Wacky MSN results

Very few results shown

[wackybrit]

Couldn't see anything like this immediately below so thought I'd post. I've noticed that searches at search.msn.com have been kinda wacky for the past couple of days.

Try something like.. 'music', there's 10405 results. Only 3576 for 'green'. If you get more specific like 'white stripes', there's only *75* results, yet millions on Google, Altavista, AllTheWeb, et al. Only 368 for the word 'hello'.

I don't use MSN much, but it's been like this for two days for me. Is this what it's normally like or has it really flaked? It just seems.. wrong, to me. :-)

[Macguru]

Hi wackybrit,

>>It just seems.. wrong, to me.

MSN, wrong? ;-)

It seems they decided, for some reason (?) to show count of results found in directory (LookShmart? ) before the ones shown on the web (Inktomi) first.

If you go on SERP 15 for 'hello' you see the total of (6569540 containing "hello") for web pages.

This very poor implementation (marketing wise) has been there since as long I can remember.

[wackybrit]

Weird, I don't see that. At the top it's : Results 1-15 of about 368 containing "hello" .. At the far bottom (at 15), it's also : Results 1-15 of about 368 containing "hello" .. Went to page 2, ditto all round. Did a find on the page for the number you gave, but it couldn't find it.

I know search.msn.com USED to redirect people from other countries to their local search page. I'm from the UK, and it hasn't done that for a while now. But, perhaps, they're still showing slightly different pages to people overseas.

But nowhere can I find reference to there being more than 368 results.. Is 368 the number you get too?

[Macguru]

I had around 365 results. Click for the next page until you see web results instead of directory listings.

[sidyadav]

But for me for a search on "Hello" (without quotation) return with:
1 page)368
2 page)368
3 page)344
4 page)338
5 page)337
............
Thats like 'poor' for a world class company , who made the OS you are on now, who almost created computer technology , created a leading mail service, the 'MSN' network is leading in portal technologies, but what happened to the web search? still in the 19th century?

I've seen way smaller companies (Gigablast?) doing way way better than the current MSN Search.

Hopefully this gets better when MSN releases their new search! I've the 'MSNBot' over there crawling a lot.

Who now's, Could beat Google?

Sid

[hutcheson]

>Thats like 'poor' for a world class company , who made the OS you are on now, who almost created computer technology , created a leading mail service...

Can't figure out who you're talking about: Univac? Honeywell? Mr. Torvalds? Netscape? Lotus? One thing is more certain than death, and almost as certain as taxes: Microsoft never even thought about doing any of those things.

[sidyadav]

I'm not talking about the Microsoft that built the OS you're on, not the Microsoft that built 'Hotmail' that millions of people use but the Microsoft that built the MSN search* that gives you (read the page title)

Sid

* well, they didn't actually build the database and stuff, but, who built the META that gives you only 300 results for queries that give you millions in other search engines.

[wackybrit]

Microsoft didn't really build HotMail anyway. HotMail was an independent site till about 1998. They've changed it very little. That's about the same time I stopped using it *g*

[makemetop]

It appears that there is still some confusion about MSN results. MSN (if there are more than a page of directory listings) gives the number of directory listings first. When you have trawled through the 360 odd directory listings it moves on to web pages (crawled) listings and gives the number of those - for which there are millions for this search.

To say that MSN only has 360 odd results while other search engines have millions is piffle :)

When Yahoo used to show directory results, it sometimes came up with only 1 result - but had thousands in "web pages" - MSN do the same thing.