Definition of MSN: What is MSN (Microsoft Network)

MSN stands for Microsoft Network, Microsoft’s answer to America Online’s service.

How MSN is invented? The History of MSN

The Microsoft Network (MSN) was started in combination with Windows 95 operating system on August 24, 1995, but has gradually tracked AOL in popularity in spite of Microsoft’s supremacy of the PC software business. MSN has not broken 10 million members, compared to AOL’s 30 million.

MSN Organic Results

MSN Search (www.msn.com) is ranked third in the search contest by most counts, with about 14 percent of all searches worldwide, but Microsoft has long tried to increase its share of searches. When we talk about MSN Organic results, these are really tremendous and approximately the results matching to the quires given by the searchers. MSN Search like most other competitors returns both organic results as well as variations of paid listings. MSN has versatility in its results while displaying websites on given search. MSN follows and welcome to newer website and get them in its index and greatly contribute in web promotion business. Therefore, it has great attraction from Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Experts.

MSN always Contributes in New Technologies

Microsoft introduced new technology for MSN search in early 2005, and is rumored to be developing a new search facility built in to a future version of the Windows, operating system. Windows users would then be able to search their own computer, their company’s servers, and the Internet within the same search.

Today's MSN

Today’s MSN Search, in contrast, looks a lot like the others search engines and dealing in both organic and paid listings.

MSN for Search Marketers

Worldwide search marketers must focus on MSN Search because of the sizeable number of visits you can attract to your site – 14 percent of all searches. MSN currently uses its own technology for organic search syndications Yahoo!’s Precision Match technology for its paid search.

MSN: Microsoft Adwords and Adsense Center

Similarly to Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter uses both the maximum amount an advertiser is willing to pay per click (PPC) on their ad and the advertisement's click-through rate (CTR) to determine how frequently an advertisement is shown. This system encourages advertisers to write effective ads and to advertise only on searches which are relevant to their advertisement.

Microsoft adCenter allows advertisers to target their ads by restricting their ads to a given set of demographics and by increasing their bids whenever the ad is seen by a user of a certain demographic. As of November 2006, no other PPC advertising system has a similar feature.

Similarly, adCenter allows advertisers to run their ads on specific days of the week or certain times of day.Microsoft adCenter provides both UI and Web service API front end to advertisers, both are built on Microsoft .Net 2.0 framework.

Microsoft was the last of the "Big Three" search engines (Microsoft, Google and Yahoo!) to develop its own system for delivering pay per click (PPC) ads. Until the beginning of 2006, all of the ads displayed on the MSN search engine were supplied by Overture (and later Yahoo!). MSN collected a portion of the ad revenue in return for displaying Yahoo!'s ads on its search engine.

As search marketing grew, Microsoft began developing its own system, Microsoft adCenter, for selling PPC advertisements directly to advertisers. As the system was phased in, MSN search showed Yahoo! and Microsoft adCenter advertising in its search results. As of June 2006, the contract between Yahoo! and Microsoft has expired and Microsoft is displaying only ads from adCenter.
In May 2007, Microsoft agreed to purchase the digital marketing solutions parent company, aQuantive, for roughly $6 billion.

MSN Interactive Services

MSN is providing its interactive services just like other search engines but has slight difference while contributing its services to the end users. Following are the known services:

• Hotmail, Messenger
• MSN Live Search
• MSN Directory
• Air Tickets and Travel Services
• Yellow Pages Services
• Maps and Routing Services
• Shopping and Real Estate Services
• And Many more….

Sources

• Wikipedia.
• Search Engine Marketing Inc.