Since my seven-month old critique of Microsoft’s revamped search engine is still currently on the front page of this site, it seems only fair that I comment on today’s re-relaunch. Microsoft’s search engine has finally arrived. The code on the search page is no longer crap; it almost validates, and the only error seems to be a misplaced space in an attribute.
Aesthetically, it’s clearly following Google’s lead by putting the search box on a page by itself without any portal-style extras. The blue gradient styling matches the standard WinXP theme, but the links for the various kinds of searches are clustered quite closely together. Spreading them out a bit (and maybe adding some different styling for a:hover) would make it more user-friendly I think.
What about its search results? Well, a vanity search still doesn’t find this site on the first page of results, but it does place higher than it used to, and I’m well aware that this is quite likely a function of how much I’ve neglected thelimeybrit.com in the last, um, eight months or so. Google still lists this site first, so their respective algorithms are obviously quite different. A couple of quick test searches turn up vastly different results on each engine. I can’t say at this point whether one is going to consistently return better results than the other, but I will say that search.msn.com is currently better than it’s ever been, and it’s at least worth looking at as a complement to Google.
Read the BBC’s write-up about MSN Search here.
Douglas Bowman has a more detailed write-up that covers msn.com’s redesign (not just the search page) here.
Slashdot thread here.
Yeah…
But who cares?
Write something about you, bro. Something interesting!