Technical pros impressed with MSDN & TechNet Search

re: Technical pros impressed with MSDN & TechNet Search

HomeroOM — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:37:49 GMT

But the forums doesn't have a good print feature until now!

re: Technical pros impressed with MSDN & TechNet Search

Roger Dawson — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:23:09 GMT

About time! Since Microsoft in their wisdom has not, in most cases, never assigned error numbers to error messages. Searching with the text of an error message resulted in pages of irrelevant associations.

re: Technical pros impressed with MSDN & TechNet Search

Mr. X — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:52:19 GMT

More than once, I have searched Microsoft's web site for a Windows error message using Microsoft's search engine and gotten "*no* hits, but when I searched the same site using Google, there *were* hits. This is equivalent to a 1500 meter runner being disqualified in the first 100 meters. It was *game over* before Microsoft got out of the blocks.

I really have two major issues with using Microsoft's engine to search a Microsoft web site:

#1. It is (or was) a lousy search engine.

#2. Microsoft doesn't document all their error messages at their web site. For any support person, this is a real aggravation.

At least they now do spell-check and make suggestions, even being so bold as to auto-correct a spelling and search on that without asking.

I just searched on my name at the Live site and got 5130 hits, but at the Google site I receiveed over 14,000 hits. Is Microsoft weeding out duplicates or is Google twice as good? Who knows?

Microsoft reminds me, at times, of the American car companies. They have used up so much goodwill over the years, that my interest level in them is non-existent or least veru small. I have been burned too many times by them.

Mr. X

re: Technical pros impressed with MSDN & TechNet Search

cslemp — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:48:49 GMT

Mr. X - appreciate the candor in your feedback, but I'd love to hear some examples of that kind of disparity between Google and MSDN Search today.

The only thing I'll say to attempt to win you back isn't that I think Google won't get you good results, but that MSDN Search should get you as good or better results more efficiently because of the features we've built in that are designed specifically for technical searches of our content.

As to the error messages comment, that's an issue we've been hammering on for some time, and without going into the gory details, we've finally got Live Search indexing more error message content.

So once again, while I understand the "used-up goodwill" comment, I'd just ask you to give us another try, and come back with some examples if you get no joy.

re: Technical pros impressed with MSDN & TechNet Search

TD — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:20:45 GMT

Your search engine doesn't work very well as google or others because when you try to register a website to your engine - it never picks it up. I have even uploaded a site map for your organization to use and you still don't pick up our website. Our website is a financial institution and I have submitted over and over again for more than 6 months trying to get registered in your search engine. My admin page shows that you can see our website and I can even see you look at our website. I have never had any issues registering with any other search engine and our site is always on the first page when searching.

I give up on live search, it doesn't work well probably for that reason in particular.

re: Technical pros impressed with MSDN & TechNet Search

cslemp — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:29:15 GMT

TD, I'd like to clear something up, not to make excuses or minimize your concern, but because many people seem to be under the impression that my team owns Live Search. We don't. We've built a custom search engine for MSDN and TechNet using the Live Search API, just as any of you can do. What sites are picked up by the Live Search index is up to the Live team. Granted, being inside of MSFT, our team has a little more pull with them to get our stuff indexed in a timely way, but not as much pull as you'd think :)

If you have feedback for the Live Search team on their indexing of your site, I'd encourage you to submit it here https://feedback.live.com/default.aspx?productkey=wlsearch or leave a comment on their blog here http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/

Thanks for the comment, though, and please keep talking to us! Any feedback on MSDN Search? Would love to hear it...

re: Technical pros impressed with MSDN & TechNet Search

TD — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 02:21:32 GMT

Sure I can certain post on another board, just pointing out a main breakdown. Even though you don't 'do' that part your departments have to work together. To me, it is one of the major malfunctions and if one isn't working - it doesn't matter how good your search engine is. The entire picture needs to be looked at.

I certainly like the improvements of the search page itself:) The drop down as you type selection is nice.

http://mikepope.com/blog/addcomment.aspx?blogid=2015

TrackBack — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:03:08 GMT

MSDN FLASH IRELAND - INTERNATIONAL RESOURCES - 3 September 2008

Microsoft Ireland Blog — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:50:55 GMT

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http://blogs.technet.com/johmar/archive/2008/08/13/new-and-improved-msdn-and-technet-search-impresses-devs-and-it-pros.aspx

TrackBack — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:52:37 GMT

http://blogs.msdn.com/msdnsearchblog/archive/2008/02/19/more-details-on-msdn-technet-search-3-0.aspx

TrackBack — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:53:21 GMT

http://blogs.technet.com/techblog/archive/2008/08/13/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-the-improved-msdn-technet-search.aspx

TrackBack — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:54:41 GMT

http://blogs.msdn.com/allandcp/archive/2008/08/17/evil-laughter-and-msdn-search.aspx

TrackBack — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:55:04 GMT

http://tiredblogger.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/review-msdn-enhanced-search/

TrackBack — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:55:18 GMT

http://blogs.technet.com/port80/archive/2008/08/13/speaking-of-technet-msdn-search.aspx

TrackBack — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:55:35 GMT

MSDN and TechNet Search: now more refined...

Chris.blog.Microsoft — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:17:54 GMT

Several months ago, we did a deep-dive on MSDN and TechNet search with a dozen users . They were generally