We’re always looking for ways to give you search results faster.  The popular Desktop Search Shortcuts from MSN Desktop Search are good examples of this.  On a related note, Internet Explorer (5.0 and above) has a little known feature that lets you quickly search for something on any site: IE Search prefixes. After the search prefixes are set up, you can type a single word identifier (prefix) and search query in the IE address bar...
Read More

When I was at etech last week checking out all the wonderful things that people are building on the web and with machines I had a number of people ask me about our RSS feeds and what was permissible. As we said in a previous post they are for end-user, non-commercial applications; we released them so that people can track MSN searches via their personal RSS readers. Very specifically not for recreating our search engine on your own website. A...
Read More

During this period of madness, we have a special treat for all you college basketball fanatics. We rolled out some instant answers for the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Tournament.   We teamed up with FOX Sports to show real-time scores and schedules during the games. You get a quick snapshot of the tournament just by searching for “college hoops”. You can also track a specific team such as “niagara purple...
Read More

In October 2004, about 30 technology enthusiasts from around the world came to our Redmond campus to take part in an early preview of the new MSN Search service and assist us in the development process. The Champs reviewed our product plans from the bottoms up, including the current and upcoming features as well as future ideas that hadn’t made it into our first version release. Our goal was to get constructive feedback and to obtain a view...
Read More

We want to take a moment and congratulate a teammate of ours. This past Tuesday, Ramez Naam, the GPM of our algorithmic results, officially became a published author (and blogger). His book, “More than Human“, discusses both the promises & pitfalls that bio-enhancing technology hold for our world. In his own words: I wrote this book to cover these two, interrelated topics: 1) The science of human enhancement – what’s...
Read More

Our MSN Search Party at SES turned out to be a big success, with the entrance continually packed with over 400 people attending the event.  The event took up four rooms of a great restaurant in New York called The Park.  The party was conversation filled and entertaining, with people mingling from the first floor to the second eating, talking and drinking. Thanks for coming! Kristine Bangert, MSN Marketing  
Read More

So, we’ve been reading some interesting posts lately about MSN Found. It seems that people are taking us a bit too seriously and have a not-so-accurate perception about what it’s really about. The campaign is simply meant to be an alternative way to entertain people and let them know about MSN Search. The pages aren’t supposed to be “blogs” but are character pages – this is a fictional search “opera,&rdquo...
Read More

In the initial MSN Search Beta release we introduced a feature called Encarta Answers. This provides direct answers to all sorts of questions related to geographical locations, historical figures, definitions, calculations, conversions, and simple equations.  Encarta Answers show the exact answer to your question or query right at the top of the MSN Search results pages. Here are just a few examples of things you can do with Encarta...
Read More

As some of you may have noticed, MSN Newsbot, our personalized news aggregator, has undergone some changes as a part of the MSN Search launch.  The UI is now integrated with the search product.  In the US this means moving easily between Newsbot Search and our partner MSNBC.  For all our international markets Newsbot is wholly integrated into Search. Our layout now features more top stories (4) at the top of the page plus image...
Read More

I am proud and excited to announce that MSN Search is now officially launched. With this final push we have made more than 40,000 Encarta encyclopedia articles and associated media available for free to MSN Search users, which translates to more than 1.5 million Instant Answers. We also improved and integrated Newsbot, added a button for RSS feeds on the bottom of all applicable search results pages, and increased our MSN Music selection. We...
Read More