(7)
Microsoft officially launched their search product on November 11, 2004, almost two years and three months ago. A WebmasterWorld thread asks, "so after two years has MSN finally got it right?"
So far, Webmasters are saying no. Here are some quotes:
I get very little traffic from them because they still can't manage to find the appropriate pages in my site to return.
They haven't got it right! What they should do is to syndicate Googles, Yahoo's and Ask's result and skip trying to compete because they can't.
Every person who worked on this project should be fired ;)
I agree, they still have a long way to go. I am surprised at how far behind Microsoft is, I honestly am.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Dave G
02/05/2007 05:18 pm
To be quite frank, this is one of the worst posts I have seen appear on seroundtable. Normally the content is high quality but this simply isn't... why? The 3 comments from random people that are totally subjective put together no case at all and are very biased. Just because there is less traffic doesn't mean it isn't good traffic. Where are the conversion stats? And if it doesnt pick pages from 'your' website why does that make it bad? What about the pages that take 'your' place, are they not good? I tend to find that MSN produces great results for 90% of my searches. It has certainly got better over the last few months compared to a year or so ago. There is no way you can say if it is better or worse, not even I can, we can only put forward personal opinion. Unless someone comes along with statistics for every industry including comparative conversion rates vs traffic flow etc then there is no way to say if it is better or worse. My personal opinion is that Google is worse than it was a year or so ago, and yes it DOES rank my pages high for my terms, but when I use it as a search engine for other things I tend to find it very hard to find what I want. In short, there is no data or facts in this post, merely some opinions which are going to start a general "opinion" as people jump on the MS bashing bandwagon like usual. I personally don't like MS, but I am happy to say when something is good if it is good rather than being a fanboy to google, ask, yahoo etc. Sorry for my rant :) Just had to get it out as I didn't want the quality to slip on here :) Dave
Barry Schwartz
02/05/2007 05:24 pm
No problem Dave. This honestly was a last resort post. I didn't have much material from today's forums posts, so I used this one. But I personally had very high expectations from Microsoft and they have let me down big time.
Barry Schwartz
02/05/2007 05:29 pm
Oh, and in terms of opinion versus data. You know that this blog covers forum opinion? That is why this blog is different from all the others. We cover opinion. But if you want data, just look at Microsoft's share continue to decline quarter after quarter. It is sad. Search quality, well that is subjective.
Gabs
02/05/2007 05:41 pm
Nothing wrong this the post barry or the comments dave.. Today has been dead on the forums.. Well happy birthday from me to msn live :D I think its far behind but thats not a bad thing always you know ;) If only the traffic was higher..
Gerry Grant
02/06/2007 01:44 am
Microsoft search has been one of the biggest disappointments I have had in twelve years of being involved with search optimization marketing. I talked about them at my search optimization marketing conferences, I had one of the first accounts and I have spent hours with their tech support. Before it was launched I spoke at length with Eric Hadley from Microsoft and Eric assured me it was going too be promoted so well that every living person over 18 in the United States would know about it. Why can’t they do a better job with this? Barry I would like to see more on this.
Craig Lefevre
02/06/2007 08:55 am
I think the post is pretty much on the money, live is still very poor and its obvious to see. I really thought Microsoft would turn it round quicker than they have....
John Colascione
02/06/2007 09:40 pm
i ave to admit that I agree with two out of three of those original comments. (The bottom two) I do not think they have right, they have spent plenty of time trying to get it right, and not only is the traffic not there, but there results are far from even second best. The bottom line is that is that I cannot rely on using MSN search for it it is meant to be used for. I must still use Google. MSN shoudl stick to what they do best. They just are not in a position to tackle the search business and they are wasting their valuable resource onlny to finish last. I wish there was something better to say, but there just isn't.... I'll give them a 10 for "effort". The have lost the war. There is no need to "stay the course".... it's time to move on and revert back to displaying better results.