Inspecting MSN Search

ins0maniac writes "I compared Yahoo, Google and MSN's image search. I noticed that, MSN's search had images from only a few sites. I searched for keywords britney spears and randomly checked few pages upto page number 20 and found that the 400 images were only from 3 domains :| 5in9.com, celebritypicturesarchive.com and nabou.com. This is totally weird as it doesn't seem like a search engine, but a collection of few online galleries." There's a number of other interesting notes in the entry about the new search engine. Also, Britney.

Comments

A revenue stream..

[phuturephunk]

..Is a revenue stream. The galleries in question probably pay for dominance. Yeah, this seems contrary to a full free search, but at least the results are on subject.

The real task, it would seem, would be to find a way to have the engine return the proper pictures for the proper searches (so typing in Daddy's birthday doesn't result in pictures of some 50 something dude banging some barely legal chick with a party hat on.)

Stuff like that.

Re:A revenue stream..

[grub]

The galleries in question probably pay for dominance

That's what I think however I didn't see results from Corbis.com (BillG's stock photo company) in any results of searches that I did. And I did search for pretty generic stuff (ie: "ansel adams" who, I believe, Corbis owns the rights to)

Re:Standard MS Tactics

[PocketPick]

Your logic is true for more than just webpages. It spans basically Microsoft's entire software library. Balmer's arrogantly stated that it "one mistake" was that it didn't get involved in the 'search' industry earlier, but anyone who has followed Microsoft's trail can tell you that thier late to the table more often than not. And even when they are on time, the product is often a faulty or damaged good that doesn't operate at the level of other competitor products.

Ex.
-IE debacle, where Microsoft played catch-up to Netscape and other existing browsers after failing to neglect thier need in earlier years.
-Direct3D, which played second fiddle to OpenGL for years in usability and features till Microsoft finally began adopting parts of OpenGL's paradigm for computer graphics.
-The modern desktop GUI. A product of Apple in many respects, but later was adopted by Microsoft.
-Powerpoint, Visio and other 'Office' products. They were created by other companies, and then consumed by Microsoft.

And the list goes on and on. Today thier trying to same with hand-held media players (derived from the success of iPods), search technologies (coming from Yahoo, Google, and other succesfull search/advertisement ventures), spyware detection and many other Microsoft 'Innovations' that are soon to hit the market.

Re:search for "linux"

[TheViffer]

On the flip side, is if you do a search for "best operating system", your first result is linux.org. In fact, I was not even able to find Microsoft listed. Amiga and QNX even came up before Windoze.

Guess the search engine is not so bad after all.