WebStart - 12:39 am on Mar 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

>On July 1, MSN plans to overhaul the way its search result pages appear... The top three listings, instead of four, will be highlighted with a box, marking them as "sponsored" results... <

WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT THAT, than what MSN search does now? It displays 1 or 2 "featured sites" (paid ads, paid to MSN) at top and 3 OV ads on top now, titled as sponsored, and also OV ads to the right in a box. As far as its great results as a new engine, I have to say its hard to tell when the beta is there, and when whatever else they use is there, it is like playing ping pong on results.

But seems to me mostof the time its new beta engine displays a lot of shopping.com and bizrate and dealtime results at the top of "natural results."

This comment is in reference to ecommerce type sites, but even so: what is "real" about those results? They are all paid, or in the case of shopping.com and dealtime and bizrate, structered with high density keywords to capture the artificial intelligence of those robots. Not real at all.

No sour grapes on my part. I advertise on dealtime and shopping.com and bizrate for exactly that reason.

But the fact is: The major results showing on almost all search engines these days are paid for. One way or another.....