Still awaiting Microsoft's search entry

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Re: Hail, an intelligent person!

Back to the REAL story: I have yet to try MSN's new search ... almost always go to Google by habit. That is going to change at least somewhat.

Maybe in the future. Remember, this site still is beta. Google still is the master.


The last few times I've search for items in Google, I've not received - or had to dig DEEP for - the proper results (unsponsored) ... even tried in different ways.

Google actually is a very powerful search tool if you know the ins and outs. Have you tried using the intitle: keyword? It's just one of several to refine search results. If you're looking for teapots and search on intitle:teapots the results will be much better than than if you search on 'teapots' alone. I don't see this functionality at the MS site yet.

Also MS's Boolean search is kinda limited. It offers a drop down box with any/all/none operators but you can only choose one. In fact, as I think about it I'd have to say it's only Boolean-like. You can search on 'teapot' and you can search on 'not tempest' but you can't search on 'teapot and not tempest.' You can do that at Google.


However, they've almost always had something in their sponsored results. Interesting that I can get a lot of garbage in stuff that wasn't paying them, yet they knew what to put up in their sponsored results?

Has anyone else noticed the same?

Yeah! The sponsors! MS pretty much copied wholesale the look and feel of Google. (Sorry Bit Byte, even BG thinks copying is OK.) But that alone won't cut it for them. MS will really have to do the sponsored results thing well if it wants to knock off Google. The sponsors don't care about (and don't pay for) impressions. They pay for clicks and the site that serves up the most relevant sponsored links is going to make the money.

My opinion is that it's nice for a look-see, but for the time being I'm still going to use Google. Google still does a much better job giving its users the tools to make really powerful searches. That's not a dig on MS, MS is just getting its feet wet.

In fact, I'd say MS has come a long way from just a few months ago when I searched on 'Linux' at MSN Search and came up with a paltry 4,000 hits. Yeah, right. I hope they're done playing those foolish games. They better be if they want to play with the big boys.


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Posted by: none none   Posted on: 11/11/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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