MSN and Yahoo! make some changes to their search engine sites

MSN now lets you test drive its new search engine. At the same time both MSN and Yahoo! present more user friendly versions of their search sites and search engine result pages.

Test the new MSN search engine

(July 2 2004) Imitate, don't innovate! Microsoft is the master of imitation, and there is nothing wrong in that. The company has proved again and again that it is able to take the ideas of others and turn them into their own.

Now MSN is working hard on preparing their Google-killer, the new MSN search engine. Many Web masters have noted visits from the MSN bot, as it is spidering sites, building the new search engine database. There are currently 1 billion pages in the new index.

You may now take this new search engine for a ride, by visiting the MSN Search Technology Preview. They have put up a special form where you can give them your feedback.

If you want to check to what extent your own site is listed, you may use some advanced search terms. "Eytan" at the MSN Search Discussion Forum notes that if you want to restrict your query to a specific domain you can search for -- for instance -- site:microsoft.com windows development.

That will query the index for the words windows development, but will restrict the query to only those hosts on the microsoft.com domain.

You can also map the pages that point to a your pages by entering, for example, link:http://www.pandia.com/.

It should be noted that this is a beta test version, and it may be a little bit moody and slow.

Changes at MSN.com

The regular MSN search site at search.msn.com continues to be powered by the Yahoo! search engine for the time being. However, MSN has made a few changes to this search page that may indicate in what direction they are going.

They now have a very simple and Google-like front page (i.e. a search form and a few links only).

(Interestingly, when using the Opera web browser we get the old search page with links links to directory categories and MSN resources.)

The result pages are also changed. Sponsored text ads are clearly marked as such, and the "Featured Sites" links (more ads) are gone.

As Danny Sullivan reports, MSN has also dropped paid inclusion. Paid inclusion lets webmasters pay to get their pages included in the search engine database and regularly revisited.

Paid inclusion has a bad reputation, as some webmasters suspect that paid inclusion pages get a better ranking. It is apparently this bad PR that has led Microsoft to drop paid inclusion.

However, MSN does use the Yahoo! database at the moment, and you may pay Yahoo! to get included. Given that MSN uses its own algorithm to sort search engine results, we might as well believe them when they say that they will not treat paid inclusion links more favorably.

By the way, the special MSN search page is not the same as their portal home page at www.msn.com. That page includes the regular mix of ads, news and weather forecasts.

New Yahoo!

Yahoo! does not want to be left out, and has launched a new version of its own search page. This one is just as simplistic as the new MSN page. It is dominated by a large search form, and has only a few service category links in the left hand column.

Yahoo! is testing new search engine results pages as well. Use the form at new.search.yahoo.com to access these pages.

They are equally uncluttered and user friendly. We like them. It should be noted, though, that we do not see many text ads in Europe. Some American users are complaining about too many Overture ads above the fold.

Yahoo! is also asking for feedback from users. Use the special "Tell us what you think" page for praise, criticism and constructive suggestions.

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