New Msn Search Engine: How Good Is It?
|
If you have an online business or you just use Internet as one of your marketing tools, you know that how important are the search engines in your quest to get more targeted visitors to your website. The changes in search engine field can have unexpected outcome for your online endeavors. That's why it is important to be well-informed on impending progress in this sphere.
Microsoft has recently come out with the latest beta version of its much touted search engine. Supported by 5 billion indexed pages, it is poised to become one of the most powerful search engines in the market. Right now MSN is using Yahoo provided search results for queries done through its search page, which it's planning to change somewhere in early next year with its own. You can check out the search engine at http://beta.search.msn.com .
Google's immense success and profitable business model enticed Microsoft and others to look into lucrative search engine market seriously. Amazon, for example, has recently launched its web search site A9.com. Today, Google carries out almost 50 percent of all searches on the Internet. Yahoo with 24 percent of the market share is trailing in a distant second place. MSN with 14 percent lags far behind from the competitors ? a situation, which won't be very easy to change.
However, Microsoft has a long history of copying booming products; make their replicas some times, arguably, better then the originals, and clinch larger portion of the market shares. Microsoft has successfully done this to Borland's dominance of programming languages in the early days. The list of victims continued with once utterly popular word processor ?WordPerfect, market dominant spreadsheet ? Lotus 1-2-3, Novell's Netware and finally Netscape. Since 90 percents of all personal computers run on Windows, Microsoft gets an extra edge against its competitors, which it's capable of exploiting very effectively.
What is new in MSN search?
This version of MSN search incorporated several interesting features, which other search engines are lacking at this moment.
Direct answers to plain language factual searches
Unlike Google or Yahoo, Askjeeves has better ability to find answers to direct plain language searches. MSN search has taken this one step further by adding Microsoft's Encarta reference tools to its features. Ask, what is the capital of Russia? You will get the right answer at the beginning of the result page. Questions like "What is the size of a Blue whale?" also brings in exact answer. No doubt, students will love this feature as it makes a lot easier for them to get specific answers to the questions related to facts and figures.
Near me
Microsoft's new search engine includes a ''near me'' button that helps users find websites for a given location. In this release, this works only in United States.
Once you press this button MSN search figures out where are you located using your computer's IP address. However, this can be easily superseded by changing setting preferences. This is important if you are located in New York and looking for something near Boston.
Search Builder
In other search engines, if you would like to customize your search you have to use advance search options from a separate page. MSN search has made it a lot easier for average users by adding the ability of customization right on the search box.
Once you click on the Search Builder from the link right underneath of the search box a drop down menu will open. Initially, the menu might look a little confusing; with little patience you will be able to use available great features easily.
The tool "search terms" allows you to add Boolean search options. Site/ Domain tool is used for limiting a search to specific site or domain, or excluding them from your query. "Links to" tool helps you make your query within the sites linked to a specific site. Country/ region and language options are required to make geography or language specific searches.
The best option from this group of features is the "Result Ranking". This option allows you to refine searches and give you a better control over the search result by using a set of three bars. By sliding the bars up and down you choose whether you want to see more of exact match or approximate match, more popular or less popular, static or dynamic pages as search results. You can generate an impressive range of results for a single query thanks to this option. This could be very useful for some types of searches. For example: if you are looking for news based pages, you might prefer to choose more dynamic pages rather than static ones.
Preference setting
Most notable options on the setting page are "Safe Search" ? ability to filter out sexually explicit images and texts, and ability to fix the number of results displayed from one particular site.
Relevancy
Many reviewers claim that if you compare the search results with Google, MSN search engine "falls short" in relevancy. However, my results showed otherwise.
I ran a search on the phrase "trade leads". The results from both the search engines were very relevant. The only difference in MSN I noticed is our http://trade-leads.rusbiz.com managed to turn up on the first page. But, a search on the word "e-catalog" was brought better ? more relevant ? results on MSN then Google. This time too I was happy to see http://e-catalog.rusbiz.com on the first page of MSN search results.
Conclusion
If you consider all the new features of MSN that Google does not have yet, its ability to cover natural language queries, quality level and relevance of results, ability to refine searches, there is no doubt that MSN search engine is as good as Google.
Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace with solutions to start and run online business.You can contact him at mailto:nowshade[at]rusbiz.com
|
|
|
Building Link Popularity As Easy As 123
The most difficult area of SEO is building link popularity. You may be thinking why? Because there are no easy ways to build link popularity. In this article I will tell you how to get links and how to find them.First thing you must do is find a web site that you would like to trade links with. How do you find them? You can join link exchanges like www.linkexchangeit.com or you can search the search engine with keywords related to your site. Remember RELATED sites only...(related: Seo)
What Are My Chances To Get The First Place In Search Engine Listings?
