Microsoft To Launch New Search Engine

Anyone read the news about this Thursday?

[TheGuyAboveYou]

Microsoft will launch this on Thursday.

Corp. on Thursday will start its long-awaited Internet search service, adding fresh competition to Google Inc.

The Redmond, Wash. software maker on Thursday will open to the public its service for searching the Internet after eighteen months of development. The company is trying to tap into the lucrative business now dominated by Google of combining Internet search and advertising.

[online.wsj.com...]

[ogletree]

Search for the masses has nothing to do with quality. MS has had MS search as the default for many years. People open up their browser and see a MS search box and then type in www.google.com. How can they do more than they are already doing. Unless they make a new home page that looks a lot like google and says please don't type in Google.com search here instead they will not improve. I make a living understanding how people search. If you had access to the data I do you would realize what people type into se's. As long as you can type in a comapany name or even the .com into a search field people think Google is great.

Now I understand the concept of never say never. I will restate my statement. There is very little chance that anybody will upset Google as the search leader for a very long time. Nobody can predict the futrue. The concept of search may not even exist.

[LukeC]

Mmmmm

[techpreview.search.msn.co.uk...]

delivers different results to

[beta.search.msn.com...]

what does that mean?

[LukeC]

If MSN do a Coca Cola and go for aggressive permanent advertising and PR, people will start to switch from Google to MSN.

You need a lot of money to get that kind of blanket coverage, a serious lot of money.

I can see the adverts now... everywhere.

[nutsandbolts]

I can only express my delight in these MSN results.... I only hope they will carry over to the "live" version tomorrow.

[tl001]

I think you are wrong. If Microsoft releases a search spider that visits sites and update content much more often than google (and this seems to be clearly the case), then lots of people will turn to microsoft.

Can't agree more. Who gives more contents wins. If it continued its deep crawling, Microsoft would definitely beat Google and its arrogant and selective crawling.

Yahoo never made it ...

Yahoo would probably become a niche crawler of news sites. Nothing more.

[aleksl]

I think the only long-term solution for Google is to purchase AOL.

you've been smoking. AOL is part of Time Warner, a $78 Billion company with a revenue of $42 Billion dollars (both Billion with a "B"). Google is barely a toddler.

I see lotsa MSN praises here. Just want to mention one more for Microsoft - anybody remembers Sybase, and how MS SQL Server came about?

M$ has a proven record of getting late in the game, using its very powerful connections to stride along, then surpass and eat alive competitors.

This is a great and scary moment in Search Engine Wars. When integrated into every Windows desktop, I believe MSN search will be easisly #1 search solution out there.

Would M$ deside to dominate the niche if it destroys Google, like it did 10-15 other well-known companies? If that is the case, will we be 3 years from now talking about MSN SERPs being out of date, stale and ridden with spam, and not being able to market new websites except in PPC?

[Stefan]

Glad I had a look at this thread.

Here, MSN beta and tech preview are very very different. For our weather and news pages, (that have a fresh date everyday), I have Nov 8 showing in tech.

The serps for our site in tech are astounding. We have #2 for the most common one-word search relating to the site, that's out of 3.8 million. In G, beta, and Y, we're at about 35 on it.

I haven't checked the tech preview in a while, did because of the thread, so I don't know if this is new, but I sure hope that they move it to the main search.

I'll have to check forum97 more often.

[mbush27]

Hello everyone,

Wow, this sure is exciting. My site/web optimization is still in its infancy. Google has me "sandboxed", and I haven't received any real results from any of them yet, but MSN's preview shows me at #4 for my most competitive keyword. I am so excited. I have my fingers crossed for tomorrow. Does anyone know the current market percentage of searches done using microsoft?

Matt

[WebFusion]

you've been smoking. AOL is part of Time Warner, a $78 Billion company with a revenue of $42 Billion dollars (both Billion with a "B"). Google is barely a toddler.

On the contrary...considering the fact that AOL has been bleeding cash for some time (and dragging on time warner's share value), they would probably be interested in a sale:

[theregister.co.uk...]

[contentsiteguy]

Google has already figured out a way to make their money without have a soul come to their search engine. It's called Adsense.

[grandpa]

It looks like most of the news release scheduled for Thursday has already been announced by now. I caught some of it on the AM dial this morning. The annnouncers closing remark:

Yahoo.

[Rollo]

Does anyone know the current market percentage of searches done using microsoft?

I think for G its nearing 50%, Y about 25%, and MSN is about 15%, but these things are sure to change after MSN's media ad blitz and especially after MSN launches its new opetating system... I bet it overtakes Yahoo in the next year or so. It'll take a long while to catch Google though...

[daku]

I'm #2 in msn techpreview for my most important keyword. I just hope lots of people will use msn once it's fully launched :)

[sonny]

MSN has always had a search box. What will be the difference Thursday or Friday or whenever msn search switches over. It will still give results like before. Where would the extra market share come from? People typing in msn.com instead of google.com? Maybe if MSN gets more subscribers, I guess.

