MSN is prepopulating the search box with "The Apprentice BBC" in UK

[forcer]

Please MSN stop doing this. I really pray that you will raise your market share and we have an alternative to Google but what you are doing now is really really bad. If you loose market share then you absolutely deserve it!

Anyone in UK can confirm by going to msn.com

Anyone knows where to send complains to MSN search engine? Or maybe even a webmaster petition?

[Aragorn]

Nothing like that here in India.

[jabb]

If i go to http://uk.msn.com they populate it with 'Euro 2008 results'. Obviously just using hot topics at the moment, i don't see the big deal, why would you want to complain

[forcer]

The primary function of the search engine is to search for stuff that you are interested in. If I go to MSN.com then in 99.999% cases I don't want to see BBC Apprentice or footbal results. I want to search my own stuff. So I need to click on search box and delete the information in there!! That slows down the whole process.

Now if you look on bigger scale and imagine all the users of MSN together - how much of time they spend on deleting the stuff MSN put there. and how annoyed they will be / or confused?

[forcer]

Why I am complaining so much is that I see what MSN is doing with its search engine, and as Adcenter Advertiser I can see that in a while there will be no point advertising with them because they will just destroy the whole thing with experiments like that.

[ewc21]

I agree that it's annoying but I also think it's a spot on for people who use MSN Live Search. Once they go to that page, most likely they'll look at the search box and type in their search phrase.

I haven't seen it myself but if I do, I hope it's just an optional phrase that disappears once I place my cursor on the text box.

It would be interesting to see how much this costs to advertisers.

[forcer]

Originally Posted by ewc21

I agree that it's annoying but I also think it's a spot on for people who use MSN Live Search. Once they go to that page, most likely they'll look at the search box and type in their search phrase.

I haven't seen it myself but if I do, I hope it's just an optional phrase that disappears once I place my cursor on the text box.

It would be interesting to see how much this costs to advertisers.

Unfortunately, you need to delete a character after character in the search box. It does not clear automatically, when you click.

Yeah, I would be interested about how much it costs as well..

[jabb]

Originally Posted by forcer

Unfortunately, you need to delete a character after character in the search box. It does not clear automatically, when you click.

Yeah, I would be interested about how much it costs as well..

Lol it takes two clicks to highlight and delete, you must be a billionaire if your time is so valuable you cant waste 2 seconds.
Why would it costs advertisers any money? Do you think surfers are so dumb they don't know how to delete the words and continue with their search?

[NoobieDoobieDo]

That's really strange. It's kinda sad to see MSN doing this.

Isn't not even that good of a show - obviously.

[vitaminp]

@jabb: if you look at the wide scale of things... a little thing like this can annoy somebody (as we have seen here) enough to go to another search engine that *doesn't* tell you what to search.

maybe if this is just 0.1% of users who are put off...
thats 100 for every 100,000 users.
100 users, doing 10 searches per day...
1000 searches per day (per 100K) lost, just because MSN is experimenting.

[SiteBuyerUK]

If they want popular search terms, they might as well populate it with free porn

[veridicus]

forcer, why do you care if they gain market share? Unless you own stock it shouldn't matter. I find their search engine useless. I'm sure many others do, too. If they ever produce something more useful than Google they'll gain market share. But Microsoft doesn't innovate, so that will never happen.

[jabb]

Originally Posted by vitaminp

@jabb: if you look at the wide scale of things... a little thing like this can annoy somebody (as we have seen here) enough to go to another search engine that *doesn't* tell you what to search.

maybe if this is just 0.1% of users who are put off...
thats 100 for every 100,000 users.
100 users, doing 10 searches per day...
1000 searches per day (per 100K) lost, just because MSN is experimenting.

But lets say 0.1% of users like it and use MSN more..

[vitaminp]

Originally Posted by jabb

But lets say 0.1% of users like it and use MSN more..

the users are already using msn so gaining more users isnt really possible; and why would you search more than you need to?

i dont think there's anyway to encourage somebody to 'want' to search more, unless you get them thinking

[moneyballs2]

Originally Posted by forcer

Please MSN stop doing this. I really pray that you will raise your market share and we have an alternative to Google but what you are doing now is really really bad. If you loose market share then you absolutely deserve it!

Anyone in UK can confirm by going to msn.com

Anyone knows where to send complains to MSN search engine? Or maybe even a webmaster petition?

I got this last Monday, with the Apprentice I thought it was from a previous search somebody made using the computer. But i suppose it isn't...

If it was for Dragons Den It'll be great. But c'mon!

[jabb]

Originally Posted by vitaminp

the users are already using msn so gaining more users isnt really possible; and why would you search more than you need to?

i dont think there's anyway to encourage somebody to 'want' to search more, unless you get them thinking

How about they might not of thought to search for that now they have it leads to new stuff, new searches.

[Le GoogelGuRu]

When I go to MSN UK, I don't see anything in the search box.

[jawanda]

I agree that it is annoying, it seems like they could come up with a better way to promote these search terms on the main page without putting it right there in the search box. that just makes the se slightly less user friendly (takes one extra second to use) ..

[petdam]

http://it.msn.com/
"calcio serie A".
The WOW starts now
"WOW! That really sucks!"

[forcer]

Originally Posted by veridicus

forcer, why do you care if they gain market share? Unless you own stock it shouldn't matter. I find their search engine useless. I'm sure many others do, too. If they ever produce something more useful than Google they'll gain market share. But Microsoft doesn't innovate, so that will never happen.

I care because advertising on MSN Adcenter has better ROI for me than on Google Adwords.. More people search on Adcenter = more money for me