How MSN.com Search Results Will be Affected

The search box on MSN.com returns a combination of paid, editor-selected, and algorithmic search results.

This illustration shows results for a search on the term investments at the U.S. version of MSN.com. The results are divided into several categories, which always appear in the following order:

“Featured Sites” includes major MSN.com advertisers, such as SAFECO, and other MSN sites, such as MSN Money.

“Sponsored Sites” consists of paid results provided by Overture. Usually, the highest bidder for a particular search term gains the most prominent placement in these results, but Microsoft reserves the right not to display Overture listings for certain reasons, such as when a Sponsored Site would compete with a Featured Site in the same set of results. In addition, Microsoft might not display any Sponsored Sites for a search term that is entered by users fewer than 50,000 times a month.

Today, “Web Directory Sites” is the largest category, extending well beyond the limits of this illustration, and it consists of paid results from LookSmart, sites selected by volunteer editors at LookSmart subsidiary Zeal, and sites selected by MSN.com editors. Within this category, order is determined by an undisclosed MSN.com algorithm, and Microsoft claims to give no favoritism to paid results. However, when LookSmart’s contracts to provide search results for MSN end, this category will disappear.