MSN Search. Big Improvements and Release of Alpha Version - New Search Engine.

MSN Search. Big Improvements and Release of Alpha Version - New Search Engine.

Hi All, On Thursday, July 1st, MSN has announced two things: big improvements to the current search service and the release of the alpha version of the new algorithmic search engine Big improvements to the current search service - The improvements to the existing service are the broadest that MSN has made in the last few years and are designed to help people get faster, clearer and easier access to the information they want. The changes and improvements include a new MSN Search homepage, a new, cleaner look for its search results page direct access to popular information sources, and extensive performance improvements. Check it out at http://search.msn.co.in (for India specific searches) or http://search.msn.com A new, cleaner look for its search results page that separates algorithmic results from paid results and eliminates paid inclusion; People using the new design in beta testing spent 42% more minutes using the MSN Search service and queries per user increased by 36%. Direct access to popular information including: MSN also improves its news Search by offering a vertical news option in its drop-down menu and through its Newsbot technology, which offers personalized news search across over 4,000 news sources. Extensive performance improvements. <o:p></o:p> MSN increased speed of search query results, on average query results are as fast as Google. MSN Search homepage is the lightest home page available from the major search providers, delivering lightning-fast load times. Alpha version of the new algorithmic search engine - The release of the Technology Preview of the algorithmic search engine is being positioned as an early version designed for MSN to gather feedback from webmasters and search enthusiasts. Check it out at http://techpreview.search.msn.co.in/ Duration of the Tech Preview:<o:p></o:p> The Tech Preview will be live from June 30th to August 9th. Tech Preview Customer Performance & Availability Expectations:<o:p></o:p> The Tech Preview runs on a small cluster of 320 servers and supports only a 1B doc index (compare to end goal of 5600 servers and 5B docs). As a result, the expectations for the Tech Preview are not the same. It is fully expected that there will be times when the site is down (possibly for an extended period of time) or where it just does not perform well. <o:p></o:p> If there are any issues (site down or maintenance) with the site, Customers will be presented with a friendly error page stating that the Tech Preview is currently not available. <o:p></o:p> The System will be Down every night from 12pm PST – 1am PST! Because this is a Technology Preview on a limited amount of hardware, the system must take itself down in order to update the index of information that it serves (you’ll see the unavailable page hosted by Akamai during this time). Rather than giving our end users time-outs on queries, we’re choosing to take the system down every night and then bring it up after the system has finished its work.