Search Supremo

[briggidere]

Hi,

After work last night i went home and put my laptop on. I can't remember what I was doing at the time but came accross a search competition from MSN. They are offering 500 for one of the top 10 in the scoreboard. All they did was give you a question and you have to find the answer on msn search, and you got points for the speed you did it at.
Quite a nice way for them to work out if the search engine is working well and finding out the way users search for particular questions.
I can't remember how to get to it now. Has anyone else seen this?
If no one has seen it, i'll post it later tonight when i get back home.

briggidere

[msn.co.uk...]

Think you're a good searcher? Can you beat Search Supremo, MSN's search champion?

Use new MSN Search to help answer ten quirky quiz questions in a row, against the clock.

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 2:46 pm (utc) on Mar. 18, 2005]
[edit reason] added link [/edit]

[Receptional]

Interesting idea though - but only if it is heavily used I would have thought - otherwise data would be very patchy.

Dixon.

[rj87uk]

Take part in the MSN Search Supremo quiz and
win £500 of Lastminute.com vouchers!Think you're a good searcher? Can you beat Search Supremo, MSN's search champion?

Use new MSN Search to help answer ten quirky quiz questions in a row, against the clock.

I didnt get past question 2...

[bazza9]

Doesn't work for me - can't get past the sign-up screen (I get an ASP error)

[Brett_Tabke]

Reaction to Yahoo's Buzz watch?
[webmasterworld.com...]

[The Cricketer]

Very nice idea. Gives me somthing to do!

Although I found it quicker to use Google and not their interface to search ;)

[olias]

Ok, on the whole I am a fan of MSN search but it is quite bad when two or three times on this now i have got the wrong answer from msn and only spotted the right one when trying on Google instead.

[hannamyluv]

It's not even about the data, I bet. What better way to get people to use your search engine than to make a game of it?

You play the game and find some of the answers in the time. You think to yourself, wow, that was a hard game, but I did find some of the answers. Then next time you need to find an answer, you will think, hey MSN had a search engine and I could find the answers to hard questions. I bet it will be a snap to find the easy questions I have (or I bet I can find answers to me hard questions, too)

[plumsauce]

I think it's also a great way to get the non-expert user to dig deeper into more advanced search techniques. That would be a big win for the engines, webmasters and the users.

Plus, the buzz factor can't be beat.

[BillyS]

Good deal!

I played twice already, the first time I didn't realize that a wrong answer stopped the contest.

The second time I was doing very well after 7 questions (700,000+), and I got a question about the distace from the earth to the sun... Well, I forgot that the earth's orbit is eliptical, we are not 150 million kilometers (my quick guess, based on reading a quick blurb). I later found out that the average is 108 million :(

[MatthewHSE]

From the bottom of the page:

* You need a web browser that is W3C compliant, e.g. Internet Explorer 5 or higher, Netscape 6.1 or higher, Firefox or Safari.

Does anyone else find this a little funny? In fact I think it's quite funny. W3C compliant, e.g. IE 5?! Neat to see them recommending FireFox or Safari, though.

I tried the test but found the prize was in British currency. Is L500 a lot of money? (Their search engine stinks; I couldn't get beyond the third question! ;) )

[creepychris]

I got eight question right (three of them by guessing without searching) and then they hit me with a question that had too many answers in the SERPs: what is the oldest known goldfish? I cry foul.

[Edwin]

They don't seem to have checked their questions very carefully. One answer definitely had about half a dozen answers, depending on which site you believe ("When did the last dodo die?")

[Nikke]

Suitable Resolution
(1024x768) **

Sorry but I'm afraid your PC does not meet the system requirements you need to play Search Supremo.

- Please adjust the resolution in your computer's desktop settings

Wrong. Search Supremo just cannot tell what resolution my Mac monitor has... In fact, I have never used anything but 1024x768 on my iBook.

[RmGJw]

Woohoo, I'm currently at number one, I wonder when the contest ends. 64812 points, the second one has slightly over 20000 points. I guess they just cleared the results ;)