By Gino Cosme on 2005/02/07
A welcome alternative for innovative search, MSN Search is fast, smooth and very user-friendly. The new search algorithm combines what we've come to expect from a search engine with some innovative technologies, prompted by user demand.
With an index size of 5 billion pages, MSN Search is a good challenger for Google and Yahoo!. While many have argued that the results delivered by MSN Search are different to its adversaries, some have to agree that its relevancy is good.
Since its beta launch in November 2004, Microsoft has improved its engine, fine-tuning it to work harder for its user. The result is a search engine that encompasses a user's individuality when it comes to search.
Giving Consumers the Information They Are Looking For
Microsoft designed its new search engine with its users in mind. Many of the new features are suggestions from users themselves. The beta release of MSN Search included a lot of user feedback, both on the beta search site and MSN Search's official blog.
High priority has been placed on presenting the user with one location where they can find all the information they're looking for. A look at MSN's Sandbox confirms some exciting new developments in store for MSN Search users.
Microsoft, through and through
One look at its impressive interface and you know this is a Microsoft product. The connection between MSN Search and the Microsoft Empire is further confirmed with the engine's use of Microsoft propriety products such as Encarta and MSN Music.
Ask and You Shall Receive
MSN Search has made more than 40,000 Encarta encyclopaedia entries available to its users at no cost. The aim is to supply direct answers to plain language questions.
Leading the pack with this technology since 2003 was Ask Jeeves' Smart Answers, who immediately set themselves apart from the titans with the ability to generate answers to questions, all in plain language.
MSN Search has taken this one step further by adding Encarta to the equation. Ask a question beginning with "define, what, how, who, where, etc." and you are likely to get an answer from Encarta at the beginning of the result page. These are followed by the organic results. This is one of the many ways that MSN hopes to save its users research time.
Search Builder - Now We're Talking
One of my favourite tools on MSN Search is Search Builder. This in-depth feature lets the searcher build "special" search queries using an easy-to-use interface right on the search box.
Instead of having to remember complicated syntaxes for search strings, MSN Search lets users choose what criteria they'd like to limit their search to and automatically adds them to the search string. This is done by giving searchers various check boxes next to the available options.
These options include restricting searches to specific countries or domains, excluding a site or domain from your results, various language options, and adding additional keywords to the search string.
Users can also choose how results are ranked based on the importance of criteria by moving slide bars up and down. These include a site's index age, site popularity (i.e. the amount of links pointing to a site) as well as the exactness of the results compared to the search string.
While other search engines also make most of these features available to their users, it usually takes place on a separate page of advanced search options. MSN Search integrates these advanced features nicely with the search and results interface.
I'll be honest though; at first I found the choices rather confusing. The various options on the left don't prominently stand out and I was left wondering how to use them. However, once I realized that I could click on the left panel of options, searching has never been this easy.
Search Updates through RSS
MSN Search lets users opt to receive search phrase updates using RSS. RSS is a publishing format that syndicates website content to people who "subscribe" to the RSS feed using a RSS reader.
The beauty of this is that users can keep up-to-date on top rankings for regular searched queries without having to manually enter the search query every time.
Useful but Not Unique
Like its competitors, MSN Search includes categories specific for News, Images and yes, your Desktop.
Over 4,000 news sources on the internet form the foundation for MSN Newsbot. They've divided their news content into main sections: Technology, Business, Sport, Entertainment, Science & Health and World News. These get updated on a continuous basis with current news reported online. What's really nice is the main news page combines both local and world news, making it easy to follow breaking news relevant to one's locale.
I found MSN Image search offered better quality pictures than Google but a smaller database. However, neither quite compare to Yahoo! in terms of both quality and quantity. MSN image searches can be filtered by image size and by colour/black & white.
While I'm not a fan of search engine-developed desktop search utilities, MSN Search has built one too. If you're a fan of Google Desktop, then you'll be pleased to know that MSN Desktop Search also integrates nicely with MSN Search, adding an option next to the other search categories (Web/News/Images/Desktop/Encarta).
Enough Tinsel. Does it Work?
One thing is clear from the start - MSN's algorithm is significantly different to that of Google and Yahoo!. While Google devotees might find the results irrelevant to what they've come to expect, I found MSN's results relevant most of the time. I particularly like the way MSN balances the rankings of results based on both local and global sources.
Although MSN Search relies on common rank factors such as link popularity and frequently updated pages, I feel that emphasis is placed on page relevance. On-page copy plays a vital role in this. Rule of thumb is if a site has good content they should do well on MSN - after all, it's the content searchers are looking for, not the inbound links.
MSN Search Wrap up
I think that MSN Search is as good a search engine as Google and Yahoo!, based on the features mentioned above and its eagerness to give users exactly what they want. The combination of speed, relevance, and usability makes MSN Search a worthy challenger that Google (and Yahoo! in particular) should be cautious of.
While Google hold the majority share holding in the search industry, my prediction is that MSN Search, with the aid of the MSN portal, Hotmail and MSN Messenger, will acquire a large base of search users. Their extensive marketing campaign will draw in new users to try Microsoft's new product. And with the eventual unveiling of their own paid search technology replacing Overture, I see MSN Search providing users and search engine watchers with some interesting developments over the next couple of years.
Is it perfect? No. But neither is Google. Does it work? Yes. Give it a chance. You might be pleasantly surprised.
