MSN Search in and out of Beta?

**Tyson Pearcey** · 19-01-05

Not sure if you good Mods want to move this to Search Strategies but thought I'd post this here first.

Looks like the roumor mill is moving again on MSN. I have had confirmation from a number of Aff's now that their traffic has been increased from MSN over that past two days which leads me to believe that there is validity to these reports. Any additional feed back would be appreciated.

Now there is a bit of this fellows own future speculation on MSN paid search (which is a therory I do follow) here but the main point to read is that MSN may infact be switching in and out of Beta to live.

Report found http://www.traffick.com

Monday, January 17, 2005

Outta Beta
Different rumours and pre-announcements are leaking onto various forums. And news reports speak of a "growing proportion" of MSN Search users being defaulted to the beta of the "new MSN Search," which many of us enthusiasts have been using for awhile now.

Sources inside the company confirm that the full switchover will take place tomorrow, with "90-95%" of users soon being taken to the new search, with 100% not long off.

Unsurprisingly, word has it that Microsoft has tested various configurations with a view to revenue maximization. But more importantly, it's fairly obvious (according to observers who have looked at things like job postings) that Microsoft's pay-per-click results, currently served by Overture, will simply be taken in-house.

But what might happen in the interim? I'd guess that Microsoft will keep the page relatively uncluttered this year and even deliberately take a hit on revenues from PPC, since a big share of those revenues would be going to competitor Yahoo, which owns Overture. Indeed, I'd expect Microsoft to keep a pretty clean search results page for some time to come in a bid to grab market share from chief rivals Google and Yahoo.

Posted Originally by Andrew Goodman

**dungdee** · 19-01-05

I would recommend you to back up once a week/month, better to be safe than sorry

**Tyson Pearcey** · 19-01-05

Hi dungdee,

I think you may have posted in the wrong thread here.

BTW looks like its more the us than the uk results at present.

**drivetowin** · 19-01-05

Not sure what's happening but I'm getting lots of traffic from MSN at the moment for three of my sites

Luvly jubbly

**purple** · 19-01-05

msn traffic has come at the right time, with google ignoring a lot of my sites, but MSN liking us.

**darrenw** · 19-01-05

I'm getting the beta results now on the "regular" search.msn.com - and at the moment I'm "virtually" in Texas, US (not physically, unfortunately, it is via a proxy server).

**stevey** · 19-01-05

Yes, it's nice to have some variety in the SE wars back again, especially when it is easier for us to play

**Paul Wright** · 19-01-05

I still see plenty of rogue geocities.com and various other free pages ranking quite high on some competitive search terms. As the majority of websites using these sort of accounts don't know seo from thier elbow it would be nice if MSN could sort that out

**stevey** · 19-01-05

Let's hope they don't throw the baby out with the bathwater

**harris1** · 20-01-05

Yes I am getting the Beta search from msn.co.uk.

The results dont look great to be honest, they cant be thinking of rolling with this ? There are virtually no authorative sites and several basic directory sites appear to be ranking in the top places across a number of the major categories.

The relevance is exceptionally poor on a number of searches. They will loose market share if they go with this it dosnt seem anywhere near ready.

**EyeOfTheTiger** · 20-01-05

Hi,

This is very interesting indeed. From my initial observations (yes I have droped quite a bit of traffic from MSN) it seems as though msn.co.uk is pulling through part relevant off topic searches. I.e. search for motorolla and the first site up is about nokia phones ?!? Relevant I guess but a little of the mark. I too am also experiencing a great deal of geocities and foreign search results feeding through mainly sweden and norway sites searching on msn.com. It will be interesting to see how this pans out over the next few hours/days/weeks.

Keeps us on our toes I spose. Lets just hope the google gods take a shine in MSN's recent dislike for my sites

Tiger

**harris1** · 20-01-05

Another good one :

http://search.msn.co.uk/results.aspx...loan&FORM=QBRE

Two listings from the same site in the top three. A further two sites in the top 10 for the search "Cheap Loan" are mainly related to cars new and used and hardly any loans content at all (If any in fact).

My wife commented that she tried to use MSN.co.uk today and it produced "A load of rubbish".

On this occasion I would have to agree with her.

**Tyson Pearcey** · 24-01-05

The results are still fading in and out and as some of the others have commented there does appear to be a heavy favouring some very odd sites.

User experience on a number of search terms I've explored to date is of poor quality.

Still missing little ad-values such as having the functionality of an alternative to miss spelt words. I believe we'll need to watch MSN over the next few weeks for some big improvements to their search.