Microsoft Offers A Peek At New Search Engine

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "The Inquirer is reporting that Microsoft is offering a preview of its new search technology. The search engine preview has a minimalist interface, similar to Google. Microsoft claims over one billion web pages searched, but admits the fact that searching is a little slow. This technology hasn't yet been incorporated into MSN Search, though the site claims it eventually will be. In related news, the Financial Times is reporting that Microsoft are to improve the regular MSN Search site by removing paid advertisements from regular internet searches, a move that will cost them 'tens of millions of dollars.' Are the Search Engine Wars finally upon us?"

Comments

Search for Linux

[grandmofftarkin]

Redhat, SUSE, Mandrake, etc. don't turn up on the first page. WTF?

Oh I get it. Microsoft don't want their competitors turning up in search results.

Hmmm ... I think I'll stick to google.

Re:Search for Linux

[SimplexO]

A search for 'search' returns a list of websites that all contain the word search in their domain name, none of them are any of the good ones - Google, AV, Yahoo, and (even!) MSN.

Hrm...

Re:Search for Linux

[betelgeuse-4]

Search for "microsoft" and only 1 result is returned, compared to Google's 103 million.

Re:Search for Linux

[WebCrapper]

The sad part is, MSFT is just using the Slashdot crowd as real life load testing...

Re:Search for Linux

[iocat]

It's not just wikipedia...

Sorry, no results were found containing "rabbit"

(Google found 6.8 million, fyi).

At what point do the search engine creators just decide that their engine isn't ready for prime time? I mean, a rabbit is a fairly common thing.

Re:Search for Linux

[sponge_absorbent]

hmmm, it didnt seem to find any results for "microsoft sucks", despite the fact www.microsoftsucks.com exists... how strange

Re:Search for Linux

[ad0gg]

Its not the domain name, its the text between the anchor tag that makes a difference. You can see it with the "French Defeats" search and other humor searches where the search term isn't even the domain name or the page itself.

MSN beta search works little like google's page rank where inbound links are counted toward search placement, but it looks like msn places lot more emphasis on it. Problem with this, it breeds link farms and spamming the results.

Shhh... secret Microsoft code!

[AKAImBatman]

function search(var terms)
{
return screen_scrap_google(terms);
}

On a more serious note, this engine is not all that great. For example, if I do a search for my name I primarily see forum posts. While that's great, it's not very useful. Listing software I've written, articles that mention me, etc. are far more useful results, especially to a future employer. Google nails this because the more interesting stuff always has back-links to it. Sorry Microsoft, you need Google's technology to compete with Google.

Boycott

[OYAHHH]

Anybody know what the search engine spider calls itself.

I make sure that msnbot is not allowed to traverse my web site via the robots.txt file. I'd like to do the same with this robot.

BTW, I've noticed no appreciable decline in web hits at all.

Re:Boycott

[OYAHHH]

I,

Think you hit the nail on the head with the word "why".

What is the point of MS providing a search facility via their websites and eventually tied directly into their OS. So they can make more money. Yeah a secondary concern might be to help their customers have a better experience, but believe me, it's to make money.

Has MS been particularly honest about their search results in the past. I've done the "Linux" search on MSN before and quite frankly it was appalling to me that a company could be so blatent in their disregard for truthfullness.

Thus, "Why" should I provide any opportunity for MS to make any additional money. I certainly don't feel the need to line Bill Gates pockets anymore.

And, I certainly don't feel the need to give sustenance to someone who has made it their life's calling to squash anything that is non-MS.

Call me vindictive and I'll wear it like a crown if you like.

To me, collaborating with MS in any manner is sorta like having the person who shot and killed your mother over for dinner. Ain't gonna happen under my command.

By disallowing the msnbot I effectively, in a small way, reduce MS' ability to rule the world completely.

And as I noted in my first post, before I disallowed msnbot from my site I only got a few redirects off of MS sites daily anyway.

If somebody wants to find my site they can readily find me on any of the other search engines. My site's consistently in the top five returns for the pertinent subject matter on any search engine. Except MSN, of course, hee! hee! hee!

Re:Playing catch up

[strictnein]

Very interesting: Drilling down using NetScan and you actually get a page that links to Google Groups.

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Message-ID: 409e3b22$0$29341$756600cd@news.cambrium.nl

Sear ch for this message at Google Groups

Kind of suprsising

MSN Bots = Annoying

[Bruha]

I'm getting more hits than most of my regular visitors in my logs.. even google does not check my site on a daily basis but these seem to do it on a semi hourly basis.

More FUD... oe something like that

[poptones]

MS kicked Netscape's ass because Netscape fell into a spiral of devolution while IE became a much better product. In the fight between Netscape 3 and IE4, it was no contest because IE was, at the time, simply the better product. Remember, this was when Netscape was just sure it owned the web and, at the time, it was even thumbing its nose at the W3C. This is perhaps the most perfect example of Microsoft's "embrace and extend" philosophy. Once MS becomes dominant in a market it's very easy for themn to retain that dominance - but attaining dominance in any particular field is NOT a given even for MS.

So compare then to now: you can't even get decent fucking search results of Microsoft's own support site from Microsoft itself. They can't even properly track their own content - how on earth can anyone trust them to track everyone elses? I work tech support a few days a week and I don't even think about using Microsoft's "search the knowledge base" page - it's often laughably short on search results even for well known things like "xp rpc exploit" and "download ie6."

When I can get proper tech support info on Microsoft's own products without having to go to Google and type site:microsoft.com THEN I'll start to believe this is like Netscape vs. Microsoft.