Entered CNET Catalog: 04/12/2005
SKU: SERVMSN
Manufacturer: Microsoft Corp.
Product summary
The good: Taps into other MSN services, such as Music and Movies; comprehensive reference searches via Encarta; a highlight viewer in downloadable toolbar helps you find search terms in lengthy Web pages; desktop search tool.
The bad: Weak local search; lacks video or people searches.
The bottom line: MSN Search may appeal to fans of MSN's various services, but its lackluster local and multimedia searches disappoint.
Average user rating: from 4 users
2.5 stars
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 05/11/2005
With its soothing, sky-blue search box, MSN Search takes a more New Age approach with its interface than its competitors.
The minimalist MSN search box includes links for Web, News, Images, Desktop, and Encarta searches; click the pull-down menu next to the Search button, and you'll find additional searches for stock quotes, movies, shopping, and music. Just to the right of the Search form is a Near Me button, which you can click to find results near your city (but not your specific street address).
Although our MSN Search for Andorra returned about 14 million pages, that's still 9 million pages less than Yahoo and 6 million pages less than Google.
MSN's Web search results did a good job of separating sponsored results from our actual search hits, confining the paid listings to shaded boxes and columns with smaller fonts; however, the number of results returned was still less than for similar queries performed on Yahoo. MSN does let you see cached pages (great for checking older content on a frequently updated Web page) as well as links to related sites. Some of our MSN searches included special sections up on top with news and related links, although nothing as elaborate as Ask Jeeves's Smart Search boxes. Images searches returned thumbnails with dimensions and files sizes, and MSN allows you to sort the images by size or by whether they're in color or black and white. Movie queries tap into MSN Movies (which includes movie posters, descriptions, links to trailers, and local showtimes), while Encarta searches use MSN's paid Encarta encyclopedia service. By the same token, shopping searches send you to MSN's shopping site, while music searches let you browse MSN's library of pay-per-download music. Missing from MSN Search are video and people searches, as well as detailed local searches with maps and driving directions (which, strangely enough, you can find on the main MSN portal, but not through MSN Search).
MSN offers a robust downloadable toolbar that features a pop-up blocker and a nifty highlight viewer that lets you quickly scan long Web pages by highlighting your search terms. The toolbar also includes an IE-only desktop search tool that will index all the files and e-mail on your PC. However, neither the toolbar nor the MSN Search portal will save or track your search history. The MSN help section provides cursory descriptions--with a few search
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 4 user reviews
Nothing compared to Google and Yahoo
Pros: No pros found
Cons: Does not return the required results
Review: MSN search is so bad I can sometimes type in the eact web address and it still can't find what I am looking for. Control is not simple, it is annoying to switch between image and web searches and even more annoying to switch to the settings. Just stick with google and yahoo.
User Rating:
4.0 stars
out of 4 user reviews
Its kinda cool...
Pros: Cool user interface, you can ask it questions and it gives you answers from encarta
Cons: It does not have very many pages indexed, it has a long domain name
Review: Its a pretty good search engine that has a lot of useful features that other search engines don't have yet. It allows you to weight the importance of the popularity of a site, how closely a site matches the search terms, and how recently updated the site is. I also like the answers from encarta which are very auccurate and guess what you are asking very well. I don't like how the domain name is so long though beacuse if im am going to search the web, msnsearch.com is not exactly the first name i think of. All in all it is a pretty good search engine, but still has a lot of room for improvement.
User Rating:
3.0 stars
out of 4 user reviews
MSN Search
Pros: Integrated Encarta
Cons: Cluttered, derivative
Review: Just like Google . . . but with fewer relevant results and lots more visual clutter. 95% of the links on the page are boldfaced, as if they'd be missed otherwise. White on varying shades of blue isn't the best contrast, either.
User Rating:
1.5 stars
out of 4 user reviews
Its not Google
Pros: Functional
Cons: slow, not very accurate
Review: Not worth using when there is Google or Yahoo
