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Search Box or Ad?

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

Wednesday, March 28, 2007
17 years ago6,689 views

Look at the search box from:
http://uk.msn.com

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

thats freaky.. more like an ad to me!!!

   How much do do peeps pay to have thats defaulted ?? :)-

photoactive [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

That's evil. Or at least, doesn't do much for user trust . . .

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

In case they change it:
http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/1597/msnukcu6.png

Mambo [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Come on – at least clear the default text "onfocus". That's naff. Gurd job I NEVER use msn.

Ludwik Trammer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

That's nothing new to me. Polish portals do this all the time. For years. And their ads don't clear onFocus.
The point is to force people to search for that term., and then the first search result/the sponsored result before normal results is a site of company that bought the advertisement.

Ludwik Trammer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

In this very moment you can find this kind of advertisement on http://gazeta.pl and http://interia.pl, second and third Polish portals (bigger players also do this, just not today).

/pd [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

3rd Party Portals can do whatever they like, but its a disgrace that MSN have done this.. either knowingly or unknowningly.. it goes against the grain of a default SE box ...

Dan [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

can you add SUCKS onto the end of that?

wonder what they are paying? per search?

awordseditor.blogspot.com

Hong Xiaowan [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Who are the stupid advertiser?

"The apprentice BBC"? Trump playing at UK? Now is Sir Alan, related with Trump apprentice?

Trump was fired?! Cool!

Analogpoint [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

I'm not knocking anything you guys are saying, but it's possible that MSN is simply trying to say "hey look at our cool search results-- if you type in 'The Apprentice BBC' you'll get the 'The Apprentice BBC' website".

IMO, they're trying to say the obvious, what should be assumed to always be true, that if you type in the name of a company, show, movie etc, you'll get that company's/show's official page.

They probably just picked search term that because they thought it was something cool for UK users.

You can think of it as analogous to when Google hyperlinks the Google logo to a search on certain famous people's birthdays, except much more annoying.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I've fired off an email in Microsoft's direction, let's see if they reply :)
With Robert Scoble gone from MS they really need some "representative company blogger"...

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

<<it's possible that MSN is simply trying to say "hey look at our cool search results-- if you type in 'The Apprentice BBC' you'll get the 'The Apprentice BBC' website".>>

I don't think so.

<<The new series of The Apprentice begins tonight. The show, transferred from BBC2 to BBC1, will see 16 candidates battling it out for a £100,000-a-year plum job with Amstrad tycoon Sir Alan Sugar.>>

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article1581714.ece

Jack [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

wow, that's pretty sad that ms has to do this.

They should get an evilmeter for their decisions

Ludwik Trammer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> 3rd Party Portals can do whatever they like

What do you mean by "3rd Party"? Portals like onet.pl or wp.pl has their own search engines, that they push very hard...

Benjamin Jancewicz [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

...annoying...

Eric Frenchman [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Hey, at least Microsoft found an advertiser for their search platform ;-)

Just a desperate move since there is minimal search traffic.

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Mine says "Euro 2008 results".It changes everytime I click the link.

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Maybe it's not an ad and it's the hot topic of the day ?!

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

MSN-The search engine of mystery. Leaves so many questions unanswered, like
1 Is it an ad?, hot topic of the day like Ionut suggests?
2 Who uses MSN?
3 Who likes MSN?
4 Why is it such a failure
5 Is it because Microsoft own it? <---Well this question isn't unanswered!!!

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

(Updated the post.)

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Now "cricket world cup". Also why is MSN Ireland ie.msn.com so different to the other msn's?

Ringelnetz [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

Philipp,

the sites you mention are not search engines. The "official" search engine of Microsoft is http://www.live.com/ as far as I know. MSN is a portal, which uses live search. So I think it isn't fair to compare it to Google.

Do you remember Yahoo using Google's search?

And look at this evil link:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%42%6c%6f%67%6f%73%63%6f%70%65%64

Google is doing the same!?! What did you pay to get this?!? ;-)

Best wishes,

photoactive [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

<<And look at this evil link:
google.com/search?q=%42%6c%6f% ...>>

Really, Ringelnetz, that's silly.

True about the portal aspect, however; that's probably why we hate portals.

Today (here at least), the search box at uk.msn.com is blank.

So we can probably take that as an admission that they were being a bit evil.

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

And now that the world is a little bit better. Yay!

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> the sites you mention are not search engines. The
> "official" search engine of Microsoft is live.com/ as far as
> I know. MSN is a portal,

Yahoo is also a portal. And a search engine. As soon as someone provides me with convincing traffic numbers that more people start searches from Live.com than MSN.com, I am convinced that Live.com is the official MS search engine. Right now, somehow my gut feeling is that Live.com being official is still a mere marketing attempt by Microsoft that hasn't reached all end users yet. I could be wrong, again, if you or someone has numbers?

Ringelnetz [PersonRank 1]

17 years ago #

I have another silly explanation. This is MSN's preemptive spell correction. If you enter nothing or something wrong, instead of telling you "Did you mean..." afterwards like Google, it tells you before committing mistakes. A breakthrough technology!

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

[put at-character here]Ringelnetz. LOL! Is there anyone here, or in the world that likes and uses MSN?

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