While searching for the keyword blog in Google today I noticed that MSN’s Live.com was buying Adwords.

Here is a closeup of the ad:

I was curious about what MSN might be advertising so I clicked on the ad. It took me to the MSN Search results for the query what is a blog:

Here is a closeup:

It seems like an act of desperation for MSN to buy Google Adwords for MSN’s own SERPs. The ad didn’t even take me to Live.com, but to the URL http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=what+is+a+blog&FORM=SEMTC3&vendor=google&pkw=what+is+a+blog
It seems like a great way to communicate to Google users, “Hey, our search results are better than these. Check us out!” I’ve given up on non-google search engines, though I wish someone would come along and challenge them. I tried setting my new laptops homepage to live.com and quickly punted to google so I could actually find stuff.
I don’t think the method of advertising is poor. They need to have a killer SE before doing it though (IMHO)
It’s almost like their own form of Arbitrage. I think they should banned too.
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