MSN announced today that they will be limiting the use of advanced queries:
For those of you who use some of the advanced query syntax in our search engine such as link:, linkdomain: and inurl:, you may have noticed that this functionality has been recently turned off. We have been seeing broad use of these features by legitimate users but unfortunately also what appears to be mass automated usage for data mining. So for now, we have made the tough call to block all queries with these operators.
Is MSN having difficulty with dealing with large numbers of queries?
The fact of the matter is that MSN is the only engine of the top three, Google and Yahoo being the others, that does not have tools for webmasters to verify information for websites.
Google offers Sitemaps and Yahoo gives webmasters SiteExplorer.
Are they planning on building something new, trying to stop scrapers or not able to handle the amount of searches from users and developers? When will MSN offer tools for webmasters and developers? MSN has been struggling to secure a bigger piece of the search pie, and now they are limiting the super users.
What do you think, should this be a concern for MSN or us?
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