MSN Search Tech Preview #3

[msndude]

Continued from:
[webmasterworld.com...]

---

Steveb: Thanks for the heads up on the cached link not working. We are aware that this is not functional for many Internet end users and we are actively working on a fix.

thanks,
-msndude (msd)

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 11:14 am (utc) on Oct. 12, 2004]
[edit reason] split off from older thread [/edit]

[Dayo_UK]

>>>This may have been said already but, after clicking on the cached link, I am offered a Google search!

I get a page under construction.

[canuck]

What are you guys talking about closed? It's still coming up for me...

This morning it was down and they posted a notice thanking everyone for the feedback and from the notice it sounded like Preview #3 was finished and #4 would be rolled out soon... guess it was premature.

[soapystar]

what an excellent way to get a database full of search terms that they are going to have potential "problems" with

i think you got it. All ive been doing is domain searches for competitors. :-)

[isitreal]

Ha ha, I did a search for:

[town] [service] [service] [product]

Number 1 was for 'searchcomplete.com'

Number 3 result was for google.com, that's very funny... yuck yuck

gots a ways to go here guys

[matt21811]

There seems to be too much emphasis on the main page of sites and not enough on subpages.
I have a site whose main page is about buying widgets but I have subpages on installng widgets and removing widgets. Both rank subpages well in google but they dont show up here. In fact my main page shows up for one of the searches that I think should find the subpage.

[RFranzen]

The cache link is working now!

I looked at one of my pages, and there is some minor munging of content. For example, the © symbol shows as a question mark. This is on a page which declares itself to be charset=iso-8859-1", using charcter code 169 for the copyright. I.e., I am not using one of those "ampersand umptisquat semi-colon" special HTML sequences. (I probably should, but I don't. ISO-8859-1 should be a sufficient declaration of context.)

... just checked the encoding of the cache'd copy. It's UTF-8, which I understand. ("... and one encoding to rule them all!") Their ISO-8859-1 to UTF-8 converter has a minor glitch. Checked another page using the footnote symbol ¹ (code 185). It displayed as a question mark also. At a guess any char greater than 127 will be mis-displayed for ISO-8859-1 source pages.

Wow, this is getting weirder. The ¹ (super-script 1) displays correctly on the SERP, which is also encoded as UTF-8. MS Search must be using two different encoding converters.

-- Rich

[steveb]

Cache worked for me too, and it shows a date cached which is nice.

[mat]

Seems to have been some dial-turning; keyword-in-domain not quite so all-conquering in the current results. I continue to find the results pretty good, must say.

[dgdclynx]

I have just had my first look and it is very disturbing. My site is invisible and it took hard work to find that I even existed. If this comes out with LOnghorn I might as well give up. Google has always been good to me.

[walkman]

MSN dude,
my site gets spidered daily but not even mydomain.com show up on the preview site? Any idea?

[iblaine]

The techpreview results are not good. Search for jobs, Monster doesn't show up. Search for news, CNN doesn't show up. Search for books, Amazon doesn't show up. Search for miserable failure, Bush is only #2. :) Roll out MSN search as it is today and CNN, Monster, and Amazon will likely have something to say about their rankings.

[lizardx]

Long time lurking, had to post. I like the MSN results, see problems like others see, but definitely good enough, the results come very fast too. It will be interesting to see how the site does when it gets hit with full traffic.

Having the cache date is nice, also having top and bottom next >> previous links, that's a good touch.

Somehow I doubt that MSN will be unveiling their version of the sandbox any time soon, Google will now have to stop doing that unless they really want to lose marketshare, it's getting exciting.

[Rollo]

The results are not perfect, but one should also consider if the restults of the new engine are better than the current MSN results. I think so on balance...

One BIG plus about the new MSN is that it reflects changes to sites very fast while the results of the current MSN are totally stale... they don't seem to change for months on end.

[tictoc]

I cannot wait until Thursday when the search preview goes live to the public. Even being a Yahoo shareholder I can't stand the way they treat their business customers. Good Luck to the new MSN Search!

[dauction]

I was looking forward to this but if techpreview is what they are releasing then MSN is in trouble

search for news ...
maybe techpreview is really just a decoy?

[dauction]

I do like the fact you can report spam sites right at the end of the link for each search result..

The problem is going to be if MSN is going to actually going to commit resources to have the reported spam actually investigated

[steveb]

Will only be the next beta version
[eweek.com...]

Very good, Microsoft. Take the time to do it right, not half-arrsed.

[soapystar]

am being served the German page from the UK, is this a joke?

[lufc1955]

Looks like the technical preview site is down in preparation for launch of the real thing. I hope MSN search does well. Searching needs another major player.

[ThomasB]

Geolocation is really bad. Took me quite a bit to find out that you can change it via [techpreview.search.msn.de...] because [sandbox.msn.com...] doesn't work.

[eddy22]

In the Search Tech Preview, Some results have this

"See more results from " ....

Anybody knows what is this? And why?

eddy

[Rollo]

"Microsoft Corp.'s MSN division on Thursday will launch a public beta of its Web search technology, according to sources familiar with the plans... The launch this week will not involve MSN's desktop search, which is slated for release in December, the sources said."

Looks like we'll have to wait another month for the real excitment...

[CathyM]

"See more results from " ....

I am seeing this only when there are indented secondary results from a domain. This seems to be the exception rather than the norm on the searches I am checking.

[Rollo]

Then again, who knows...

[washingtonpost.com ]