Bing - Search & Win with a new UI - Search Blog

February 16, 2006, 02:47 PM by Bing | 27 Comments

Earlier this week we launched MSN Search and Win. It’s a contest that will be running through April and you have the opportunity to win some pretty great prizes. I like it because it’s easy. As you search on our main site (or through the flash interface) you have the ability to win prizes. If you’re not interested in the prizes then you can ignore the ads.Why are we doing it? Well there certainly are a number of people who have pondered our motives, but when it comes down to it we have made a lot of improvements over the past year with our algo so people should notice a difference in relevance and a marketing campaign like MSN Search and Win is a good way to encourage people to try us again so they can see the improvements for themselves.

Since you’ve all been doing extra searches on our site due to the contest I am sure that you’ve seen the new UI on MSN Search that we rolled out yesterday afternoon. We’ve traded in the blue for a steely grey. Other changes include a longer search box and hit highlighting in the title. On the first, we’ve listened to your feedback and on the second, trust us, it makes your job as a searcher easier. Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming. Personally, I like the change, but I’ll continue to search from live.com – I can’t do without my Seattle Traffic Map.

Brady Forrest, MSN Search PM

Comments

PatriotB

Posted On February 16, 2006, 04:21 PM

I've taken a look at the new MSN Search UI and have a couple comments.

There's too much wasted, empty vertial space. There shouldn’t need to be a vertical scrollbar–-I shouldn’t need to maximize the browser window or scroll in order to see what’s on the bottom, when there's all this empty space. (Maybe it was like this before; I don’t know since I don’t use MSN Search regularly.)

RobC

Posted On February 16, 2006, 04:38 PM

Hey,

I noticed the change last night...good good on the surface. I like the color change, the rest I will dig around in later tonight.

"we have made a lot of improvements over the past year with our algo so people should notice a difference in relevance"

I have noticed that on alot of my searches this new algo has (for now) dropped some of the index pages of sites and replaced them with second-level pages (contact us, etc) and "old" pages that have not been touched for years. I would hope that this would wash out in the coming days. It will, right...? There are alot or great, new sites out there and cluttering up results with old pages/sites really does not do anyone any good.

pmac

Posted On February 16, 2006, 05:17 PM

Well, you rolled this out at the same time that you rolled out a new index that is fast becoming the laughing stock of the search community. Never have I seen an index fail so horribly. It is a joke how bad it is. Example:

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=cars&FORM=QBRE3

8 out of the top 10 are from one domain. Like, HELLO? this is pretty basic stuff no?

Shurik

Posted On February 16, 2006, 06:05 PM

I’m very disappointment with MSN search team. (Andy Edmonds and Co.)
I don’t want to rehash what’s already been said.
Just read this: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum97/751.htm

Craig

Posted On February 16, 2006, 06:20 PM

Why won't you guys do anything about the subdomain spam????

Look at this search

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=bad+credit+loans&FORM=MSNH&srch_type=0

Spamtacular

Posted On February 16, 2006, 06:49 PM

Try searching for "spyware." Don't think users need 15 clones of the same page.

Filippe

Posted On February 16, 2006, 08:11 PM

UI looks nice but WTH did you do with the results?! Why would Microsoft make such a fuss about their new look and at the same time literally DESTROY their results with nonsense garbage? I would think that Bill would be smarter than what occured yesterday afternoon and not unleash such ridiculous SERP's

Tam

Posted On February 16, 2006, 09:32 PM

The search engine looks much better. But the search results are not very good imo. It was a lot better and relevant before.

James

Posted On February 16, 2006, 10:50 PM

I hate these new serps, garbage results. and the webpage title color is too dim to read.

sanatgersappa

Posted On February 16, 2006, 11:42 PM

Great UI. Any plans to rename the search to Windows Live Search?

Stephen

Posted On February 17, 2006, 04:36 AM

Any Plans to actually crawl a reasonable sample of the web and rank pages properly ?

SEO Power

Posted On February 17, 2006, 05:56 AM

Hi,

Everything looks nice but a numbered listing pages (1, 2, 3) would be very helpful for SEO's to analyze positions easily.

Thanks,

Cletus the Search Hound

Posted On February 17, 2006, 11:03 AM

The larger query box is a good thing!

When will you turn www.msn.com into the main search portal? Bad is the fact that I must type search.msn.com. A ctrl+enter on msn still takes one to www.msn.com which stinks; flash, spam, fluff, ads, obnoxious cookies etc...

My searches are still bringing in way too many duped domains, sub domains, and spam.

I am not ready to quit yet... keep at it! :-)

Kyle

Posted On February 17, 2006, 11:25 AM

Wow...who approved this change. All my websites dropped a little but I did searches for almost every keyword I could think of and SPAM RULED EVERYTHING. YAHOO IS 4th now in search engines behind GIGABLAST. WOW...I thought there were some smart people working on the ALGO. Worse results then pre 1999.

Michael Griffiths

Posted On February 17, 2006, 02:36 PM

I do have to agree with the other posters: WTF happened?

I've been using MSN Search fairly exclusively since it launched, and the results are now.... far, far, FAR worse and more spam-filled than they were a week ago.

Incidentally: I don't like the UI change. The gradiant looks like you're trying to be "simple" and "graphical" at the same time. Fails utterly. Copying the Live.com, or making it very similar, would work - but currently the old UI looked better and more "in-form" to the new one.

Mistake there.

I do have to wonder.

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