PPC Blog » Microsoft Live

Hey MSN / Live Search, You Suck

PPCblogger — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 15:09:57 +0000

I think thats my best post title to date.

In all seriousness, I cannot believe just how bad Microsofts search engine is right now. It’s umbelievable how wrong they get the ‘easy’ stuff still, like simple searches for brands / sites and exact match domains (navigational queries).

A search for ‘Myspace‘.

Pretty bad, lets try some more.

A search for ‘Digg‘. The ‘Disability Information For Greater Glasgow’ is top, but I am guessing the majority of people will be searching for the other ‘Digg’…

A search for ‘Reddit‘. Wikipedia top, need I say more.

A search for ‘Mahalo‘. Wikipedia top again here.

A search for ‘Delicious‘. Not on the first page!. OK, lets help them out a little. A search for ‘Del.icio.us‘. Still not to be seen, although Wikipedia is now in the results…

Shocking.

Now run those searches on the new Wiki search alpha, I’d argue that the very top result (not the full SERP) are actually better…

Microsoft To Acquire Yahoo In 2007?

PPCblogger — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 17:29:27 +0000

There’s a interesting post over at the Shoemoney blog where Jeremy Shoemaker gives 10 reasons why he believes Microsoft will make a move to purchase Yahoo.

Keeping the 10 reasons Shoemoney gave short and sweet, they are;

The Search Algorithm

Overture Yahoo Search Marketing

Yahoo Publisher Network

Flikr

Del.icio.us

The People

Video

Community Properties

Business Directory

Yahoo Just Cleaned The House (reshuffle)

Will it happen? To me it seems like a no brainer… If Microsoft hopes to compete in this new internet economy (contextual ads) they need a bigger chunk of the search market. Yahoo is the only option IMO.

What do we think?

MSN (Windows Live) & Lycos Top Searches Of 2006

PPCblogger — Fri, 15 Dec 2006 18:43:26 +0000

Off the back of Yahoo’s & AOL’s recent 2006 search statistics both the Windows Live Search blog & Lycos have announced their top searches of 2006.

Top Overall Searches at Windows Live Search in 2006:

Ronaldinho
Shakira
Paris Hilton
Britney Spears
Harry Potter
Eminem
Pamela Anderson
Hilary Duff
Rebelde
Angelina Jolie

The Lycos top 10 overall search terms for 2006 are:

Poker
MySpace
RuneScape
Pamela Anderson
Paris Hilton
Pokemon
WWE
Golf
Spyware
Britney Spears

Microsoft adCenter To De-Dupe PPC Adverts By Display URL

PPCblogger — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:39:28 +0000

Although they haven’t realised the news to the public domain just yet, as of mid-November adCenter will de-dupe ads by display url. Currently two sponsored adverts with the same display urls (example.com & example.com) can both be shown at the same time in one SERP. This move to allow only one display url per advert in a search results page will be in-line with what Google already have in place.

This may have a significant impact on advertisers and affiliates alike running ads using the same display url. In the similar way Google decides what advert to show, the advert with the highest click through rate (CTR)/bid will be served regardless of which ad is associated with the real trademark owner.

Of course if you have a registered trademark, aCenter can restrict other advertisers bidding on your terms.

MSN Search Redirecting to Microsoft Live

PPCblogger — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 20:56:37 +0000

If you haven’t already seen this, the old http://search.msn.co.uk is now redirecting to http://www.live.com/?searchonly=true.

So it seems Microsoft are finally ready to move away from the old MSN search name and move forward with the new Microsoft Live Search platform.

The redirect to the Live domain only seems to be the case if you search directly from http://search.msn.co.uk however. As shown below -

If you visit MSN UK (http://uk.msn.com/) and perform a search from here, it keeps within the same domain although shows Live results as shown below -

What happened to the infinite scroll feature to? This was where you didn’t need to change page, just keep scrolling down.