Windows Live and MSN

[Praxus]

I noticed on an earlier thread (thats now closed) that Windows Live
search was said to be the same search engine as regular MSN; but I get
different results / rankings for the same keywords, so they are definitely doing something different.

I wonder whether they will fully switch to Live after its out of beta...keeping Live.com and MSN would only be confusing to consumers and wouldn't be very helpful for branding. Will also be interesting to see whether the algorithm live.com uses now or the one at msn.com will be used when live goes into production...or it could be something different
by then I guess!

[msndude]

During the Beta, Windows Live Search uses the strictest setting for the Adult Content filter. The production site, by default, uses the intermediate setting. That's the only difference.

The reason for this is that Live Search didn't have a control to let the user change the setting, so to be safe, we set it to strict. Once that's available, they should match exactly. Or you can change your settings for search.msn.com to strict and they should match right now.

[Praxus]

Wacky..I found the issue..I get the different results if I use Firefox; but the same, as msndude said, if I use Explorer.

[msndude]

I was going to ask what some of those sites were, but maybe I'd better not! :-)