MSN LiveSearch

I like that you’re trying to change search, but you got a few things wrong… let me explain.

1. It’s called live search, but it’s not live. Where’s the AJAX auto suggest like google has to help with my search?

2. You broke my scrollbar. No matter what program I open, the scrollbar always works the same: I can slide it and it lets me know how far up or down in the document I am.

Don’t change what a user expects. When I see a button, I want to push it. A handle? I pull. A scrollbar, I scroll. Try going to result number 200, then tell me how I get back to result number 1 quickly without re-searching for it? I can’t.

3. Your ads are cut off. I know they scroll with every 10 results, but it took me about 15 searches to figure that out, the average user won’t figure that out at all, and seeing cut-off ads makes you look very unprofessional.

4. It’s still not relevant. I like that you give importance to new sites, but you’re still not as relevant as Google. Search for “cds” on Google and the top result is a place where I can buy music. On MSN, I can learn about investing. What do you think is the more common definition of “cd” worldwide?

The new features are nice and pretty, but that’s all they are. I’m sure the marketing department loves them, but the average searcher probably just scratched their head while clicking on over to Google.

It’s not the interface that matters, it’s the results I get back that I care about. Keep on the “fresh web pages” and lack of sandbox.. you got that right, but don’t screw with my scrollbars.

March 9th, 2006