Topic Category: MSN
September 10, 2007
Apply To Try the Microsoft Webmaster Portal
By Scott Goodyear
Have you been using the tools at Google's Webmaster Central site? Microsoft is now beta testing a competitive service called the Microsoft Webmaster Portal. According to their blog post, they'll offer submission, spider, and site map resources to help you with your MSN/Live Search SEO needs.
November 08, 2006
MSDewey.com, LinkBait? Microsoft Stealth Launches Live.com Powered Search Engine
by Scott Goodyear
www.marketposition.com
Bored with normal search? Microsoft has quietly launched a Live.com powered engine called MsDewey.com.This flash based search engine offers a semi-interactive search hostess named MS Dewey who chides, jokes, has an interest in Halo, and more.
October 25, 2006
Create Personalized Search Engines with Live Search Macros
by Richard Drawhorn
Search engines are constantly evolving and adding new features in an effort to lure internet users to their sites. One of the new features offered on Live Search has recently caught my attention: Live Search Macros. This interesting new feature allows you to create personalized searches that focus the results around particular topics of interest to you. In this post, I'll review Live Search Macros and offer some tips on how to create them.
September 26, 2006
Microsoft Live Search No Longer in Beta
by Richard Drawhorn
In a recent entry in their WebLog, Microsoft announced that their new Live Search engine is coming out of beta. For the past several months, Live Search has been tested and improved based on feedback from users, and is now providing results for both MSN and Live.com. In this post, I'll provide an overview of Live Search and some of the features you'll find when using Microsoft's new search engine.
June 27, 2006
New Robot Command For MSN
By Scott Goodyear
Sometimes when checking your rankings do you find that the description of your site is outdated or incorrect? You may wish to check the cached version of your page in order to see if the engine has simply been using an older, cached version of your page. But what if they do have your current page cached?
June 05, 2006
Microsoft Rewards Researchers in the Field of Search
by Richard Drawhorn
In a recent post in MSN Search's WebLog, Microsoft announced the 12 winners of Microsoft Live Labs' "Accelerating Search in Academic Research" Awards. Researchers from countries around the world competed for funding from Microsoft, as well as access to data from MSN search query logs for use in their research.
May 22, 2006
When Titans Clash: Microsoft's and Google - Live.com Scores Major Coup in Amazon
By Scott Goodyear
Microsoft's Live.com search service scored a major coup this month by obtaining a contract with Amazon.com and it's related properties A9, Alexa, and IMDB (the internet movie database) which previously had contracted for search results through Google. Now when searching on these various sites you will see a Live.com logo but more importantly, this means that MSN could potentially gain 8% or more of the traffic that once poured into Google from Amazon's searchers and it could create a stronger demand for MSN's new adCenter service.
March 27, 2006
MSN Launches "Live.com" Search Engine / Portal Beta
By Scott Goodyear
MSN has launched a beta search service / portal at the address "www.live.com". At first glance, this site appears to offers many of the same features that you would expect from any search portal like the ability to set weather reports, preview/read the service's proprietary email (hotmail), view news feeds, the ability to set RSS feeds from blogs, etc. What really sells this search service, however, is the user interface and the interface's customizability.
May 15, 2005
Using MSN's RSS Search Results
MSN Search has made syndicated RSS search results available for any search term you enter. This can be a valuable tool to monitor your keyword positions as well as your competition on MSN.
March 15, 2005
Search Engine Strategies New York 2005 Update
We normally don't talk about SES shows in MarketPosition, but the most recent SES conference in New York provided us with some insights that we believe are significant enough that they should be passed along.
February 15, 2005
MSN Search Goes Live
On February 1, 2005 Microsoft officially launched MSN Search using its own proprietary index.
July 15, 2004
Get a sneak preview of Microsoft's highly anticipated MSNBot!
By Brent Winters
You may have read the rumors and scattered bits of news over the past year that Microsoft is building its own organic, or algorithmic, search engine to replace its current service based on Yahoo's Inktomi-technology.
December 15, 2003
Microsoft to Ban Pop Ups
If your business depends upon sales from pop up ad advertising, now may be the time to start looking for alternative marketing strategies. Microsoft has announced plans to build pop up ad blocking software into Internet Explorer next year. While ad blocking has been available for years in a variety of paid and free products, Microsoft's move will bring the ad blocking technology to the masses.
October 15, 2003
MSN Canceling LookSmart Contract
In what LookSmart critics may see as poetic justice, LookSmart's stock fell 50% October 7th, 2003. This did not follow the proposed lawsuit settlement. Instead, it came after an announcement that MSN would not be renewing their contract with LookSmart after January 15, 2004. MSN currently carries LookSmart's listings and accounts for a hefty 65% of its revenues. MSN also serves results from Inktomi, now owned by Yahoo.
August 15, 2003
MSN Developing Its Own Spider
Microsoft, seeing the growing power of Google and Yahoo!, has finally decided to develop its own engine. For years Microsoft has operated its MSN search engine by combining search results from third party players such as Overture, LookSmart and Inktomi.
April 15, 2001
Exclusive Interview with a Lead MSN Program Manager
As many of you may know, Fredrick Marckini is the founder and CEO of iProspect.com, one of the country's leading search engine positioning companies and an occasional contributor to the MarketPosition Newsletter. He was generous enough to provide us with notes from an exclusive interview with MSN. He was also granted interviews with senior executives and engineers at other major search engines and directories, which he promises to provide to MarketPosition exclusively in the coming months.
March 15, 2000
MSN Keyword
MSN now allows you to bid on a spotlight section, to the left of their regular search results. Your text ad can appear in this left hand box for any keywords you bid on and successfully win at their auction site. This is a way to auction off an advertising spot to the highest bidder and is nothing like the pay-per-placement method that Goto.com uses for its main content. I'd recommend bidding up to whatever price you believe would still allow you to be profitable.
May 15, 1999
Achieving Top Rankings on MSN
MSN, owned by Microsoft, has recently become a popular search engine. Currently MSN search results are based on Inktomi's database (i.e., HotBot). News reports of a few months ago said they were planning to switch to a variation of AltaVista's database in the future although to date, nothing appears to have changed.
