Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Applications
    • Applications

    MSN Altering Paid Search Listings

    By
    Matthew Hicks
    -
    March 19, 2004
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      Microsoft Corp. next week will announce a series of changes to its MSN Search site that further separate paid search listings from Web results.

      The companys MSN group plans to launch the changes on July 1. MSN Search will place fewer sponsored link ads at the top of search results to ensure that non-paid Web search results appear higher up on the results page, said Lisa Gurry, director of MSN. To achieve the goal, MSN is limiting to three, rather than four, the number of paid links that appear atop Web results in a section it calls MSNs Search Featured Sites.

      MSN will share the changes with the 400 marketers and advertisers planning to gather next week at its Redmond, Wash., offices for its Strategic Account Summit.

      “Were making it easy to distinguish between what is a paid link and an unpaid link,” Gurry said. “And were putting algorithmic results in the top half of results 100 percent of the time.”

      MSN sells it own search advertisements and contracts with Yahoo Inc.s Overture Services division for sponsored listings. The Search Featured Sites will be predominantly MSN-sold paid links, while Overture results will fill the paid links designated for the right-hand column of the search results page.

      MSN also will tweak the look and feel of the search results page to better distinguish listings, including adding a shaded background to the sponsored links, Gurry said.

      The changes to search ads wont affect the unpaid Web results, which MSN draws from Inktomi, now part of Yahoos revamped search engine. Yahoo has faced some criticism for a program launched earlier this month that lets Web sites pay to be included in its Web search index, though it has maintained that its algorithm gives equal weight to paid inclusion and organically crawled Web pages.

      MSNs changes will not alter the paid-inclusion Web search listings it gets from its Yahoo partnership, a spokeswoman said.

      The Federal Trade Commission also has weighed in on the issue of paid listings, suggesting that they be clearly labeled as separate from non-paid Web search results.

      /zimages/4/28571.gifClick here to read more about the debate over paid inclusion the dominated the recent Search Engine Strategies conference.

      MSNs paid-listing changes were one part of an MSN Search beta, which MSN has been testing with a limited number of users since the fall. Gurry said that MSN is developing its own algorithmic Web search engine to launch later this year but declined to offer further details on it. Last June, MSN began crawling the Web with its MSNBot.

      /zimages/4/28571.gifCheck out eWEEK.coms Enterprise Applications Center at http://enterpriseapps.eweek.com for the latest news, reviews, analysis and opinion about productivity and business solutions.
      Be sure to add our eWEEK.com enterprise applications news feed to your RSS newsreader or My Yahoo page: http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/my/addtomyyahoo2.gif

      Avatar
      Matthew Hicks
      As an online reporter for eWEEK.com, Matt Hicks covers the fast-changing developments in Internet technologies. His coverage includes the growing field of Web conferencing software and services. With eight years as a business and technology journalist, Matt has gained insight into the market strategies of IT vendors as well as the needs of enterprise IT managers. He joined Ziff Davis in 1999 as a staff writer for the former Strategies section of eWEEK, where he wrote in-depth features about corporate strategies for e-business and enterprise software. In 2002, he moved to the News department at the magazine as a senior writer specializing in coverage of database software and enterprise networking. Later that year Matt started a yearlong fellowship in Washington, DC, after being awarded an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship for Journalist. As a fellow, he spent nine months working on policy issues, including technology policy, in for a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He rejoined Ziff Davis in August 2003 as a reporter dedicated to online coverage for eWEEK.com. Along with Web conferencing, he follows search engines, Web browsers, speech technology and the Internet domain-naming system.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×