As a good corporate citizen I began trying MSN Search several months ago with the initial release. At first it was pretty painful. I would search on MSN, not find what I wanted, then switch over to Google. Recently, however, I have found that I almost never resort to using Google. MSN Search is finding what I'm looking for. In fact, I have noticed several instances of MSN Search being better than Google. First, MSN seems to have more current results than Google. Several times lately I have searched for something current and found results on MSN when Google still has none. A recent example was my last post. This showed up on MSN just hours after I posted it. Google took until the next day. Second, MSN is sometimes giving the more relevant links first. Let's go back to my last post. If you search for "Some Perspective On Vista" on Google, my blog will be the 4th link. The first 3 are pages that link to my blog. On MSN Search, my blog entry is first, followed by all of the pages that quote it. In my mind at least, the original source should always be ranked above something quoting it.
Update 10/19/05 - Sigh. Google is indexing this article now but MSN Search is not. For what it's worth, Yahoo doesn't have it yet either.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that the original should always be ranked above something quoting it.
For example on a theoretical seach of "The World is flat" I would not want the original writer from the 18th century's writings; but a person quoting it, talking about how this fact is wrong, the history behind the quote etc.
Or a more political example If I searched for "Weapons of mass destruction are in iraq", I would not want your presidents factually wrong statement, but a link perhaps to the CIA correcting this statement, or a brief history of the conflict so far, the context the quote was in in history etc.
Oh, and MSN search is still not very good. Why is the search box so small, when it's the only purpose of the page.
Hell, if you removed everything BUT the search box and go button it would still be functional. So why's it so small?
Also, it still can't pick up some of the weirder spellings of words I misspell; google can.