A posting on the MSN Search forum at WebmasterWorld seeks feedback on user issues with the MSN search engine.

What’s wrong with MSN Search? In the aforementioned forum, one poster ostensibly from MSN has requested feedback on the problems faced by search users on Microsoft’s portal site:

…there are other folks that seem to say MSN Search is no good. That may be fair feedback, however, would love to get some ideas on where we need to improve most — is it spam, relevance or another area altogether?
Spam definitely gets some votes in the thread, with one post from user ‘gomer’ being an example:

I sincerely wish anyone else the best of luck with reporting spam.

In defense of MSN Search, they ignore spam reports just the same way as the other major search engines do. Too bad, they are missing an opportunity to be truly different – and in my opionion (sic), they need something that sets them apart.
Other users noted little in the way of indexing, such as a post from ‘wingslevel’:

yes, i would like to add my hat to the “improve spidering” task as most important for msn. the results that are there are very good, just need more. of my 3 main sites (40,000 to 75,000 pages), msn seems to have between 6 and 9 % indexed.
Whatever the opinion, a Microsoft strength always has been that it listens to users. They may include features in something like Office that few will use, but they get included because someone asked for it. With the company hiring ad-related managers and ramping up its ad network, MSN should be worth watching.

David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.