MSN was launched in 1998 using the Inktomi search engine database to generate its results. It remained entirely dependent on Inktomi for its organic search engine listings until 1999, when it launched a newer version of its search facility. This version of search results was composed of a mixture of Looksmart and Altavista listings with its original Inktomi search database.
In November 2004 MSN made the bold move of creating its own Microsoft-built spidering, indexing and ranking system. This was based on several years of research into effective ways to crawl the web and display relevant information for the web queries being made on a daily basis.
This version of MSN Search came out of its Beta testing area and went live in February 2005.MSN’s current search engine index now includes over 5 billion documents and web pages, allowing it to deliver relevant search engine traffic to many businesses across the UK.
MSN Live Search
Microsoft’s current activities have seen them expand their Internet capabilities. This led more recently to the development of their online services and tools called Windows Live. Windows Live Services can all be accessed through its live web portal www.live.com (link to http://www.live.com). MSN Search was replaced with Live Search on September 12th 2006.
However when using older web browsers such as Internet Explorer 5 or 6, if you type an incorrect address into the address bar, it will still show a page from the now depreciated MSN Search. This will state that the page can’t be found and as of May 2007, Microsoft has not yet fixed the error.
Bing
In the Spring of 2009 Bing was announced as the replacement for MSN Live Search. This is the latest version of Microsoft’s online search facility and it went live on the 2nd June 2009. Bing included many notable changes including the inclusion of related search results section on the left hand side of the main search listings. Bing is currently the 3rd most popular search engine world wide behind Yahoo and Google, however the agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo in 2010 will show Bing providing all organic search results for Yahoo for the next 10 years.
Microsoft AdCenter
MSN entered the PPC advertising market in 2006 with its own PPC advertising client known as Microsoft AdCenter. Microsoft seems to have taken its cue from Google in the development of AdCenter as many of them share a similar set-up and management system. Although this system is relatively new to the market, we have already tested this new form of advertising to gauge its effectiveness for our clients.
