Forum Moderators: mack
Results look very good so far, Look out Google!
AND THERE WAS THREE
The Dr
I don't think any of us are qualified to speculate accurately on how this will affect Google.
Some of us are.
Others are not.
95% of search engine users will have no clue and will continue to use Google.- by internetheaven
internetheaven, I used to agree with you, but my eyes have been opened. It's not just us techies, but average person DOES notice (can notice?) that google results are getting worse.
Couple that with a MS-backed marketing campaign and you'll see migration. Not the downfall of Google, but certainly competition.
CF
For the past 3 weeks I've noticed that MSN was alternating between 2 different main algos,(or at least SERPs) so probably A/B testing now live.
CF
Will this effect G? Hard to say. I see an awful lot of people do their searches from the browser address bar. For all those IE users that will be an MSN search. I suppose if it meets their needs they won't go any further.
WBF
Shows that good old fashion optimizing still works and also the extent to which Google and Yahoo mess around with their results.
Google was smart enough to mention month by letters.
Mc
This beta results on FireFox thing is finally making me to use FireFox after years of I
It's not the browser triggering it... at least not for me. I have tried FireFox, FireBird, Opera, IE, and Netscape 7.x - I still get Yahoo results. Only by going directly to the beta search can I get the beta results...
I've tried some rather complex queries, not the simple one or two word phrases a webmaster might be looking at to see how they rank. I mean one of those longer queries that people type in...
I've tried several that good sense and show results on the old search, nothing on the new search at all. To many of these and people will run from this search engine:
Search tips:
* Try similar words. For example, some sites may use "film" instead of "movie".
* Make your search more general. For example, instead of using a specific product name, try typing the generic product category or manufacturer.
It's not the browser triggering it... at least not for me. I have tried FireFox, FireBird, Opera, IE, and Netscape 7.x - I still get Yahoo results. Only by going directly to the beta search can I get the beta results...
Here is Atlanta, GA, I am seeing Yahoo in IE and the new MSN in FF.
IP based seems right.
Steveb, for a while I thought you were being too harsh on the new msn beta, but I'm starting to think you're seeing it pretty clearly. I think I fell for some illusion that suggested that content was being given a higher rank, but now I think that was a mistake. We are after all talking about one of the least creative corporate computing cultures in existence here.
I agree, I can't believe MS is going live with this now, it's completely useless for any real searches. Maybe one out of 5 is good. But it is very consistent. IE 1, 2, and 3 were the worst major browsers out there. then they got it right, and 4 was the best available. They've done that with almost every area they've entered from scratch, it's their formula, put out anything for version 1, then wait for the MS backed inertia to start building market share, improve product each version, until it finally actually works. Crush opposition by making it cheaper or free. Cut into profit centers of competition, as dvduval very astutely pointed out the msn beta serps are already designed to do.
MS is nothing if not predictable. Here I was thinking that they would actually try to put out a good product for the first release, they've never done that, why start now?
However, that little bird has only about 36 hours to be right by my count, still no sign of beta results for me.
if they rush this product out and it sucks, they are such idiots. talk about a waste of promotions and publicity. people we'll see this crap and go right back to google.
that's how I was thinking about it too. But then I realized, no, that's not what's going to happen. What will happen is that the current userbase of msn, the ones too clueless to use a non msn product, the ones that stuck with the browser defaults their machine came with, will keep doing that. As long as the results are halfway useable they will suffer very little marketshare loss.
But they'll do live testing, and start building the next version, or tweaking this one. Maybe by next year MSN will be putting out results good enough to start attracting new users. Or maybe even by this summer if it's designed for flexible tweaking. They have patience, this doesn't need to take off now, it just needs to be barely good enough to let them start working on it with real user data.
Then, if Google keeps messing up, in 6 months msn can start advertizing, like, hey, new sites listed. no directory pages [ok, that's optimistic :-)] etc. I see the commercial like this: ms type fantasy girl is at computer, turns to boyfriend, says, hey, how come I cna't find the new website for that movie when I search for that new movie. Boyfriend turns to her and says, oh, well, you know, google doesn't have new websites. Didn't you know that? Try MSN, it has all the new stuff.
They are really only competing against themselves at this moment, or rather against their old yahoo results, which are ok, but not the greatest. MSN will definitely totally kick the yahoo results in the butt when it comes to freshness, and percent of site pages indexed, although google still leads there, but I don't think they'll lead that for long unless they get their systems working, upgraded, or whatever they need to do, asap.
Also noticed they don't seem to use any sort of stemming which is one of the reasons Google is so far ahead of everyone else.
I think they still have a very long way to go. However, I'll wait until they roll out the real deal. I just hope this isn't "it"! :(
Who knows what MS has in store for the search functionality of the near future but I'd bet that integration with the OS will seal the deal with MSN being the benefactor.
We are not 'normal' members of the public, anyone who is and finds they have a little box in their office document that gives them decent results (and I mean once the have ironed out the problems) for information that they need immediately is going to click that rather than open a browser and then type it in.
Imagine this....
Person is typing sentence 'The turnover of Blah Industries for 1999 was' and needs the figure, what do they do? If there is a button that answers their need for information then they will use it. I know that getting suggesting the correct document isn't easy but the general public are fairly useless at forming search phrases so why couldn't an automated system build a query similar in quality to the average user?
Some testing the rest of this month, two or three more major algorithmic changes, more complete indexing of quality larger sites, an addition of some sense of niche authority, kicking the blog spam and domain name addiction... and this could be a great engine in two to four months.
Hopefully something like that is what will happen, not some crazy premature birth.
Here's a demo or the world's worst search engine ever:
[csnetserver.com...]
I have left "beta." in the beta search URLs in case MSN wakes up and realizes how bad theirs SERPs are, and restores their old (read usable) search to their main MSN home page.
None of the sites above are commercial, they are just historical authority sites in a "pop culture" sort of way. lol
Regardless, I like it! At least from a site placement perspective and increase in revenue! ;-)
Without any quality alternative MSN will clean up with this search engine.
Users will not be going to MSN and saying "Oh i cant find what i want, i will try google" more likely they will be saying " MSNs better than it was, no point trying google because it only brings up directory, old out of date sites anyway"
Couldn't agree more. They need a couple more algo tweaks on this thing before making it live permanently.
Making it intermittently live is a good way to get more feedback, but I think it needs a little more work before making it permanently live.
Good to see them working on it though. Death to Google. :-)
