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Does MSN Search Hit The Spot?

Stefan Karzauninkat looks at MSN's new search facility and asks if global search can match the relevancy for consumers and business of local search supported by local indexing teams...

Is MSN's new search facility good at finding local information? And can global search match the relevancy for consumers and business of local search supported by local indexing teams...

By Stefan Karzauninkat

[Register and post your own comments on this article below...]

Launched in the UK in December 2004, Seekport is an innovative European search technology company that has developed a UK-specific search engine to deliver significantly higher hit quality than US-centric search offerings such as Google, Yahoo and MSN Search.

Seekport’s www.seekport.co.uk search engine offering is enabled by the company’s innovative search technology and the high level of quality and relevancy that comes from having local index teams. But what are the strengths of local search in comparison to global offerings?

Global vs. local search – will MSN Search make a difference?

With MSN Search we’re again seeing a major US vendor trying to address the requirements of all the world’s very different search markets – but only by using a single global search offering. While we welcome the fact that Microsoft’s goal with MSN Search is to help consumers search the web more quickly and get precise answers, we're not certain that its US-centric search offering will end up delivering the quality and relevancy that we know European users increasingly expect.

Our initial research has shown that when US engines return country-specific searches, every third return is still an inappropriate US-sourced item. To address this at Seekport we’ve invested in local country-based index teams – for example the UK search engine we launched in December is backed by a UK focused index team – so that we can work to cut this ratio down to an initial one-in-ten target.

At Seekport we're convinced that there's a real opportunity for a search engine that can provide users with a quality alternative to US-oriented offerings. While Microsoft is addressing this challenge with MSN Search’s slider controls and 'NearMe' button, we believe that there's no substitute for a dedicated local quality resource that can work to guarantee the quality and relevancy of our search returns.

Keeping searches simple – meeting real user expectations

There's a lot of confusion in the search market at the moment about what users actually want. Looking at MSN Search and Seekport provides a useful contrast. On one side we have Seekport, a specialist search provider with an engine that's characterised by the high quality of its hits (thanks to our innovative search technology and our specialist country index team), and a simple, spare design that leaves users free to focus on their search returns.

This contrasts directly with offerings such as MSN Search, which introduces complex functionality including returns from the Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia and the Microsoft Desktop Search. We’re not certain that users want to accept the complex presentation and limitation in functionality, particularly when the search takes up a lot of desktop resource, currently only works with the Internet Explorer 6 browser and is only available for English language users.

So who decides what you can and can't see?

Relevancy is a particularly important area when it comes to key issues such as content blocking, especially in mainland Europe where US search providers typically do a comprehensive block of whole topics and specific words, irrespective of whether the content is acceptable or not.

At Seekport we're committed to responding quickly to requests to remove unacceptable content from our searches – we can do this in hours rather than the weeks or even months typically taken by US vendors. But we also believe that it;s not good enough to simply block whole areas of content without applying intelligence and local knowledge to what sites actually contain. That’s why we’ve invested significantly in local country search teams whose key function is to provide our European search customers with the sophisticated, content-driven and locally relevant search results they are increasingly failing to find from US vendors such as Google, Yahoo and MSN Search.

Delivering scalable search solutions for B2B customers

While search engines such as Google may serve the general web user's expectations well at the moment, we're seeing a growing B2B requirement for a search engine that can offer country-specific, spam-free, relevant search results. With Seekport's concentration on local country team personnel to support each region's site we are already experiencing significant interest in the concept and the technology powering it from the B2B sector.

From our initial analysis of the MSN Search offering, it looks like a difficult solution to scale down for B2B search deployment – particularly due to its reliance on a central data centre to handle searches across multiple countries.

That's why we've developed a white-label search engine that uses a powerful vertical and blended search capability, which leading B2B content providers in sectors such as media and publishing can use to develop new business opportunities based on their content archives. This approach gives B2B organisations the power and search relevancy they demand without the up-front commercialism typically associated with US search solutions. And Seekport is able to provide special internet searches exactly focused on several customers needs. No US vendor is able to do this in any way.

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NMK Event - New Directions In Search, 23 June 2005

Discover the latest trends in local vs global search, integrated search, metasearch and mobile search from leading search engine and SEO/SEM companies including Overture, Infospace, Weboptimizer and Seekport at New Directions In Search on 23 June.

Stefan Karzauninkat will be speaking at this event on the benefits of localised search.

About the Author:
Stefan Karzauninkat is Director of Quality Management (Europe) for Seekport Internet Technologies. His expertise stems from his ten-year involvement in creating websites for customers with particularly content-heavy sites. Stefan is the author of the 'Suchfibel' (Internet Search Primer), the most comprehensive German-language work on Internet searching to date. The corresponding website www.suchfibel.de has been a search engine of choice for many years. Headquartered in Munich, Germany, Seekport is a search engine technology provider established in December 2003, with the objective of offering individualised search technologies for companies at the highest technical level and establishing one of Europe’s leading Internet search engines. Seekport’s search technology is characterised by high quality of hits, achieved by the use of innovative technology and local indexing teams. Seekport operates search engines in Germany, France, the UK and, since 31 May 2005, Spain. By the end of 2005, Seekport will be online in nine European countries. www.seekport.co.uk