I never ever had a start page before until today when I made the new MSN Search (http://search.msn.com) my start page. I did this for two reasons, 1st when I open IE I visit a site from my favourites or I do a search. I did the searches with the Google Toolbar before. 2nd reason is that I am so fed up with Google search about totally irrelevant bad results and IE crashes because of problems with the Google Toolbar ActiveX component that I am switching my searches to MSN now. I wrote just a few weeks ago how much it annoyed me that the first 3 pages of Google were dialer spam when I was looking for info on my civil law homework, while MSN had at least 10 great results helping me on the first 3 pages. Today the same happened again on a totally other topic. My girlfriend and I celebrate 1 year today and I want to go to an Egyptian restaurant with her so I looked for Egyptian restaurants in my city. Google returned some crappy travel sites that don't list what I am looking for. MSNs 1st result is an Egyptian restaurant in my city even with a menu on their page (that #1 result from MSN isn't even listed on Google). There are 3 other restaurants homepages in the result of MSN and also a list of Egyptian restaurants listing these 4 and others in the Top 10 results. All these pages can't be found with Google on the first 10 pages and I doubt that anyone would look much deeper into the SE results. So if you haven't used MSN until today because you thought it sucks and comes from M$ then try it out next time you look for something and aren't happy with Google results. I don't mind if you prefer Google and don't like MSN because of M$ but I just thought I'd share my opinion with ya guys
I agree that there are many times when MSN returns MUCH more helpful results than Google. One of the most frustrating issues I run into when doing research / searching for real results (ie reasturaunt etc) is that Google gives me result after result of over optimized pages (adsense farms) some of our brother/sister SEOers have developed. I am jealous You adsense guys must be making pretty good money by now I am loath to click through an adsense ad though since I haven't gotten around to figuring it out for myself See how bitter I am - hah
AzAkers, What we are seeing is a diminishing of organic results. Now you get adsense ads via adsense publishers in the top 10 and you get adsense ads above and to the right! This could be the downfall of google by trying to overpopulate the results with adsense even if it is by proxy...........
Agreed I joke with my 'adsense farming' buddies that they are killing the relevancy of search, but frankly...they are. I'm sure Google can re-tool and survive, I have no doubts about the innovation and fluidity of the folks at Google - sooner or later they will develop a new venue/channel for advertisers to flood, and it will likely relieve some of the effects. BUT - The question is - will that be before or after the general public has started to develop a taste for other search engines. MSN would do well to start campaigning as the RELEVANT search engine returning REAL meaningful results. We all know that a campaign doesn't have to prove itself or follow through on its promises , just convince some and they will convince some, and they will convince some...and eventually you have a search engine commander & chief Google once the unapproachable giant has positioned itself as a formidable opponent. Quite a drop - opening the door for competition - Just my 2bits -
Why didn't you just swap browsers. I.E. + MSN homepage... Bad! Supoprt the FireFox open source spirit!
MSN doesnt store too much junk in their index unlike google. As I believe now, Google Sucks. In other words, MSN is coming strongly over Google!
Try MSN Search in Google and you'll see that the top Adword's ad is an MSN ad. I also see MSN Adsense ads in the MSN forum here at DP. Their theme is "It's More Precise and More Powerful Find Just What You're After" I also noticed some marketing efforts on the msn homepage recently touting their search engine with this same message.
I don't like FireFox... the update mechanism isn't working and the browser crashes extremely often when I open 20+ HQ pics on a page. That never happened to me on IE. And concerning security, IE has its holes but FireFox does as well.... just think about the recent JavaScript readmemory exploit in Mozilla/FireFox. The only thing I like about FireFox is the tabbed browsing but we'll see that in IE 7 as well. And the pop-up blocker that's integrated to IE is much better than the FireFox one in my opinion. Anyway that's off-topic actually I am really surprised about the feedback to this thread. I thought people would kick my butt for saying such bad stuff about Google but it seems I am not that wrong at all. I wonder what the feedback would have been when I made this thread before the "new" MSN
Personally, I am no fan of M$. But I believe the MSN search engine returns the most relevant results. Today, I even encouraged one of my clients to forsake GG and use MSN. Do I say this because 16 out of 26 keywords I'm tracking on MSN are in the top 10 results and only 5 of the same phrases are in the top 100 on GG? Yeah probably.. On the other hand, old habits are really hard to break and I still find myself using GG most of the time
With some of my keywords I'm at the Top 10 for Yahoo and MSN. As for Google, only my home page is indexed. I think I'm on the 3rd page when I search for my own website on Google.