MSN, Mostly SPAM Network

This week Microsoft introduced a beta test version of its search engine, Live.com. This first version of Live.com went up Wednesday and is the latest step in Microsoft’s highly publicized initiative to bring a series of free ad-supported software products to the internet (Windows Live and Office Live). This is yet another initiative of MSN to position themselves as a direct competitor of Google

Live.com looks great and includes some Google-like features such as the search box at the top of its home page and simple keyword ad units in the upper right corner. However, don’t be fooled by the pleasing aesthetics. For the most part, MSN yields search results that are unreliable due to the massive amounts of spam they include.

As an example, let’s take a look at some search results for the keyword “credit cards”.

First MSN:

Out of the top ten results, there are seven instances of blog spam which redirect to a “real site”. Only three quality sites appear in the top ten.

Now Google:

No spam in the top ten results.

Searchers are not going to have confidence in the MSN search engine when the search results are sub-standard. While the average searcher may not immediately realize they are clicking through on search engine spam, they certainly will be left somewhat confused - “Hey, I clicked on a different website. Why does MSN keep sending me to a different place? They must not be very good”. It won’t be long before they are back to searching on the near spam free index that Google provides.

Live.com may look good but searchers will not be taken in by the slick appearance for very long when they quickly realize their search results are unreliable. MSN is going to have to do more than provide a nice looking interface if they want to sway searchers away from Google. While Google has received some bad press as of late and a sliding stock price - which is still over $300/share - it has a huge market share in the search space that is only increasing while MSN’s share remains at approximately eleven percent according to Nielsen NetRatings.

Google has worked hard to eliminate spam and MSN would be wise to do the same. MSN might want to consider letting their engineering team take the helm for a while and develop some sort of spam-proofing of their index. After all, they can make their index as pretty as they want but if their results continue to be circa 2000 then they shouldn’t expect to gain any search market share. If they truly want to gain in the search industry then perhaps they should hold off on the aesthetics and focus solely on combating redirects, cloaking, mirroring etc. Also, they might want to open up more ad inventory on Live.com to provide a wider range of opportunities for advertisers.

As it stands right now, MSN search results do little more than give life and hope to search engine spammers.

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