Search Engine Information

History Of MSN Search Engine

The history of the MSN search engine (now called Windows Live Search) is not quite as interesting as Yahoo's and Google's history because Microsoft was already an established corporation and technology giant by the time of “MSN’s” inception. MSN is simply an acronym for Microsoft Network, but the term ‘MSN’ is mostly used to identify either the MSN search engine or the very popular MSN Messenger (now called Windows Live Messenger).

Originally, MSN.com was not a search engine or web portal. It was first designed as a content viewer in Windows 95 and was developed by a group headed by Nathan Myhrvold. The content viewer was ahead of its time and required computer performance that was higher than the average PC. As a result, the MSN Program Viewer idea including the semi-popular ‘MSN Shows’ was dropped.

In 1999, the domain www.msn.com was revamped into the web portal it is today. All Windows installations default Internet Explorer to this page and as a result the MSN search engine became very popular in a short amount of time, allowing them to market other services such as Hotmail and MSN Messenger and consequently their new ‘Windows Live’ brands including Windows Live Search. Although MSN ranked 5th overall for Traffic Rank in November 2007 (figure from Alexa.com), they do not carry much weight in searches harboring approximately 9% of the market.

In 2006 Microsoft launched AdCenter which is comparable to Panama and AdWords. Some notable differences in AdCenter are its limited search distribution and limited search ad syndication, resulting in a smaller campaigns but more relevant, quality traffic. One can expect this service to grow as Microsoft recently made their biggest acquisition in the history of the company, acquiring aQuantive Inc. – a global digital marketing and advertising solution company – for $6 billion.

In 2007, MSN started rebranding their services with Windows Live replacing MSN. For example, the MSN search engine became the Windows Live Search engine.

As mentioned, MSN.com has huge traffic ratings and continues to increase its traffic by offering more and more services in over 26 languages. Current popular services seem to mirror those of Google and Yahoo! – Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Search (formerly MSN Search), and Windows Live Maps.

Broadly speaking, SEO Companies don’t pay too much attention to results in MSN Search. This is not only because its 9% hold on the market, but because MSN search results seem to be much less relevant than Google or even Yahoo!. When searching on the MSN search engine, one can find pages that are completely unrelated or sites that no longer exist. This lack of accuracy became very apparent in 2006 – however some have speculated that the MSN search engine is being overhauled and thus the reason for its shaky ranking system.

With Microsoft’s forced push of IE7 in Windows Vista, their new Windows Live Search and desktop searching tools combined with securing themselves in China (a huge market potential despite government imposed censorship and human rights issues), don’t count MSN Search out – they may yet rebound to majority search engine status in the very near future.

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