New study argues that MSN Search gives the best search results.

By Lars Våge, Internetbrus

Microsoft’s search engine has been prominent in the news lately.

Amazon and Alexa have started using Windows Live Search instead of Google for their web search results. Ask.com’s CEO Steve Berkowitz is to start working with Microsoft. Steve Ballmer is boasting about Microsofts’s gains vis-a-vis Google and Yahoo.

For the time being Microsoft Search is far behind Google as regards users, but that might change. Christopher Payne, who is responsible for Windows Live Search, says to Associated Press that “I think we’ll look back on this as the DOS era of search.” Hm.

We are familiar with Microsoft using big words. Therefore it is interesting to read a new report on search engine result relevance. The report is produced by Intralink, a search engine optimization and web marketing consultancy firm in Cincinnati.

The findings and the methodology used are found at Seoresourcecenter.com. Intralink has covered Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, Ask.com, AOL Search, Gigablast and Wisenut but not the French search engine Exalead.

Intralink has checked on five criteria or variables, namely: “relevancy”, “freshness of content”, “failure rate”, “difficult search results” and “non-organic or extra features”.

Surprisingly the top score is given to MSN Search, ahead of Google (although not with a large margin). When it comes to “relevancy” Google is behind both MSN Search and Yahoo!

On the other hand, Google is the leader concerning “Freshness of content”, where both Yahoo! and Ask.com are performing surprisingly badly.

Does this mean that MSN really is better than Google? It is hard to say, as the margins of error are large. However, what the report may indicate, is that MSN is catching up quality-wise, which is important, as it was quality and relevance of search results that made Google the dominant player on the search engine arena.

This article was originally published in Internetbrus, a Swedish blog on search engines and Internet searching that has been online since early 2001. It is written for both searchers and educators.