MSN Search Technology Preview (Finally)

I'm finally getting to reviewing the new MSN search technology. Dear MSN, please do not preview new technology when I'm finishing a book. Thank you. Anyway, the new search tech is now available at http://techpreview.search.msn.com/ , and according to the site there are about one billion pages in the index.

The query box is simple; a single search form. There do not appear to be any pages covering special syntax. The results pages are equally simple; there's no result count that I can find, and page results include only title, excerpt, and URL (no date, no size, etc.) There's also a small icon which, when clicked, allows you to leave feedback about the search results.

Special syntax? Eh. I confirmed site:, title:, and link: (mixable with other syntaxes). I could not confirm an URL search. Nor could I find the switch to get 100 results on a page (15 results is thin, especially when there's no results count.)

I know this is a preview but the whole thing made me claustrophobic. Only 15 search results on a page. No syntax. No information about the page results other than the title, URL, and snippet. (Currently my favorite search result page for a regular search engine is Gigablast, and for a meta-search engine it's a tie between Vivisimo and Zap Meta.) No advanced search. Redirects on the search results (it just bugs me.) No help page. I know this is supposed to be a preview, but there's not much to see -- like Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, "There's no there there."

Well, I'm being slightly unfair. There are search results, which is why you're here, right? They were odd. First of all there were no ads, which is fine. I'm sure as soon as it's out of preview we'll get ads all over the place. What surprised me was how odd the results were.

Do a search for Flowers on Google and most of the first page of results will be commercial -- 1-800-Flowers, FTD, etc. But do a search for Flowers on MSN's search preview and you'll get a florist review site as the first result (which I couldn't find in Google's first page of results.) The second result was a page in China that looked like one of those search affiliate/aggregate pages. Third result ditto, only it looked like a larger site possibly out of Australia. The fourth result, the Flowers & Plants Association.

A very odd set of results. Some overt commercialism there, but far less retail, that is results going directly to stores instead of affiliates and aggregates. Very little control. Am I supposed to jump for joy over keyword search only and little information and little control over the search results? Arrrrgggggh. Maybe later, when it's a bit beyond preview.

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