[redzone]

contentsiteguy,

You can't have the chicken without the egg, or is it the egg without the chicken..

It took millions of surfers going to Google to make adsense a reality....
While AdSense makes "sense' for publishers, I have yet to see GAW Content provide anywhere near the ROI that GAW Search provides. Most of our advertisers stay clear of Content bidding at both G & Over.

[WebGuerrilla]

I think there has been quite a bit of confusion over the flury of news stories. So now that I have been told that the NDA has lifted, I thought I'd set a couple things straight.

Ink/Yahoo isn't going away tomorrow. (or today depending where you are) The only thing that is going to happen is the techpreview url will redirect to [beta.search.msn.com....]

When that happens, they will introduce a new interface that contains the features that were leaked a couple of weeks ago at searchenginewatch.

It's still very much a work in progress. Moving it to the beta location will give them more feedback from an audience that will have a higher percentage of real users. (as opposed to us webmaster types who only search to see how we rank). But it certainly isn't going to produce any substantial traffic anytime soon.

From an SEO perspective, you would be wise to not invest a great deal of time analyzing and tweaking sites base on what you will see tomorrow. Keep in mind that it is still a work in progress, and the search team is aware of most of the glaring algo holes that you will most likely stumble across. So if you are getting beat by them, don't panic. You will probably end up doing much better when the real switch happens.

If you are on the other side of tht fence, and your spam is kickin' ass, don't go out and buy that new car or house just yet. It probably isn't going to be quite as easy as it looks right now.

[sonny]

So, now that MSN is trying to be a major player, should the Microsoft Search link be moved to the top of the list in Webmasterworld's respective category, or just below Google but higher than Yahoo or below them all? hmmm.....

[bears5122]

What Microsoft wants, Microsoft gets. I think it is ignorant to believe Google will be king 3 years from now just because it is popular today. What I've learned in the Internet world is companies come and go.

Google simply can't compete with what Microsoft will do with longhorn. Microsoft already takes the entire market of searchers who either don't care/ or don't know much about search engines. Your 40 year old housewife doesn't care where her search results come from. Your savvy webmasters do.

Let's not forget that Microsoft has a powerhouse advertising division. They will flood our TVs, web, and anything else with ads for this service down the road. Google just can't compete with that and will lose a substantial amount of their market share.

It'd be different if Google had the best results, but they aren't even better than Yahoo! these days.

[ownerrim]

I just tried out the techpreview. I hope these are not the results that will migrate to the beta site, because they are loaded with crap in my area. And I really do mean spammy sneaky crap.

Also, I just noticed that the google results for my niche which usually show about 2.5 million results now show about 5 million. First time I've ever seen that. Perhaps google is ramping up to take on the beast from redmond.

[graywolf]

Just checked a half a dozen terms, for one I am #1 and #6 with the different pages on the same domain. Kinda funny.

[Even_Steven]

THe new search engine must already be live, because I just ran searches for about 50 different terms that I optimize for, and results between beta.search.msn.com are the EXACTLY the same as msn.com.

[WebFusion]

Nope. Still Ink

[McMohan]

results between beta.search.msn.com are the EXACTLY the same as msn.com

which is EXACTLY the same as Yahoo :)

Mc

[Clark]

My question is whether Microsoft will do their own version of adsense to justify this story [ciol.com] about doubling ad revenue?

[ogletree]

Why do people keep saying longhorn will change things. How is that possible. MSN search is already the default on most new computers. People will still type in www.google.com just like they do now. Your average housewife does type in www.google.com. I know old people that do it. Very few people put much thought into things like we do. If all they know is google.com that is what they will do. MS is not known for search. It would be like Del Monte getting into ice cream. Would you buy Del Monte Ice cream. People think of Gl when they think of search. Google is mainstream. The key in marketing is to get mindshare first. G has done this. MS can advertise until they are blue in the face but unless they make a clean ad free front page like G they will not win. MS will not be able to do this. They will make too much money selling that space. MS and Yahoo are the top portals but not pure search.

[lasko]

I'm seeing the same results on MSN and BETA.

From Europe anyway :)

[Imaster]

Seems like they started rolling out their new search in the beta site.

Check out
[beta.search.msn.com...]

Results are not coming as of yet, it's still giving me "This site is temporarily unavailable, please check back soon", but I can see the complete new layout with "Search Builder", "Search Near me", etc

I guess they will roll out in a few hours!

[TinkyWinky]

How many hotmail users are there? Placing search in such a way that you migrate some of these users would surely represent a good %ge of the searching public.

[Powdork]

I always have green bean casserole ice cream after my turkey and stuffing soda.
It looks like this week it will be fun to do this again.

[xcandyman]

Uk search is working :)

[beta.search.msn.co.uk...]