Months ago, Microsoft announced its intentions to get serious about MSN Search, potentially breaking its dependency on LookSmart. It seems they have overcome one of the initial challenges by developing a new web crawler.
1. What is MSNBOT?
MSNBOT is a prototype Web crawler robot developed by MSN Search. The robot is a software program that traverses Web pages on a site, downloads the documents for indexing, and follows the referenced hyperlinks.
2. Once MSNBOT crawls my site, will my site show up in the search results on MSN Search?
This crawl is part of a prototype project. MSNBOT is not currently indexing for the MSN Search Engine, so your site may or may not appear in MSN Search results today. Although no specific date has been set, the intention is to eventually integrate the crawled contents into MSN Search results.
3. Why did you crawl my site; what is the purpose of your crawler?
MSNBOT indexes documents on the Internet so that they can be analyzed and used for applications like Web search engines.
Links on MSNBOT:
Microsoft’s Explanation
AlwaysOn Blog Discussion
