Microsoft Employees - Which Search Engine Do you REALLY Use????

http://andrewhitchcock.org/companystats/

http://www.blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-06-19-n38.html



How accurate are these Stats from Your Experiences?

Please be frank?

I expect that you'll find the majority of Microsoft employees frequently use Google as their primary search engine, which is a pity.

I hope they would use all the available search engines, not just a Microsoft branded search like MSN or Windows Live, or just Google. 

There are also ways to internally use multiple search engines for a given query and then give feedback as to why one was better/worse than another and way.

BTW, IE7 makes using multiple providers easy with inline search and support for OpenSearch-based search providers, search provider discovery, and the "Find More Providers" link in the search dropdown.  No need to visit a search engine page with IE7.

Yes, the Search Providers in conjunction with tabs are very useful.  I compare the results between MSN Search and Google a lot.  I refer to Google for old hacks though, like when I need T-SQL syntax I go to google and search for coalesce, then I know a link to MSDN will show up.  I really like the image search interface for Live, though, that's really growing on me.

BruceMorgan wrote:

BTW, IE7 makes using multiple providers easy with inline search and support for OpenSearch-based search providers, search provider discovery, and the "Find More Providers" link in the search dropdown.  No need to visit a search engine page with IE7.

I seem to recall a conversation where [You? DMassy? Someone else?] regretted that launching multiple searches from the Search Bar at once was cut for IE7 and might be implemented in the future.

Am I remembering correctly?
It could be a great feature for side-by-side comparisons.

IE 7's search box is great. The only two criticisms I can come up with are that CTRL-A doesn't work, and that if you click the search button with nothing in the box, it doesn't launch the search page (which is totally understandable, but inconvenient for the way I browse).

We've seen a lot of employee feedback that says many are making the switch to MSN (or live). 

My homepages are either live.com or search.msn.com.  If I find something I don't like, I provide feedback.

If MS employees want to try Google first, I would really encourage you to try http://searchoff.  This will show Google and MSN results side by side and allow voting/feedback.

littleguru wrote:

Bruce, is there actually a way to open a new tab when using the search box? I find it a little bit annoying that the search results are displayed in the same tab...

I very rarly use the search box because of the current implementation.

[Alt]+[Enter]

BruceMorgan wrote:

use multiple search engines for a given query

Shameless plug: "find" favelet to accomplish the above

Manip wrote:



IE 7's search box is great. The only two criticisms I can come up with are that CTRL-A doesn't work, and that if you click the search button with nothing in the box, it doesn't launch the search page (which is totally understandable, but inconvenient for the way I browse).

In the upcoming IE7 Beta 3, Ctrl+A works in both the search box and address bar.

But clicking the button with an empty search edit control still does nothing - by design.

The IE7 search toolbar is great and I like the way that new search providers can be added.  If you visit OpenSearch Add searches to IE7 then you can customize and add your own searches.  Or browse through the several hundred already created.

I remember a site from around about 1996 that allowed you to search and brought back hits from 4 different search engines - the novelty was okay, but maybe that might be useful to you if you don't trust one particular engine? 

I am trying LiveSearch (from AllTheWeb) at the mo.... I remember when their fast search engine really was one of the fastest ..

As Matthew said, samples that low are pretty much useless.

I use live.com as my normal home page and use the IE7 search box (pointing to Windows Live as default but with many other providers defined) to do all my searches.

That said, more and more of my searches are via this thing...



(more info here)