Is MSNBOT Active?

[sri_gan]

Is MSNBOT active?

If so, Where do we need to submit domains other than paid Inclusions?

[ihelpyou]

Yeah, it's active but you cannot submit to it. It's in beta mode. Besides, no one can submit to MSN at all, not even paid.

[Bernard]

Just to be clear, MSNBOT is a spider. It is actively doing its thing crawling the web.

MSNBOT is not a search engine. You cannot go to MSNBOT.com and search for anything.

MSNBOT is part of Microsoft's initiative to build a new search engine, but crawling the web is only a small part of a complete search engine.

[sri_gan]

Hi Doug and Bernard,

Thanks for the information.

It was active in June for bit then it stopped.

I captured the following.

http://search.msn.com/MSNBOT.htm

In this page I found the below detail:

How can I submit my page to be indexed in MSN Search?

MSNBOT is not feeding directly to MSN Search at this time.
However, you can submit a URL to: http://listings.looksmart.com/home/sbl/index.jhtml


It goes to looksmart paid Index (never been a productive Index till now).

Thats why i wanted to know if there is any location MSN openly announced like a regular crawler based SE.

[ihelpyou]

It's always been that way ever since Looksmart screwed all of us and became a PPC directory.

[Bernard]

Originally posted by sri_gan
Thats why i wanted to know if there is any location MSN openly announced like a regular crawler based SE.

Not that I am aware of. They have hinted that they are working on one, but no formal announcement that I know of.

I have read a lot of speculation / rumors that Microsoft is really trying to intgrate a PC & internet search facility into the next Windows version (Longhorn). They want to trump all the search engines by making browsing unnecessary. At least, that's the rumor. The latest Business 2.0 print magazine has a 2 page article on this in the September issue.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by Bernard
[B]Not that I am aware of. They have hinted that they are working on one, but no formal announcement that I know of.Not formal but there have been some hints about from Reps at MSN and developers of the new platform in a few recent articles. I don't believe the integration into the OS will be much different then the way the IE browser interfaces to MSN.

IMO, the smart marketing boys at M$ see the OS integration as further leveraging of their products to the MSN Engine. I believe you will also see direct submission and page tracking(position data) through FrontPage. There have been a recent proliferation of FP addins that are SEO related!

[sri_gan]

I had a glimpse before that they might mix their crawler to OS and it looks like they would.

If MSN integrates submission to Frontpage, I think it will become a complete web publishing software really they are M$ :) .

They could add this feature into Visual Studio also.

I saw one more thing, In The Washington Times with a topic

http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030820-080615-5377r.htm

Excerpt is:

"Analysts say rival Microsoft MSN must weigh whether acquiring Google or Yahoo might be the surest way to remain a contender in the crucial Web search space, USA Today said. "

This yr. is full of big purchases.