Richard Vanderhurst

For any rival, gaining on Google is definitely a large task, but one thing that Microsoft will always have is the power to throw money at a project till at least some of it sticks. This comparative new boy on the block has been out of Beta for more than a year now, and MSN Search has matured into a service to which Microsoft is content to give its name. MSN Search definitely appears to be matching Google walk for walk re features.

Crucially though , there are some things that Microsoft appears to be doing better than Google. The beef of MSN Search has got to be the web search engine and, having a look at the numbers, it obviously has some work to do to catch up with Google re the sheer volume of straightforward results.

Google no longer boasts the precise size of its index is, but a fast search for “Alexander the Great” reveals that Google still has a much bigger index than MSN. Google explains it returns “about” 91,300,000 results while MSN claims to tug a definitely tiny 3,504,091 results.

I am taking his point, and by that motive, the bigger the index, the better the product is as long as you can serve that content up in a food way. Does this attitude apply to a straight search engine? In the case of general search, when the sole output is an inventory of links, the comprehensive key is the standard of the 1st fifty-odd results.

I’d suggest that there simply is no way to make all 91,000,000 results from a single question “useful” in a conventional web search context.
Having said that, there’s one eventuality in which Google’s much bigger index is a definite advantage — in searches for obscure info. Google’s capability to tug up some results even for the most weird of entertainments or strangest recipes or rarest guitar models is unique.

MSN is unquestionably playing catch-up, though , and looks to be making advances extremely quickly. Presumably the largest challenge for MSN Search will be to remain as focused in its results as Google has, once it’s got an in a similar fashion monstrous repository to churn thru. Once a search engine can return millions and millions of results per question, the main problem is to ensure the top 50 are totally topical to the user.

This job is allocated to Google’s PageRank function, the paranormal wizardry behind Google’s success. The PageRank function is Google’s way of ordering search results according to their significance, that is, by link recognition, the “honesty” of content, and numerous other things, some secret, some not. It should not come as any surprise that Microsoft has a particularly similar system for MSN Search ; both approaches appear to work really efficiently. Getting the PageRank or equivalent mechanism to work properly is critical.

It does not only affect the content that is returned when a user runs a question, but also decides the content indexed by search engine androids, and the order in which it’s indexed, when it’s indexed, and how frequently that info is updated. Overall, re getting me the info I need quickly and effectively, both score good marks.