Powerful new search tool

A beta of the new MSN Search tool is now available. The current index is over 5 billion pages. Cached search results (much like you may have seen at Google) are also provided. So what's different? Check out the "Near Me" button. The Near Me button enables a local search of your query (currently only for the U.S., but this will be expanded). (The browser's IP is used to determine your current location.) A wizard for advanced queries is available using the "Search Builder" button. There is also a results ranking tool to tune the accuracy of search matches, freshness and popularity of the result sets. A settings button allows you to further tune # of hits, etc. A desktop search tool is also planned but is not yet available.

Is it a Google killer? Not yet. Remember this is a beta and more exciting stuff is coming soon (some of it based upon the pioneering work of MS Research). Go ahead and give it a try.

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 11, 2004
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  November 11, 2004
  I heard the spider part needs a lot improvement, small website admins are complaing on slashdot about msn bot download 1G of content daily, actually it's downloading all the same pages the next day, even worse, it might download same page or 404 pages many many times so they had to block msn bots...
• Anonymous
  November 11, 2004
  Uwe: I'm sure you're a medical student doing some research - check the Settings button.
  
  timts: I checked Slashdot but didn't see the posts you mentioned. This is a beta launch - there are lots of opportunities to provide feedback (see the search results pages for more info).