Let's help the MSN team.

If you are reading this, chances are you have good SERP positioning on the beta and are awaiting the release or any scrap of information about the release timing.

Same here.

As we wait, eat soup, max out the credit cards and make the hard decisions of which cable package to drop, why not help MSN with any remaining bugs ?

Personally, I have only noticed a couple minor changes to the SERP format since the move from Tech Preview to Beta.

1. They fixed the page number problem on pages 2+
2. Added the cache date to some cached pages.

And the only problem remaining I see is the total number of results decreases when drilling down through the results of a search. Speed is good, results are relevant, ads work, infinitely better than Y!, up-time is good, even a beta home page (http://www.msn.com/defaultpf.armx) that is updated multi-daily.

The question is.... What is the problem???

If there are problems that would prevent a roll out, post them. Help the developers.

To the MSN development team:
With the voracious appetite of the MSNBot (1 gig last month) it would be nice to know if this engine is going live any time soon.

hehe, same here.
I think there is one problem left. The problem is called SERPs. It's just easy to fool with seo. Maybe they know about it and they are trying to change it.

As I have said, I think they are slowly moving the SERPS from one too another. I don't think you will see anymajor changes in Algo from what you see now until official launch.

Odd that you say that today.

One of my site/keyphrase combos that has been steady in the beta since it's release just dropped of the charts today from #4 of a heavy competitive term.

Either they implemented an alt tag weight change (image laden page) or they don't like me anymore.:-(

Where would I submit to find out if I have violated msn's beta guidelines?

I was hoping that I would get the release of the MSN search engine for Christmas.

Well that did not happen, maybe the will release it for Presidents Day.

Although I am not ranking where I would like to be with some of my sites, I must admit the relevancy is extremely good.

Maybe we should start a pool on a release date. My guess is Valentines Day.

I have an excellent listing in MSN...

Where talking very competitive.....

I haven't moved in weeks......

I don't see any changes in Beta.... Only thing I did notice is what seemed to be a slow migration of Beta data into MSN.com

Yea, MSN seems to be doing a good job with relevance.

This is simply Microsoft, they will move back release dates, then move them back again. The bugs may not be what you see on the screen. A search may be taking up too many resources, or bandwidth. Who knows. I'm just interested in how they are going to market to beat Google. A solid affiliate program would do it imho.

i agree. I do think things have moved around a bit in the past month, although results have been very steady since the 1st.

love that msn search

MSN Beta results blow google away for relevancy.

google is too focused on 1) MAXIMIZING revenue from adwords and 2) putting link brokers out of business ..... that they have totaLLY lost sight of what RELEVANCY is ,,,,,,,,

BTW, JoeBob's sig link is a Must Read for all SEOs.