MSN Search Down Starting At 11:35AM EST Time

Today, between 11:35AM eastern time and about 3:00 PM eastern time, MSN Search was down. Going to http://search.msn.com/ brought back the following message;

This service is currently unavailable

Our team is working to restore service as quickly as possible. Please try your request again later.

At this time, MSN Search seems pretty stable right now. The Wall Street Journal reported;

A Microsoft spokesman said the outage began at about 8 a.m. Pacific time. At noon, the service was still down, but shortly afterward began working again.

The spokesman said company technicians have been working on the problem, but have not yet concluded what caused the shutdown in the first place.

Of course the forums are buzzing about MSN Search being down. Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, Search Engine Watch Forums, and Search Engine Roundtable Forums.