The day after noticing MSN ‘predicting search’ for ‘the Apprentice BBC’. MSN carry it on to a new day about ‘Cricket World Cup’. This is probably going to end up being really annoying

Today someone from my work informed me about some rather strange MSN is doing.  When you go to MSN.co.uk (yes .co.uk, not .com) you will come to the MSN home page with all the usual ‘noise’ on it.  However you’ll notice straight away what’s in the search box.

I have never searched for this nor have I done any searches similar to this.  Could this be a new CPC style system? have the BBC paid a few £££s to make this happen? or does MSN think this is a useful search to the majority of the searchers?

MSN have updated there SERP’s page, again in the page of two days. They could of done this the same day to help conserve blogging energy! Anyway, MSN have updated two things today so that sames my blogging energy for tomorrow

The first thing you’ll notice now when you go to MSN is the new search box. Looks pretty much exactly the same however it’s got a cool little eye-catching mouseover glow to it. Here’s a screenshot of it in effectI thought it was pretty cool

I thought it was pretty cool anyway

The second thing which a few people may not of noticed is how MSN have got rid of those stupid > < buttons to go next/previous buttons and now have ‘next’ and ‘previous’ instead.

Good to see MSN improving the layout even if the SERPs themselves aren’t improving

MSN are implementing new changes onto there SERP’s, just like Google has been recently. However MSN have gone a bit further than changing colours round, they have recently implemented a new ‘Related Searches:’ section on www.msn.com top right when you do a search, any search, I haven’t found a search where they don’t return this.  Here’s a quick look at the new related search box when I did a search for ‘Cars’:

So is this because MSN may think people are interested in the results and may find them helpful, or is this MSN showing off there LSI skills, or even, both?

In case you didn’t know, MSN have recently issued a new Patent about duplicate entries on one search page.  The first thing that springs to mind is that any page that’s listed in the organic with multiple entries, like www.domain.com Vs. www.domain.com/index.html, it would be perfectly fine for MSN to do this.  However as Bill posted at Search Engine Land is that it does not specify if this Patent is going to affect the organic side of things , the PPC side of things or scarily still, both.

Now what that could mean is that if you have a PPC ad with Adcenter and have a good organic listing in MSN, your organic could be thrown out of the window because you have a PPC ad.   So you can’t truely dominate the SERP’s if the latter does come true and will hurt advertisers and will screw over MSN in the long run I reckon.

Now, if the latter does come true, there’s a very obvious exploit already in this new Patent.  If Organic listings are getting banned (they may only get pushed down, you never know) when you have a PPC ad on the same SERP’s page, why not make ads for your competition!  Dunno about the rest of you but I’d quite happily pay pence to see a competitor say bye bye to there organic listing.

When I loaded up my computer this morning I was greeted with the usual Windows WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) so I clicked the X and carried on. I opened up firefox expecting to find Google and my personalised page with my news feeds on it. Instead I was forwarded onto this very strange screen

Now am I reading that right!? a Firefox extension from Microsoft for thier WGA thing? Wow thanks Microsoft, not only can you annoy me VIA the start bar, but you can now also bug me while I’m browsing the internet! This ain’t right

Well, Microsoft are certainly taking a different step to help market Live.com. Instead of the norm they’ve made a cool little site called Ms. Dewey, and what’s special about it is the rather attractive lady who practically mocks you as you search. Doesn’t help you search just distracts you (a lot) and the search results are shown on a continuous scroll rather than page by page so it’s irritating

I did a few searches and she said that I must be having a stroke because only one hand was working or I’m just retarded and she called me thick! good to know what Microsoft thinks of it’s users