MSN Affraid to Launch

Ever since the New MSN Beta has been released I've been scurrying over to the BETA Site to check my rankings like the the little unfortunate brainwashed search child I've become....

I also, like many of you here, got very excited when near January the MSN Beta Link was no-longer red on the homepage and began anticipating a release sometime soon.

Through all of this, I've been researching my serps on Beta from what began to be daily, to bi-daily, to weekly.....

No change what so-ever in about a month.....

Competitive terms too, very competitive...

So - I don't see any serp changes, I don't see and filters being lifted or tailored.

What in the world could they be waiting for. It's got to be something other then a technology factor....

Are they stalling due to increase traffic and brand awareness?
Are they affraid to reveal the new search?

What are they waiting for?
What are we missing?

:-?

I have traveled the almost the identical path. To the point now where I almost do not care about their release.

IMO, with no major shifts in months, they are unable to deliver fast results world-wide.
Yes, they can cookie a few thousand existing beta users from the home page. Big deal.
I think they are concerned with millions of world-wide, simultaneous hits.
After all, their servers are probably running Windows.

I believe they are ramping up their testing.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/webservices/0,39020378,39184379,00.htm

Yes, they're afraid of embarassing mistakes. The last thing as a company you'd want to happen is for some international headlines that say, "MS tries new search engine and flops. Again!" Remember there have been plenty of mistakes like that when they released a new OS or something and even though the bugs are easily fixed, the bad press hurts the reputation.

I'd say they're going to keep testing for weeks to come, that's how they do things.

Too be fair I don't think MSN have ever given a go live date other than to see it will launch when it's ready - which in my view is the right thing to do. I think an expectation grew on this forum and others like it that it was going to be at the start of this month. My guess is that this expectation formed on the basis that people were just extremely eager to see it live because of their good beta serps and nothing else. I'm happy to be corrected on this but I have not seen anything from MSN stating a January release.


Bluesuit

I though I first heard that they were supposed to release before 2005 - then it changed to the begginning of 2005

MSN will launch soon.

msn is showing beta results here in florida

Aint that a wealth of knowledge.

I had actually had a dialogue with a microsoft developer today over email. I sent her an example of some spam and the method that was used and what part of the algo seemed to effect it. I got back a good reply, saying that they are currently tracking alot of things so that they can fix the few current problems. After the exchange, i'm feeling very optimistic.

So far, I'm very happy with the SERPS. on Yahoo and Google, I'm not doing too well -- despite all the crap the board talks about -- backlinks, front links, sideway links, all that crap. I've done enough to satisfy the big "G". Surprisingly on MSN beta, out of 15 million web sites, my web site pops-up for hte most relavant keyword for my web site, I"m SHOCKED! THis can also be said for a handful of other key words as well. I'm happy!

I say it will be ready in about 1 1/2 months or less.

i had this same scenario about a month and a half ago, i changed some things around to move in yahoo, but msn apparently loves on page optimization even more than yahoo. now im pretty high in most of my kws, keep on plugging.