You must have heard the stories how people became rich and famous with their websites. How could they achieve this? Their websites took a first position in search engine listings targeting popular keywords. Sounds easy, right? Wrong! To be honest, chances for a regular small business website to get to the top of the search engine listings are close to zero and each day they become smaller and smaller as a number of new and old websites grows.Let's exam...(related: Seo)
The Search Engine Showdown
If you're anything like me, you have a favourite search engine and you're loyal to it. You never use any others (which made this research difficult for yours truly), insist yours is the be-all and end-all and you even go so far as to deny any shortcomings it may have. But is your search engine truly the best? Inspired by a great article at the BBC News (BBC News: Search Wars), we decided to compare the major search engines. Here's what we found.We chose the search term "real estate fiji" because it's a competitive industry and geographically specific. We also searched with the same phrase, misspelled to see if the search ...(related: Seo)
Five And A Half Ways To Amp Up Your Search Engine Optimization
Statistics show that 85% of pages visited on the Internet come from people who have gotten there from a search engine. Statistically, people look first at the top of the first page of the regular search results, then the bottom, and then they go to the sponsored listings.There is an art and science to being ranked highly on the search engines. The science is formatting the pages with the right meta tags and submitting them in the right way to the search engines. The art is to make the site look and read normal in spite of filling it with key words.Here are five and a half ways to get a higher ranking and more visitors:1. Pick the...(related: Seo)
Attack Of The Killer Google Zombies!
Don't share this with people of a nervous disposition because I really can't restrain myself any longer.Picture the scene if you will...[A conversation last week though it could be this week or the next - it happens all the time...]Anon: "We want lots of people to find our website but it doesn't seem to be happening for some reason."Michael: "Can you tell me some of the methods you've been using to market your website?"Anon: "Well really we're just waiting for Google to update and then we'll be fine. Once that happens our problems wi...(related: Seo)
Google Vs. Yahoo -- How To Rank High On Each One
Google likes incoming links, especially links from high-ranking, on-topic pages that include keywords in the link text. Google doesn't like over-optimized, high keyword densities and over use of keywords in headings, etc. like they use to.Yahoo, on the other hand, looks at on-page factors more, such as keyword density, keywords in headings, etc. That is where the problem comes in.Of course, they both look at everyting, but keep these two very important points in mind ...(related: Seo)
Adding Content To Your Site Every Day
If you have been a webmaster for more than a week, you've surely heard the saying "Content Is King". And it really is true! This article will explain why the regular addition of fresh content to your website is so crucial and explain several ways to do it easily and inexpensively (even free).Why Adding Fresh Content Regularly Is So ImportantAdding new content to your website on a regular basis is the key to your online success for several reasons:1 - The search engine spiders LOVE to crawl new pages. Their is intense competition in the quest to be considered "the best" overall search engine, and the total quantity of pages in their index is an important bragging right for the winner. Believe me, if you'll invest the time required to add new high-quality informational articles to your website on a regular...(related: Seo)
Good Things Come To Those Who Wait (and Other Analogies And Cliché?s For Seo)
We've all heard that familiar expression, "Good things come to those who wait". Whether you're waiting for your Heinz ketchup to pour out onto your burger (remember those commercials?), waiting for Christmas day to open your gifts, waiting for summer vacation to be let out of school, or waiting in line at the DMV? well, maybe not the DMV, good things will come if you simply allow them to come in their own time.Under normal circumstances that expression is simply not true. You'll still get your ketchup if you s...(related: Seo)
Why Does The Link Page Have A Pr Zero?
For beginners, link exchange campaigns can be a minefield of problems. For example, here is a question I was asked:"Hi Andy, I have noticed that a lot of sites that request a link exchange from me may have a PR 5 or 6 on their home page and when I click through to the links page there is a PR 0. This is very disappointing and I don't exch...(related: Seo)
The Write To Link Popularity
Incorporating writing as a means of boosting your link popularitycan be a turnoff for many webmasters, when in fact it can lead toa wealth of links.I first learnt about link popularity while researching about many different methods that I could use to market a Geocitiessite I had. After emailing countless webmasters and receivingsome dismal results, I realized that it was hopeless to getpeople to exchange l...(related: Seo)
site-map - Copyright © 2006 | You can send your articles and get links. Contact Webmaster | All Rights Reserved.
| Seo