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
2 Comments
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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[…] spam is because MSN is trying very hard to get people to use MSN Live Search, even to the point of buying Google AdWords. Every time you click through your logs to MSN Live Search, it boosts Live.com’s traffic […]