MSN Search review
I just checked out the (new design?) MSN Search website. My observations below should substantiate any doubt you ever had that Microsoft were serious competition for Google.
I started by searching for this site, first using the search term "coda", then "coda.coza", then "coda.co.za".
The first result when searching for the title of my site, "coda.coza", was the following URL: www.blogwise.com/go.php?uid=1188. How odd. Then, I didn't appear within the first few pages of results when searching for "coda", whereas in Google I'm the 12th result.
So I decided to submit my sites, hoping that would improve their rankings, only to receive this message:
"Please Upgrade Your Browser
...
To view this site you must use: Microsoft® Internet Explorer or Netscape® Navigator 4.0 or higher"
Not only is this message a pile of stinkin' baloney, it's unreadable too (black text on dark blue). And what exactly does it have to do with MSN Advertising, as the page title suggests?
Next. MSN Search contains, above the search box, the a date. When I visited, it reported this date as the 14th. Today is the 15th. Even the expectingly localized UK mirror gets this wrong.
And then I have to wonder, who (what) decided that, for example, the Advanced Search URL should be http://g.msn.com/0SEENUS/44 as apposed to something readable, such as http://msnsearch.com/advanced. Is this a limitation of their system or do they just not care about showcasing it's ability to provide it's users with readable, understandable addresses.
Side-note: this post will probably become obsolete when web searching is made native to the Microsoft OS. But even then one has to wonder whether quality (Google) will win over dominance.
Another side-note: I removed the archive lists (from the bottom of the right-hand column) from my blog pages because Google insisted on indexing the page containing the keyword in those links, rather than that actual archived page itself.
UPDATE: Google on the desktop, by Adam Kalsey
UPDATE: I'm now the 10th result in a Google search for 'coda' - how'd that happen? :)
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5 Comments
Who is the chick with the fat legs and short skirt?
dude.. those legs aint fat, they’re “thick”… reminds me of those drumsticks my good friend the Colonel makes…
…finger lickin’ good!
On a serious note. Google is quality? What rot. For some reason whenever I do a search for anything the first 50 results are always from the same 3 shopping portals and the next 20 from some lame blogger.
Not only that but whatever happened to the clutter free, clean search engine that was google? It’s turning into the Altavista it killed 3 years ago. A quick hint try http://www.wisenut.com
A little better.
What are you searching for Brendan? Or maybe you shouldn’t answer that..
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15 July 2004
tripeak01:37 pm
Historically Microsoft is, and has been proven to be ‘plagiarizers’ in a sense – the term anything you can do I can do better comes to mind. When they released MS Windows XP it was ‘borrowing’ it’s UI from MacOS X … now the same with Google search and Google toolbar. I don’t think they can stand to be ‘second best’.