November 2004 Archive

MSN Search Beta Release

Following up on the previous test technology preview release, MSN has launched its new, unique search engine database at beta.search.msn.com. As opposed to the previous tests, this version has advanced search features under the "Search Builder" link including site limits, link searches, selected country and region limits, 12 language limits, and three slider bars for adjusting the ranking. The beta version results page includes links to MSN's own cached pages, providing yet another source for cached copies. The cached versions' headers note the date the page was last indexed, but they do not highlight search terms. Nested Boolean searching is supported with the +, -, and | symbols as well as with AND, OR, NOT operators which must be in uppercase. Phrase searching with "double quotes" is available as are the site:, link:, language:, url:, and location: command line options. With this launch, MSN claimed a database size of 5 billion pages, prompting Google to increase its count from 4.2 to 8 billion pages just hours before MSN launched this beta. In conjunction with the beta launch, MSN has also launched an MSN Search blog.