As you know we have been testing the beta of our new search service on an opt-in basis for several months now.  From time to time we also route some of the customers from our live search service at search.msn.com through the Beta web site in order to do scalability testing.  Next week we intend to begin turning up the dial and direct more of our users to the Beta. You’ll continue to see us doing this on occasion for the forseeable...
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We’ve packed our bags and sunglasses for the annual CES conference in Vegas.  Stop by to visit, ask a question, or see us demo MSN Web Search and the MSN Toolbar Suite Beta with Desktop Search at the Microsoft booth (7145). There will also be folks from MSN Messenger, TV and Entertainment teams demonstrating their latest and greatest!   – Heather Gordon, Product Planner
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We started the blog to be able to talk to you, our users, and it has been a great success. We have decided to create the MSN Search wiki to add a way for you to talk to us (in addition to your blogs, Webmaster World & our Newsgroup). We will be paying attention find out what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong. Tell us! The MSN Search wiki is a part of Channel9 so you will need a log-in to edit it (anyone can read it).  Special...
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Pablo has cooked up a shiny new site to share, try out, and submit deskbar shortcuts to!  Most impressive is the desktop shortcut to submit a desktop shortcut.  Assuming that you have the deskbar, create this shortcut @ds,http://www.deskbarshortcuts.com/index.php?q=$w and then you can submit shortcuts from your deskbar like in these examples: ds @a9,http://a9.com/$s or ds a9=http://a9.com/$s Go check out http://www.deskbarshortcuts...
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Monday was incredible! We are very excited about all of the feedback we received from you blog posts, comments, discussion groups, and through online feedback via our website.  Scoble posted two solid round ups of the word on the street. Thanks to everyone who has already given the beta a spin.    We are still going through everyone’s reactions on the release, but we wanted to address some of the top issues that have come...
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If you’re at SES, please join us tonight (Wednesday December 15th) for cocktails and food from 5:30pm-9:00pm.   Come by the MSN Search booth for party information and directions.  (For those who need transportation, it will provided from the Hyatt Regency McCormick place, please meet in the lobby at 4:45pm). — Brady Forrest, PM
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Today we officially announced the Beta release of MSN Toolbar Suite with Desktop Search.  We are excited to hear what you think and to see how Desktop Search gets used.  Check it out at http://beta.toolbar.msn.com when you have a chance and send us feedback!   With Desktop Search you can quickly find files, emails or pictures on your computer.  We hope you find it’s not just a fast way to search, it’s a better way...
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A press release announcing an MSN conference call has just hit the wires and we wanted to invite all of you to listen in. Yusuf Medhi, MSN VP, will be hosting the listen-in call. We’d love it if you told the blogosphere what you think of Monday’s news. Here are the details for how to call in:  When: Monday, Dec. 13, 2004; Teleconference begins at 10 a.m. PST Call-in number (U.S.): (800) 559-9370 International: +1...
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Next week myself and a couple of others are going to be at SES in Chicago. We’ll be doing demos of the Beta, fielding questions and listening to what the attendees have to say. Stop by, say ‘Hi’, and get a t-shirt (we’re right by the entrance). On Tuesday, Eytan will be a part of a panel entitled ‘Successful Site Architecture’ (you have to scroll down to find it). This session will review what a site can do to...
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Doing a good job of helping Search users to correct misspelled queries is super important for two main reasons: a) 5 billion crawled docs and a bleeding edge ranking algorithm can’t do much if the query isn’t spelled right and b) more than 10% of all searches are misspelled! So we made sure our new search engine included a revamped spelling correction system that’s much better than our old one. To improve the speller we worked...
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