|
|
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
Search Engine Optimization Strategies Guaranteed to Skyrocket your Rankings
The point of optimizing your website is so that you will get ranked higher in the search engines and receive more visitors to your site. As a result, you will increase sales and revenue. Consider the following tips so that you will be able to optimize your site and be returned as a higher result in the search engines.
High Google Rankings: Frequency vs. Positioning
There's an assumption that the higher a ranking or positioning you have with major search engines; the more people will beat a path to your web doorstep. But based on my experience, that's simply not true! There's another factor that is just as important and may actually drive more traffic to your site.
SEO Trade Secrets - 8 Great Tools for Search Engine Optimization
About 80% of website traffic comes through search engines. And research shows, if you're not on the first 2 pages, most people won't find you.
Search Engines from a Webmaster Perspective
By now, virtually every webmaster has heard or read that the major search engines are responsible for 80% or more of the traffic received by most web sites and that most searchers never look beyond the first 20 - 50 search results. Not surprisingly, an entire industry devoted to search engine ranking and search engine optimization (SEO) has sprung up to capitalize on these well known facts.
Easy Steps to Get Onto Google Top Search Pages
To get on Google's top pages can be accomplished by following a few simple steps. The following procedure works well for companies working within a local region i.e. Lowell Pizza, or business with unique keyword phrases, i.e. Kraton thermoplastic rubber. The steps below outline a simple method to do content optimization. By following the procedure on your home page, you can achieve a high Google ranking. I will be assuming you have a basic understanding of html code.
Non-Reciprocal Link Building For Higher Search Engine Positioning
Non-Reciprocal Link Building For Higher Search Engine Positioning By Dave Davies, Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, Inc.
Get More Cosmetic Surgery Patients From The Web
It's no surprise that dominant cosmetic surgery practices also have a dominant web site and presence. More than ever, cosmetic surgery patients utilize the Internet to help select a credible surgeon. If you want more quality leads and patients, it's time to upgrade your web site marketing efforts.
Without Conversion Rates You Don’t Know If You’re Mickey Mouse Or Mickey Mantle
I couldn’t agree more with the headline of this article and it’s one I’m afraid I can’t take credit for. I found this line in Paco Underhill’s book, Why We Buy – The Science Of Shopping, and found myself comparing many of the things he has measured in the retail world to the tests I’ve done with online, visitor-based activity. The conversion rate on a website is easy to measure. Unfortunately, businesses too busy concentrating on their bottom line most often overlook it. The point of this article is to define what a conversion rate is and show you how you can begin to start improving your own website’s conversion rate and therefore your bottom line. At the same time, I will relate my observations to Paco’s on offline retailing.
Opinion ? Search Engine Success
This article is actually the summary to a book soon to be released by the author, titled "Guaranteed Website Success". Opinions are quite often controversial. Such is the nature of this one.
The Search Doesnt End at Your Homepage
In a recent report for a new client, I wrote:
Alert Marketing - Get Google Search Results By E-mail
Sometimes our jobs as marketers means we need to look beyond the obvious. Google, for example, offers their Google Alerts service. At first glance, this may seem most useful to companies who want to track certain searches within their industry, or to hobbyists who want to stay on top of changes in their topics of interest.
What Did We Learn from the Great Search Engine Experiment!
Last Week I did a Search engine Experiment. I wanted to see if I could brand myself as the coolest guy in the universe. I created a web page that said Mike Makler is the coolest Guy in the Universe. In that Web Page I repeated that Phrase over and over. In less then 24 Hours I was Number 1 in Yahoo for the Phrase coolest Guy in the Universe in Double Quotes. A Few hours later I was no where to be found in Yahoo.
Expert Help From Google Answers
Web users turn to search engines for answers to their questions. This is usually done through various levels of searching the engine's database. Sometimes though, no matter how hard they try, searchers can't find the information they need. Maybe they're not familiar with how to narrow and focus searches, or they may not have enough background in the subject they're researching to recognize the answer they need. Google Answers offers a solution.
What Is Search Engine Marketing?
It's in our genes, we're driven to seek. We 'hunt' for food, homes, partners, jobs and lately ? with the advent of the Internet ? information.
Black Hat SEO and the Sneaky Redirect
Are shades of grey SEO really Black Hat SEO?
Search Engine Spiders Lost Without Guidance - Post This Sign!
The robots.txt file is an exclusion standard required by all web crawlers/robots to tell them what files and directories that you want them to stay OUT of on your site. Not all crawlers/bots follow the exclusion standard and will continue crawling your site anyway. I like to call them "Bad Bots" or trespassers. We block them by IP exclusion which is another story entirely.
Do-It-Yourself Keyword Optimization
The first step in a search engine optimization campaign is to choose your keywords or keyphrases for each of your web pages. Keywords are the terms that search engine users type in the search box to conduct a query. The right keywords are those that:
Searching The Internet Without Search Engines
The World Wide Web contains more than ten million websites with thousands more being added daily from all over the world, and search engines are tasked with presenting the most relevant pages based on the search criteria entered. Finding a large and popular site like www.irs.gov is easy because it is related to a large agency, but a small site like mine www.consumermortgagereduction.com would be impossible without the use of search engines. The task of finding a website that relates to a specific subject would be almost without the use of the search engine, yet they perform this task with relative ease using tools that may be unknown to most users of search engines.
Internet Marketing and SEO
Have you ever seen any email offers of getting you to the top of search engines guaranteeing top rankings. Like anything in life there is no quick result without hard work. When it comes to designing a website it is the proper foundation principle. Like any great structure you need the foundation built for search engines.
Keyword Optimization - How To Achieve It
The most important thing you can do for your business and your website is develop relevant keywords that are not too competitive yet generate targeted traffic to your website.