Microsoft Search: Disaster for Content Sites?

[zulufox]

Just got this from a CNN.com article:

"At Microsoft Corp., researchers are exploring ways to return specific facts rather than entire documents. A search for "Marilyn Monroe's birthday" would return an answer, "June 1, 1926," instead of sites on her famous "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" performance."

SO if someone searches "how to clean blue widgets", microsoft would return an answer (TAKEN from my site's articles on how to clean blue widgets) instead of linking the visitor TO my site?!?!?!

****? How are content sites supposed to make money if Microsoft just takes my content instead of leting the visitor come to me and maybe click my ads.

[Telco_Guy]

Sounds like a typical Bill Gates move to me. Seems to me that they will have to have links to the sites that they are getting the info from though or it won't be very useful to the users. Also, if they don't provide links then I would block their spider from accessing my site.

[tbear]

>>****? How are content sites supposed to make money <<

If m$ are not careful, by suing them for breach of copyright ;)

[hannamyluv]

I would block their spider from accessing my site.

I expect most sites would.

[zulufox]

But this is how microsoft search could screw us all:

If someone searches for cleaning blue widgets, microsoft search brings back this:

"From <Link>CleanBlueWidget.com (my site)</Link>:
Step 1:Blah blah blah blah
Step 2:blah blahs lbhas
Step 3:blahs blah blah
Step 4:blah blahs blah
Step 5:blah blah blah"

Since its only an excerpt they can use it legally, just like how google news exerpts news articles AND they link to us... BUT the visitor never has to CLICK the link to visit my site because the answer is extracted and presented on microsofts own search page!

[SEOMike]

If this goes on, I sure will block their bots from my sites. How am I supposed to initiate a sale from an exerpt that I would have no control over?

This is kind of scary. We all know how Billy likes to monopolize things. He wants to kill competition at all costs... MSN search integrated in Outlook, Word, and all other M$ programs delivering excerpts of my site... <shiver> say it can't happen... someone please! Say it can't happen!

[layer8]

Rather than block the bot, why not do content pages like this:

Who is Microsoft?

BLA BLA BLA
BITCH BITCH BITCH
MOAN MOAN MOAN

It works like google bombing but for content pages.

[digitalv]

Just a thought here guys, banning the Microsoft bot won't help you any more than allowing it. If someone is doing a search through Microsoft's site, then they're NOT using a different search engine.

If Microsoft finds the "answer" on your site, at least they'll be posting the answer with a link. You may get a visitor out of it. If you've made it so their bot doesn't index you at all, then you DEFINITELY won't get a visitor out of it.

I won't be jumping to conclusions right away ... it would make more sense to see how many visitors you get out of it first.

Honestly I wouldn't care anyway ... I don't sell advertising on my site I sell network hardware. If someone wants to find information about a particular switch, load balancer, router, etc. it's unlikely that MS will find the information on my site anyway, it would probably come from the manufacturer. If my site happened to come up in a search then, I would welcome the possibility of getting a new visitor. Especially if they were searching for information related to purchasing one, or repairing one, since I do both.

But I know this isn't the case with everyone. The question is, will we be able to see how OFTEN our site was used in an "answer"? Something like a rank system for how useful the site has been in searches. Microsoft commonly uses "Did this article solve your problem" in their knowledgebase, maybe they'll have that in their search engine too. The more often your page answer's someone's question, the higher you could go in the regular results. Could be a good thing, I'm sure Microsoft doesn't want to rob people of content because otherwise people will block them as you suggested and make their search engine less than useful.

[mayor]

So what's so new about excerpts? They're in all the SE serps now. That's how surfers decide what to click on.