MSN Launches their Web Search

Microsoft has announced on their Weblog (and on PR Newswire, but I like the Weblog angle better) that the new MSN search has officially launched. Entry at http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/01/31/364278.aspx . New/updated features on the search engine include "40,000 Encarta encyclopedia articles and associated media", which apparently adds up to 1.5 million of those instant-reference type answers; improved and integrated Newsbot; and extended the MSN Music selection. And there's also RSS feed buttons at the bottom of search results now.

The search site itself is at http://search.msn.com/ . And it looks a bit messy in Opera, so let's open it in Mozilla. Much better. Okay. Search tabs here now include Web, News, Images, Desktop (you have to have their toolbar) and Encarta. Advanced search features are available a drop-down "Search Builder" feature -- cute. A Settings page looks very much like Google's, except that you can choose whether to group results from the same site, and how many you want to see listed from the same site (1,2, or 3.) You can also set a default location.

I searched for "comprehensive neurotherapy" and got 988 results. Results included title, snippet, URL, and cache link, and in some cases index date. But no page size. Rgh! At the very, very, very bottom of the page is an RSS feed link for this search.

I did a search for neurotherapy in the News search and got only 3 results, and it looked like the first one was a licensing agreement. Bemused, I changed my search to the word neural and got lots more results. Though the news search does at least have some special syntax (title: works) I couldn't find an advanced search page explicitly for the news search.

For the most part the results look all right. I'd like to see more advanced search options, help for the news search, and size on the page result listings. I may have more thoughts after I do some more working with it.

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