Some new ways to search.

[msndude]

It has been a while since we have been on the forum so I figured we would indulge in some shameless self promotion!

First off, we released a new set of operators for searching. There are many blogs that do a good job of explaining these new operatos.

The goal of these operators is to allow you to find Web feeds (RSS or Atom) and also allow you to find pages on a site more easily (advanced site: operator).

Second, we released start.com. The best way I have heard it described is "MSN Discovering WhiteSpace". Search, aggregate content and all without advertisements!

Enjoy and please send us feedback on these new things and what else you would like to see.

- msndude (msd)

[edited by: Receptional at 7:06 am (utc) on Sep. 6, 2005]
[edit reason] Please avoid links to third party sites unless central to the issue at hand [/edit]

[RichTC]

Would be pleased if you could improve msn search and your search crawl bot technology and your customer service relating to the new msn search before you branch out further elsewhere.

In the UK i have asked for feedback on one of the sites we work on 5 times now without even a reply!, your search bot does not index the site correctly nor does it cashe the pages correctly.

Your search facility in general requires attention yet on the face of it no action is being taken or if you are you are, you not telling us about it.

Jack of all trades etc comes to mind currently.

[Uber_SEO]

Yep - I'd have to agree with RichTC. Maybe you could focus your efforts on improving your search technology first.

[gpmgroup]

feed:widgets and hasfeed:widgets are neat :)

site:.com
site:.info
site:.edu
etc.

Would be really great too :)

[gomer]

Yes, focus on improving search and actually listening to spam reports.

[rehabguy]

Well msndude -

Posting to this forum is kind of like being President of the USA - you can expect a lot of unneccessary criticism no matter what you do!

I appreciate the fact that MSN indexes my new pages MUCH FASTER than Google or Yahoo, and that MSN sends me a lot of steady organic referrals while Google is busy doing it's stupid "dancing" tricks.

I just hope MSN levels the playing field with Google / Yahoo soon so there is more competition and less monopolistic behavior from particularily Google.

By the way, the programming behind start.com looks really cool - I like the AJAX style features - it has promise!

Thanks for taking the time to post on this forum. SE reps are always appreciated (by some of us!)

[Jon_King]

>>unneccessary criticism

We yield to your definition of unnecessary rehabguy. I guess saying your misspelling of unneccessary would be unnecessary criticism.

Back to topic, I like the changes and will give proper give feedback Msndude.

[gomer]

unnecessary criticism

It was msndude that asked:

what else you would like to see

[walkman]

>> and what else you would like to see

no offense, and I know MNS Search is still new, but your results are a joke. Right now you are rewarding spam /link techniques that Google caught 2 years ago.

[Essex_boy]

MSn seems to be the most stable of all teh engines I use, while Spam is a problem Im sure theyll grab it in teh end.

I hope and prey they dont do a google.

[Garya]

How about actually having a search that works, there are dozens of search engines out there that work much better and are more consistant.
My site changes every week from #1 to #5 then to 10 back to 1 then #5.
Most of the sites are not relevant to the search. I have a few serach engines on some of my sites and they work alot better. Whats up, you should go back to using yahoo results to you fix all the problems with MSN. If you like I can set you up with a search engine for about $50.

[SeK612]

As far as I'm concerned MSN search surpasses Google for search results, overlooking the spam like pages which seem to benefit from Google's current system.

With this in mind my suggestion would be to focus on getting a better share of internet searchers :)

[CygnusX1]

I haven't seen the MSNdude reply to any of the messages. I'm guessing he doesn't check in here very often.

[RailMan]

i don't the criticism of MSN search / spidering is justified - their search engine is a lot newer than google, but IMO, it's better than google with less spam and greater relevancy
googlebot hammers my servers day after day - thousands of unnecessary hits every day - msnbot spiders everything without the unnecessary hits

start.com ......... ummmm .......... poor layout, start box overlapping search box, headlines wrapping and text can't be resized, engadget (no idea what the intention is with this) .........
looks like nothing new, nothing that isn't already available on prettier looking sites with better layout
great domain name ........ just kinda wasted with this .....

[mrowton]

Second, we released start.com

Doesn't work in Opera.

Using Internet Explorer I clicked on the "why preview" link and couldn't figure out how to get back to the home page. The small "X" wasn't very intuitive for me.

[linkjack]

don't file spam reports. it's a shot on your own foot.

[stinkfoot]

>>>Would be pleased if you could improve msn search crawl bot technology

Relative to what exactly? These guys do my 11 static sites perfectly .. where as some idiot robot with a big name starting with G cant be bothered and is poking around with www and non www same urls on same servers ...

Well done MSN imo .. technology is great if it works and these guys stuff works!

[Clark]

I do like your new search. Clean and good results...

Hey, while I have you here, your boss said he is going to kill google. You probably heard about that. I propose he starts by releasing an adsense type system ASAP and offer publishers 90% of the revenue. That'll be your best shot before they find other revenue streams.

As for Start.com, that used to be a directory I think. I had a great link from them years ago. Thanks for buying the site and killing the link ;) j/k. Nice to see someone from the dark side visiting us. j/k again. Now Google is the dark side and you're the good guys. (j/k googleguy)

[steveb]

Deuce of all trades.

"new ways to search" that search through a dung heap don't interest many people.

MSN search should never have been released to the public. It's an embarrassment, and unfortunately the worts embarrassment seems to be the lack of desperation in fixing the pathetic engine. (I suppose since the public has rejected it they may just be giving up at getting better.)

I'd like MSN to get their act together and actually release a useful search engine, but that seems to not be a priority there, and it seems the heads in charge have just about the worst conceptual thinking possible about search engines.

[joeduck]

Given the tone of many notes I don't blame MSNdude for not posting much here though I hope he'll reconsider. I'm impressed with the start feature which ran *extremely* fast for my few test searches and gave excellent results.

The notion that MSN and Google are far apart in relevance is not defensible in an objective fashion.

I'm surprised to hear so many experienced people berate MSN search. Are you just ranting or in a niche where Google has escaped it's scraper problems or?

[Receptional]

MSN's reply has been split off onto a new thread at [webmasterworld.com...]

This thread is supposed to be about MSN's new Betas - hopefully the new thread can be about improving search.

Dixon.