their seach engine.

Re:But does anyone use them?

[aridhol]

Maybe they should follow redirects and index only the final page. This avoids indexing the intermediate pages that are there only for redirects, and also allows you to move your site somewhat more easily by adding a redirect to your current page.

As for the text/background idea, what about running the page through something similar to SpamAssassin. Not all tests are applicable for websites, but a new ruleset shouldn't be too hard for them to write.

Also, do they keep all pages for their cache, or just ones with a high enough PageRank? How difficult would it be for them to compare two pages for similarity, and lowering the rank for identical pages? Or for pages that have the exact same set of links (to reduce the effectiveness of link farms).

Due to the nature of the PageRank algorithm, lowering the score on the referring pages will have a result on the target page, while ensuring that it's difficult to get someone dropped completely (since other, high-ranking sites may also be pointing there).