There's no question that MSN would NOT be as popular of a search engine if it didn't have Microsoft "promoting" it on all new computers. But, I don't see why on a webmaster forum you guys are bitching about their search results. If anything, MSN is amazing from a webmasters' POV because it is so incredibly easy to optimize for (and then actually get listed for) your keywords of choice.
well nearly all of microsoft's products are built around its flagship product ie the OS, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.
Yeah, good point.. I mean who in the right mind would use paint if it didn't come with windows? Same with alot of their stuff. But Office is an exception imo
One of the main reasons it does so well is because of new user's who just installed windows and do a search right from windows, then their search goes through MSN of course. So yes, I think that if Microsoft wasn't behind MSN, it wouldn't be in one of the top three engines. Just my two cents.
the only reason i ever found out about MSN is because microsoft automatically puts MSN messenger in the windows installation.
Does MSN/Microsoft still offer that browser and premium services and stuff I remember a few years ago that they were always advertising?
It might be fairly easy to optimize your site for MSN, but those rankings won't stay. I've worked on a site which was quite an established site, PR 5 with more than 100,000 uniques coming to it every month, from Google, Yahoo and MSN. It was doing great on MSN, but now because of the changes in the algo, the same site is no where in MSN SERPs. it dropped to page 6 or 7, whereas it still retains its positions on Google and Yahoo. MSN puts more spammy pages in its SERPs these days. So the quality of results has dropped.
My dad used to have MSN as his homepage, but it takes a while to load compared to Google. I think even with their rebranding to LIVE, they are still fairly dead..