Forum Moderators: mack
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...]
Mc
Also the .co.uk search is returning slightly different results (for some phrases) than the .com
I my section at least a huge improvement on the Google serps!
Shame about sponsored listings being on top rather than side
Agree - although I get both - search for " slimming uk "
Any ideas, when will this move to the main search?
[edited by: Imaster at 10:06 am (utc) on Nov. 11, 2004]
I read in some news that they will move this to the main search in mid Jan, 2005!
OMG! Then what about all these excitements? We were taking a peek at their search tech on their preview site, now on it will be on their Beta site. See ya next year folks on this forum :)
MSN said that its new search, located at beta.search.msn.com, was different because it could answer plain-language questions such as "What is the capital of Turkey", and receive a direct answer, "Ankara", delivered by the Microsoft Encarta encyclopaedia.
This seems to be a nice feature, and actually works for quite a few questions that I asked.
Google has already figured out a way to make their money without have a soul come to their search engine. It's called Adsense.
MSN have already figured out a way to make money without having a soul come to their search engine. It's called Windows. Remember, MSN has the resources Google never did while it was building its company. MSN won't be an infant when it comes out, it will be a level playing field. The subtle differences WE AS WEBMASTERS see in the results will not be apparent to the regular user.
So, now that MSN is trying to be a major player,
You're joking, right? That's like saying "Now that Rupert Murdoch is trying to get into media" ...
MSN has already made billions out of the search industry, just because it wasn't their technology doesn't mean they weren't in the top five search engines even before they decided to do it themselves.
Shame about sponsored listings being on top rather than side
I think I disagree!
Placing paid advertising there will result in much higher response levels - they will actually have a PPC service which works.
Coupled with good SERPs I can see every aspect of this search engine working really well.
AdWords a bit pathetic - I cannot believe that nobody at Google has thought of integrating paid advertising into the results, rather than using those bland looking boxes down the side (which IMO do not work).
Lets hope this will speed up when it comes out of Beta testing.
ta,
hughie
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"Although the MSN Search technology won't be released in final form until next year,"
"The new search engine will initially be available only on a special test site."
Ummm...Reminds me of one of those classic dotcom stories...
We had a major product rollout, tons of publicity, Cnet, major media for this new technology product. Since the tech was in a bit of legal grey area (music) we couldn't get a top line vendor so we ended up with what looked like a small but competent vendor. Our stuff interacted with their stuff as part of the rollout. Approaching launch everything looked good until about 30 minutes to launch, suddenly their side went down.
15-20 minutes went by, quickly edging to the public launch deadline and we started to panic--a lot was riding on this.
Got them on the phone: "What's going over there?"
Answer: "The cat tripped over the power cord".
Something no one mentiond...it is time to short Google.
regards,
Mark
this could save some SEO's their job!
If you had access to the data I do you would realize what people type into se's.
I have access to Hitwise data and for the UK this shows me that:
- 4.70% of MSN UK's users arrive at MSN UK from Google UK
- 3.82% of MSN UK's users go to Google UK from MSN UK
I don't think MSN will have as much of a problem as you think, but then who am I to say.
Back on topic - I can now see the MSN UK Search results and they look fantastic!
Love the look of the SERPs and paid advertising. I think they have done incredibly well with everything...
[edited by: petehall at 12:16 pm (utc) on Nov. 11, 2004]
Can't beat that funky word "Google" It's become a household word. "Google up blah, blah" I hear similar phrases from many not so savvy surfers. Tough to crack that one IMO. If MSN gets more creative and spends the money I would guess there could be a good battle.
Gotta admit msn is the easiest to type in a search box but others are just as easy.
major product rollout
it's not quite that in real terms - this is beta and of all my mates that are pretty savvy that I have asked, only two knew about it - cos I told them.
So yes a major event - but give it a chance before calling it a mjaor product rollout - we are only 12 hours into the beta testing mode.
Google has already figured out a way to make their money without have a soul come to their search engine. It's called Adsense
I love it when people foster a myth that first to market means a company can't be beat (tell that to netscape & AOl)
Hell, I PREFER not to be first to any niche market. Just last month I launched a products that several competitors had "beat" me to market with by about 2 years. I simply let them do all the market research for me, establish that there was, in fact, a demand for the product, and swooped in with a version that capitalized on all their weaknesses and undersold them by $10 a copy. Happens all the time. If you think any one search engine is invulnerable, you haven't been in this business long enough (right Altavista, Excite,....?)
17.1% MSN UK
16.0% Google UK
I found this a big shock to the system, and I am still pretty gob-smacked to be perfectly honest.
It seems then that at the moment Google is just far better at it's job.
Search engine referals to all my sites tend to average 90% Google , 10% all the others combined!
this market share really does depend in what areas your business lies.
Search engine referals to all my sites tend to average 90% Google , 10% all the others combined!
You have completely misinterpreted my post.
MSN UK dominates the search engine and directory industry of the UK, with Google a close second. MSN UK is a busier website than Google UK.
The fact Google delivers far more traffic to websites (or your website) is completely irrelevant.
These are independent statistics from a company called Hitwise.
Out of all of the 500,000 websites that they record data for in the UK MSN UK is 3rd and Google UK is 4th.
Out of interest Hotmail UK is 1st and Ebay UK is 2nd.
There are many more reasons to visit MSN than just search, whereas Google is primarily about search. Hence artificially spiked MSN figures.
In the UK, MSN users are redirected to the UK branded version by default, whereas Google users are free to use .co.uk or .com. Many do choose to use the .com version. Again, artificially spiked MSN UK figures.
Finally, MSN is the default page for Internet Explorer. Many users leave it that way. That doesn't mean they actively use MSN, but they will contribute to the Hitwise figures.
Perhaps GMail may change that with time...
