MSN Search Increases Relevance Focus

[Chris]

What good is a search engine if the results it provides aren’t relevant to the query being performed? The answer? Not much. The largest search index in the world doesn’t amount to much if you don’t have an algorithm that can successfully provide results related to the question being posed.

Because relevance is such an important characteristic, many who study the industry conduct tests and surveys to discover what people consider relevant when it comes to search results.

Evidently, the commitment to relevance is also of great importance to the developers at MSN Search, who recently began using a new method to determine relevance within their search results called the Neural Net. According to Barry at SERoundtable, the Neural Net technology is based on RankNet, a method of relevance ranking being researched by the MSN team.

Findory.com founder Gary Linden came across MSN's research white paper (pdf) discussing this method of determining relevance. The technology is based on the following premise:

We investigate using gradient descent methods for learning ranking functions… and we introduce RankNet, an implementation of these ideas using a neural network to model the underlying ranking function.

This pretty much confuses everyone else as much as it does me. Even Danny Sullivan had a great time deciphering their white paper: “I'd love to give you a one sentence summary of what it does, but so far, that escapes me despite reading the paper several times.”

Danny also feels the RankNet system “recognizes” what is a good result and what is not and ranks them accordingly. He also admits that this line of thinking may come from him misunderstanding their pdf.

While the white paper is quite dense, their use of the Neural Net has already paid dividends, at least in Japanese field tests and other examples provided on the MSN Search blog. Although they do not provide in-depth details about their technology, the post does say the developers at MSN Search are obsessed about relevance and the Neural Net technology should be an indication they are committed to improving the user experience.

To illustrate their technology in action, the blog entry explains how queries about PBS evolution videos have seen relevance improvements in a measurable way. Before they integrated their Neural Net, the first position result was not completely relevant to the search (i.e., PBS did not have the top spot as it should). However, since the integration, the PBS website now holds the first position for the query in question.

Not only has MSN Search made strides to improve their result relevance, they’ve also introduced some new search commands that will assist users on refining their searches. According to their blog entry, the following commands have been added (complete with descriptions explaining how they work):

FileType: one of the most asked for operators, which restricts documents to a particular filetype.

InAnchor:, InURL:, InTitle:, and InBody: available to find keywords in a particular part of the document, or in anchor text pointing to a document.

Augmented the Link: keyword that finds documents that link to a particular page with LinkDomain:<domain>, which finds documents that point to any page in a domain.

Contains: returns documents that contain hyperlinks to documents with a particular file extension (contains:wma returns documents that contain a link to a WMA file).

With their commitment to search relevance and the ability for users to refine their searches using a number of search commands, it certainly appears as if MSN Search is committed to providing as complete a search experience as possible. Does this new relevance algorithm affect how site owners will approach optimizing their work for MSN Search? When you consider the fact that the MSN Search results will inevitably be altered and rankings will be changed, perhaps it will. Although, exactly which SEO measures can be taken, besides ensuring your site content is relevant to your targeted keywords, is uncertain.

It’s probably wise to give the new ranking algorithm some time to take hold first.

[flood6]

The comments at the MSN Blog mention the Inurl command not working quite as expected. I have also found that the new linkdomain: function not working as expected. For example:

• link:http://www.webproworld.com/ returns about 21,500 results.
• linkdomain:www.webproworld.com returns about 19,000 results
• linkdomain:webproworld.com returns about 19,000

I also tried this with slashdot.com and got similar results where links pointing to the page were greater than those returned for the whole domain. I know for a fact that webproworld and Slashdot must have substantial deep links.

I get similar results using Yahoo's "link:" and "linkdomain:" functions; home pages show more links than domain links.

Is anyone else seeing this or have I just seen bad examples so far?

[Chris]

flood, if i remember correctly, i think i saw something from danny sullivan saying a couple of these were offline at the moment, but i cannot seem to find it. :/

[cancuncd]

You can test the MSN search algorithm:
search " Microsoft Antispyware " and you cant find the Microsoft site to download, search the same on Google and its the first answer : the microsoft site.
Do you trust on a search engine that cant put on first position an owned site?
Can you trust on it?
Eduardo Mexico

[flood6]

Originally Posted by cancuncd

You can test the MSN search algorithm:
search " Microsoft Antispyware " and you cant find the Microsoft site to download, search the same on Google and its the first answer : the microsoft site.

I get the same #1 result in Gooogle and MSN; a Microsoft Antispyware page.

[Clint1]

Originally Posted by flood6

I get the same #1 result in Gooogle and MSN; a Microsoft Antispyware page.

MSN like Google, probably or may have a hundred DC's (DataCenters). In Google, you can enter any of these dozens and dozens of IP's in the address bar and get to the Google.com homepage, each one having different SERP's. Google.com can resolve to any of these IP's at any given time, and also depend on your geo location. Could be the same with MSN, however I've noticed over the past few days I can get different MSN results seconds apart. Obviously this change is being implemented now.

One of my sites got removed from MSN, and about 3-4 days later it was back where it was.

[Artyom]

I see it's pretty much like designing a super sonic jet. When you test a new jet model at wind tunnel basically you get the same curves for your plan:-) I mean MSN follows Google path, now they take into consideration things similar to GG Local PageRank (comparing SERPs with each other) and using its logs to see on what actually people click. I will not be surprise if soon we'll hear about MSN program similar to 'Google's Secret Evaluation Lab':-)

[Artyom]

Originally Posted by Clint1

MSN like Google, probably or may have a hundred DC's (DataCenters). In Google, you can enter any of these dozens and dozens of IP's in the address bar and get to the Google.com homepage, each one having different SERP's. Google.com can resolve to any of these IP's at any given time, and also depend on your geo location. Could be the same with MSN, however I've noticed over the past few days I can get different MSN results seconds apart. Obviously this change is being implemented now.

One of my sites got removed from MSN, and about 3-4 days later it was back where it was.

1000% agree, but what's the point to show somebody at US Microsoft company corp site for "Microsoft Antispyware" and do not do the same for somebody, let's say, at...Eastern Europe:-)

[jxw]

In early May, there was a discussion about relevance that got bogged down on use of the word "relevancy." I posted the following on May 7:

"I did a quick relevance check a few minutes ago. I typed in "algonquin hotel new york" in both Google and MSN. The actual Algonquin Hotel Web site appeared at the top of page one on Google. On MSN, the page for its restaurant appeared at the top of page two. From there, one can get to the main page for the hotel itself. Isn't the actual site of a business the most relevant? MSN made me wade through a page of travel sites to get to something close to the actual hotel site. While this is not the only test for relevance, it certainly is important."

Today, June 24, I just did the same check for relevance on MSN. The Algonquin Hotel site is now the first lising. Maybe MSN has actually done something here.

Jeff W.
www.matchbookreview.com