MSN unveils new search in India

Mumbai: There's a formidable new challenger to the search engine crown. MSN has launched its new search engine in India, having unveiled it globally on February 1, 2005. Built from scratch by Microsoft, unlike MSN's earlier search facility, the company claims the new search engine will help consumers find quicker and more precise answers than through existing services.

Now available in 25 markets and 10 languages, the search engine features a collection of tools designed to make it easier to target and refine searches.

The new search page is lighter and more user-friendly than its old avatar and features a useful search builder tool that allows users to fine-tune their searches even from the home page. One innovative feature of this tool is the ability to use slide-bars to choose the levels of up-to-dateness, popularity and exactness desired in the results.

The search engine indexes around 5 billion web documents and the index is updated every two days, which is more frequent than what the company claims is the industry standard — two weeks.

It also dips into a variety of other information resources to offer more relevant links. Its news search pulls the latest news from over 4800 news sources over the internet. Its image search facility searches a 400-million image collection pulled together by MSN and US users can look for and purchase music from MSN Music.

Perhaps more useful than any of these specialised sources is the ability to search Encarta, Microsoft's best-selling encyclopaedia, and find exact answers to a wide variety of questions, including those to do with mathematical equations, dictionary definitions and unit conversions.

Another useful feature that is currently only offered to US users is the 'search near me' facility that narrows search results to those that originate from locations close to the user — handy if you're looking for, say, a restaurant or a hospital.

According to Krishna Prasad, head of programming, MSN India, "We're working towards introducing this feature in India, but the nature of the Indian market ecosystem makes this difficult because not too many shops and establishments have websites."

One big asset Google and Yahoo, the two most popular of the current search engines, have is a catchy name — something that gives them the top-of-the-mind recall advantage. "We're aware of this and are not only trying to pick up more interesting domain names that are easier to remember, but also throwing a lot of marketing weight into building the brand," says Rajnish, head of marketing and strategic business initiatives, MSN India. "Besides, in our experience, people don't stick to one search engine and usually try out more than one when they're looking for something."

The company says we can expect more from MSN Search in the coming months. "Going forward, you'll see a lot more innovation from Microsoft. We believe there is a lot more that can be done," says Rajnish.