MSN
The MSN engine performed well in testing -- with one notable exception. It provides extensive ways to refine searches and generates, on the average, more relevant results than other popular engines. Unfortunately, its tool for excluding pages containing particular words is broken.
MSN's advanced search tools mirror those of HotBot's. You can perform wildcard and Boolean queries. The scope of each query is easily limited by restricting results to sites that, for instance, contain certain file types and reside within a particular domain. And unlike with HotBot, you can readily save your searches and return to them later.
One complaint: When you input a query, MSN first gives a list of featured sites from MSN or MSN sponsors. Sponsors often pay to be included on this list, but it still typically includes relevant responses. Following the featured sites are lists of matches from the MSN Web directory and popular matches from the Web at large. The directory results are helpful for general searches, and the Web matches are unusually good as well. It is all the more disappointing that the engine's word-exclusion feature doesn't seem to work; a search for dead-grateful yields, as its first result, http://grateful.dead.net.
Direct Link: MSN
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