MSN Search Roundup

Thomas Hawk writes "Well after almost 24 hours of public release, The Seattle Post Intelligencer seems to have the best round up on the professional opinions on the new MSN search beta. Bottom line seems to be that nobody is going to be switching over to MSN Search from Google anytime soon. The story includes opinions by Walter Mossberg, John Battelle, The Wall Street Journal and others. "

Comments

Also on the BBC...

[Noryungi]

Test driving 5 search engines

BBC conclusion is that Google is still the search king, but others (Yahoo, Ask Jeeves) also offer interesting search results.

clean interface, too few pages indicized

[incuso]

The interface seems pretty clean and usable (maybe sponsored links should be moved), in fact is basically the google interface :)

Options page is even more googlish

Unfortunately, too few pages are indicized. My site is used to be in the first page of relevant searches in most search engines, but in msn it does not wshow at all :(

M.

Washington Post had good summary too

[museumpeace]

it will cost you a cookie but Webb's Filter is good at rounding up media reactions:
In her usual thorough fashion Cynthia Webb of the Washington Post has summarized the punditry concerning the impact Microsoft's pending search service will have on Google's business . Most of the analysis says MS has a weak product and miles to go to overtake Google...but thats the position they were in vs Netscape once upon a time. The /. story on Mozilla.org pondering addition of search tools to its arsenal should be considered in light of [and sheds a different light on ] development of Microsoft's plans.

Re:Ask Jeeves Is Interesting

[dfj225]

What I find usually works the best is to use a "-" to remove certain terms from a search that could represent multiple things. For instance "raleigh -city" to look for things other than cities named raleigh. I haven't done any formal tests, but I think this method is better than trying to add more keywords to your search, especially if you cannot think of a general way to describe what you are looking for.

Blatant rip off

[spike2131]

MSN is a moderate rip-off of Googles UI. If you want a blatant rip off of Google's UI, its at http://search.yahoo.com/

Re:what is he smoking?

[PrimeNumber]

What is he talking about? Microsoft hasn't been a feisty upstart since about 1986.

Funny, but Microsoft has actually been around longer than that. Subtract eleven years and you will be right on the mark. :)

Re:Thank God for experts.

[carldot67]

eg

"kodak digital camera" -800

doesnt cure them all, but a lot of the merchants have 1-800 numbers. I also sometime append:

-search -index

enjoy ;)