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MSN
MSN Search.
A-Z MSN Services
MSN Search is the search engine for the MSN portal site.
It has a large unique database, query building 'search
builder' and Boolean searching. It has cached copies of
Web pages including date cached, and automatic local
search options.
Weakness: The main weaknesses of MSN search are its
inconsistent availability of truncation and no title,
truncation and stemming. Moreover, multiple search terms
are processed as an AND operation by default. MSN Search
offers full Boolean searching, although the AND is not
needed since it is the default operation. MSN Search
supports Boolean operators AND (or the ampersand symbol
&), OR (or the pipe symbol |), and NOT. Either AND NOT
or NOT can be used. Operators must be in upper case
unless symbols are used. Searching can be nested using
parentheses. MSN Search can also use - for NOT, but
there must be no space between the - and the query term
(Notess, 2005). The plus symbol + seems to make no
difference unless used in front of a stop word. The
Search Builder includes options for has a drop down menu
choice for All of these Term, Any of these Terms, and
None of these Terms. Phrase searching can be designated
by double quotes "" around a search phrase. There is
also an "exact phrase" option in the Search Builder
under Search Terms. This search engine Invokes the
language limit when followed by the two letter language
code. It also specifies a country or region using two
character country or region codes. The Search Builder
makes use of a number of limit options.
Searches can be limited by location/domain or can
exclude a specific domain. MSN can limit by country
and/or region. It can limit results specific file types:
HTML, PDF, PowerPoint, Word, or Excel. Default includes
all these file types. There are 12 language limits as of
March 2005: Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French,
German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese,
Spanish, and Swedish. There is a Safe Search limit for
excluding sexually explicit content. By default, it is
automatically set to exclude sexually explicit images
but not text. MSN will search single stop words like
'the' or 'an', and it will search them within a "phrase
search." However, it will ignore stop words if there are
other non-stop-word terms unless a + is put in front of
the stop word. Results are sorted by relevance. The
display of results includes the title, a brief
keyword-in-context (KWIC) display, the URL, and a link
to the cached copy of the page. A date is sometimes
displayed to the right of the cache link when that page
has been updated in the MSN database recently. MSN
Search displays 10 records at a time, by default. MSN
Search automatically tries to identify a user's location
for the local search. The location can also be changed
by the user through the "settings" link. Then, clicking
the "Near Me" button next to the "Search" button runs a
local search based on the default location.
The new MSN Search makes it easier and faster to find
just what the user wants (Nelson, 2006). With results
from MSN Music, MSN Encarta® and even the user's own
desktop, MSN Search gives the user all the tools he
needs to make the most of his time. The MSN Search
Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search is a collection of
toolbars designed to help the user more efficiently
search the Web and the computer from within Microsoft
Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer, the Windows
taskbar, and Microsoft Outlook. The suite also features
an automatic form fill manager, a pop-up Blocker for
preventing pop-up ads from appearing, and a highlight
feature that highlights search results for you. These
make it special. MSN's core weakness is it has no
audience. It's a catch 22 for MSN, it needs the audience
to win the advertisers to drive its system forwards.
There is no known truncation, stemming, or wild card
word in a phrase capabilities exist. MSN Search has no
case sensitive searching. MSN Search has several field
searching capabilities, but it does not have a title
search, one of the most common options elsewhere. These
are its weaknesses. There are two interesting things to
note about MSN search engine. If there is a keyword rich
paragraph near the top of the page, either in the first
or second paragraph, then the page “may” do well in
search requests for the keywords in that paragraph. MSN
search leads to pages that have links to other sites
with those keywords in the clickable text (Nelson,
2006). Some search tips in using MSN search are: Words
can be prefixed with = to turn them into commands, which
are then stored in history for one-click recall. The
users should Web Type one or more search terms, and then
click Search. The most relevant content is frequently
location specific. When the user is looking for local
events, places, and services on the Web, he must type
the location as part of his search term, and then click
the Local text link to start the search. MSN Search can
be used to search for information in over 35 different
languages.. One must avail of the Search Worldwide page
to learn more about country/region and language search
options. Search Builder option must be used to create
complex searches by combining or excluding terms, by
selecting domains, countries, or regions, or by
selecting the language to perform your search. The user
can Desktop Type the search terms into the search box,
and then click Desktop to find documents in one's own
computer as well as e-mail in Microsoft Office Outlook.
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