Forum Moderators: open
In my situation I'm from Portugal and when entering search.msn.com on IE was always forced to use search.msn.com.br (Brasil - default Portuguese search page). Even deleting all cookies and clicking the link on search.msn.com.br to use search.msn.com (USA) I was always redirected to search.msn.com.br!
The problem is that MSN.com checks my country by IP and redirects me to the default MSN Portuguese search page.
Here's the way to solve this on IE (from MSN.com Search support):
---START--
To change your Search Assistant page to MSN Search, you may follow the guidelines provided below:
1. Click on Search link on the toolbar, a new window will appear
2. Click on Customize
3. Under Customize Search Settings, click on "Use One Search Service for all Searches"
4. Click on MSN Search as your Search Service
5. Click on OK
This will now give you the MSN Search as your default search service.
--END--
It solved the problem, as I now can use search.msn.com and I'm not redirected. The little trick is the step 3 and 4 - "Use One Search Service for all Searches" and select MSN as the default.
BUT with NS7 the problem persists and it seems there's no solution for that. I presume that it will also happen with other non IE browsers.
Carlos
Unfortunately the solution provided by MSN Search support does not work all the times. Few hours after posting the above message, MSN.com started again to redirect me to my country default language page (search.msn.com.br), although my IE browser have exactly the same settings they provided to solve this problem - today the problem persists and I can't use search.msn.com.
I tried yesterday several times to send you (and all mods of this forum) a sticky mail in order to delete this post, as the solution provided does not solve the problem, but the system was not sending any emails, as every time I hit the send button, nothing happened.
Anyway I reported again the problem to MSN Search support telling them how critical this problem is - here's part of my message:
"Didn't anyone at Microsoft or MSN though that there are many users that NEED to use the default search.msn.com because it's the only way to get USA/Worldwide results? What happens for example to a US citizen if is at Portugal doing business and wants to search using search.msn.com? I'll answer that! They can't - MSN redirects to MSN Brazil (search.msn.com.br)."
The answer I got from MSN Search support said they understand the importance of the issue and will do everything they can to fix it.
Let's see what MSN will do about this matter... but I'm NOT positive that they will solve this soon.
Yesterday, for example, on the "Supporters Forum" there was a thread where users from Europe were reporting that when they tried to access techpreview.search.msn.com (USA) they were getting:
- From Italy, techpreview.search.msn.de (German)
- From Austria, techpreview.search.msn.nl (Holland)
- From UK, techpreview.search.msn.nl (Holland)
- From Norway, techpreview.search.msn.nl (Holland)
- And I, from Portugal, techpreview.search.msn.nl (Holland)
The above examples are really bad! Not only MSN was redirecting people to pages they didn't request, but also they were redirecting people to WRONG country pages that are not related with user's country language.
I think this problem has nothing to do with browser configuration and the solution they provided is a *trick* to force IE browser to use the default MSN Search page that work sometimes - it did work with me for a few hours, or it was just a coincidence?
The problem with MSN Search is the way they are badly using geographic location to redirect users and presuming they know what users want to use and automatically gives them what they never requested.
Instead of automatically redirect users to their default country language page MSN could do exactly what Google does: on their default page (google.com) they have a link to my country page (google.pt) - why reinvent the wheel?
Carlos
[edited by: tedster at 3:50 pm (utc) on Nov. 11, 2004]
[edit reason] remove email quote [/edit]
