Google vs MSN - My view

Both the Google and Msn engines have their good and bad points, but the major plus for Google is that they already have a huge userbase searching regulary on their engine and the majority of those searchers are happy with the results. To best compare the two engines and their current state of play I've split each of them into positives / negatives. Follow the title link above for the full post

Google's Positives

• Powers a huge amount of searches
• Average Joe searcher happy with results
• Incredibly fast searches
• Good organic to paid result ratio
• Super clean layout
• 'Do No Evil' reputation
• Their own PPC (pay per click advertising) program
• Large cash bukcet from the IPO to throw things at
• Bringing 'stickyness' to the site via Gmail, Google News and Froogle
• Breaking new grounds in technology and ideas to search and the internet as a whole

Google's Negatives

• Webmasters are getting impatient and disgruntled as Google's apparent lack of interest in search
• Reputation taken a downfall post IPO (been said to just be interested in making money and nothing else)
• Time taken for Google to rank a new site increased exponentially (sandbox)
• Affiliate sites taking over the rankings for even highly competive terms
• Directories flooding the results are getting a HUGE problem
• Link buying to manipulate Pagerank system
• The word beta, I estimate 70% of Google has beta plastered over it (some even had it for years)

Msn's Positives

• So much money to spend advertising it's scary and they will spend it
• Got users by the OS, can implement the search engine to the desktop via Longhorn
• Result's dont look too shoddy
• Faster indexing compared to Google
• No sandbox or whatever you want to call it
• Allready has a large'ish user base from Msn.com but not many search
• Quite a sleak design on search page (search.msn.com)
• 'Near me' technology is a great achievement and is very useful
• More results than Google on most searches
• Faster searches than Google (I've done tests)
• Promises to bring a new era in search with new technology coming soon

Msn's Negatives

• They have one of the worst reputations on the net
• Manipulating the rankings to your gain can be easily achieved by doing a little research
• Search.msn.com is not as catchy as Google.com
• Bad organic to paid result ratio
• PPC results above organic results (huge no no)
• Nothing really new compared to other engines (they really need this)

As you can probably see I currently do prefer Google to the Msn search engine but I see great things coming from Msn and I already do alot of searches on their engine, even if it is mainly because they don't have a sandbox for new sites like Google and I like to find new sites. I see a huge battle on our hands but I got one bit of advice for MSN.... Don't advertise your engine until it's 100% ready, if visitors dont like your results the first time they go there most of them wont come again even if you have improved your algorithm. Competition is always good it keeps the developers on their toes to improve what they already have. Google have been lax this past year or so Msn couldn't have chosen a better time to compete for that crowned top spot.