“Hello, World”: Exploring the History of Microsoft’s Search Engines, from MSN to Bing Sources in Today’s AI Chats (Hamsterdam History)

By Ethan Lazuk

Welcome to another week of Hamsterdam History, where we look at past SEO articles to celebrate their contributors, gain historical context, and see what’s changed since.

While we typically focus on Google Search in these articles, this week we’re turning our attention to Bing and Microsoft’s history of search engines, in general.

We’ll start by looking at an article on Microsoft Bing Blogs called, “Hello, World.”

As you might have guessed, it’s the first article on the blog.

It was posted on November 11th, 2004, by Brady Forrest, MSN Search PM.

Here’s the full text of the post:

“As you all know we have decided to join the fray and we have been listening to what you’ve had to say about our TechPreview. We’ve decided to start our own blog so that we can keep you all up-to-date on what’s happening with our product, our team and our industry.
Keep watching this space for updates.”

– Brady Forrest, Microsoft Bing Blogs (2004)

That doesn’t sound like much now, but by the end of this history lesson, we’ll have a whole new perspective on those words.

You may have noticed that Brady’s title is “MSN Search PM.”

That’s because in 2004 when the blog started, there was no Bing.

Microsoft’s search engine was MSN Search.

But for a moment, let’s hop to our present.

The reason I chose to focus on Bing this week is actually because of Meta.

Well, it’s actually because of Meta AI, the new AI assistant with Llama 3 that’s available on Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

I’ve taken more of an interest lately in the overlap of SEO and social media.

Most recently, I was playing with Meta AI on Instagram when I got back results for a search of my name that included sources from Bing.

Meta AI can reference web sources from both Google and Bing (which I mentioned in this week’s recap, Hamsterdam Part 54).

The SEO industry’s focus has largely been on Google’s results showing there.

However, I believe the presence of Bing in Meta AI (and other AI chat experiences, like ChatGPT and Copilot), signals the search engine’s growing relevance to our future as SEOs, where we go beyond merely search engine optimization to also influencing buyer’s journeys across AI answer engines.

Before we go too far, though, if you’re a visual learner, I also made a video summary of this article! Feel free to check it out or save it for later:

A few words on AI chat with Bing

Meta AI is using a RAG (retrieval augmented generation) model, which means it leverages search results (from Google or Bing) to ground (or give context to) a user’s prompt, then an LLM (powered by Llama 3) generates an answer.

While web results aren’t always listed as sources in AI chat responses, when they are, that can lead not only to brand awareness but also “qualified” organic traffic to websites.

A RAG model is also what powers Google SGE, the Google Cloud AI agents we covered in Hamsterdam Part 53, as well as Microsoft Copilot with Bing, which is Bing’s AI chat experience, formerly called Bing Chat or the New Bing.

Here’s a slide from a presentation given by Fabrice Canel of Bing at PubCon 2024 (which I was present for) discussing how search results ground LLM answers in a RAG model, like Copilot:

And here’s another slide, taken from one of Fabrice’s prior PubCon presentations, showing a RAG model Bing uses called Prometheus:

As I stated recently in Hamsterdam Part 54, I believe SEO is becoming as much about influencing the information that searchers see during their journeys on AI chatbots (or AI answer engines) as it is achieving rankings in organic search results.

If we’re talking about metrics like keyword rankings, CTR, or clicks, we’re probably talking about Google Search, and maybe Discover for organic web traffic, overall.

However, if we’re talking about the broader user journeys relevant to SEO today, we can see how the world is evolving to be much bigger than just Google Search, where answer providers like Perplexity and Brave, Gemini and ChatGPT, and, yes, Bing matter significantly more.

In the case of Bing, specifically, we can see how its search results could influence not only the information that users of Meta AI or ChatGPT see, but also users of Microsoft Copilot with Bing itself.

Copilot is capable of delivering robust amounts of information distilled from multiple sources. Here’s just some of the information a Copilot answer gave about my Hamsterdam and Hamsterdam History projects:

Some of that information is based on a YouTube video and Hamsterdam History playlist that I created just the day before!

That’s how fast the influence can happen.

Granted, that Copilot chat answer is fairly exploratory and may not result in clicks to my articles or video content directly, but it still provides a lot of helpful context, based on Bing’s search index, to build a user’s awareness of the brand and trust in my content’s credibility for the next time when they search for or encounter it.

As we see in another great slide from Fabrice’s 2024 PubCon presentation, AI chatbots are great for such exploratory searches, but when users are ready to find a specific answer, they’ll likely turn back to search engines:

Similarly, we also talked about dual search journeys in our last Hamsterdam History lesson about Google Search Options from 2009, which explained how users will either “slice and dice” or “explore” search results, depending on their intent.

As I see it, if a user knows and trusts your brand already based on AI chat conversations, that further incentivizes them to click on your content in organic search results when they want a direct answer.

That may happen regardless of how high you’re ranking in the SERP, or even reinforce your rankings with positive user engagement signals.

A few SEO quips to get out of the way

What I’d like to do now is look back at some of the history of Microsoft’s search engines.

But first, I have a few nit-picky SEO observations about this 2004 blog post, ha.

First off, it’s on a subdomain at blogs.bing.com. No harm there. It’s just that, since the blog subdomain is attached to bing.com, that means it’s not the original URL, since the post has MSN branding.

This means we’re unable to use WayBack Machine to see how the MSN blog post originally looked in 2004. (The subdomain blogs.bing.com originated in 2014, according to WayBack Machine, but I’ll update this article if I find an original screenshot.) 🙂

Something else I found interesting is that MSN Search still exists at MSN.com:

But, technically, it’s just a landing page that opens a new tab with Bing’s search results for your query.

The folder structure of the blog post URL is also interesting. It goes /search/ then /November-2004/ followed by /Hello,-World/.

That to me looks like it was automatically created.

As SEOs, we typically wouldn’t use capital letters in blog post URLs, or at least not mix capital and lowercase letters.

We also wouldn’t put dates, unless it’s an archived post. Dates makes content updates more difficult because the URL would appear outdated and need to be changed and redirected.

Commas in a URL are something else we’d avoid, so that part is likely pulled automatically from the page’s main heading, which in this case is an H2 — I’m fine with that, but I can guess it’ll drive the H1 purists nuts, ha.

Another odd styling choice with the blog post is the second paragraph has no top margin, appearing as though it’s part of the first paragraph.

As it turns out, it is. Both paragraphs are in the same <p> tag with a <br> between them.

Maybe it was originally coded that way in 2004, or that’s how it was imported automatically?

Either way, it’s a quirk! 🙂

Ok, now with that out of the way, let’s explore some search history.

Note: I’ll use Microsoft Copilot with Bing to research information for this next portion of the article. Screenshots will be taken from WayBack Machine when available.

Microsoft’s search engine history from MSN to Bing and now Copilot

Microsoft’s history with search engines begins with MSN Search, which debuted in late 1998. (This is around the same time that Google was incorporated.)

What I find interesting is the MSN.com domain was already owned by Microsoft and live as early as December of 1996, according to WayBack Machine:

We can see MSN.com was advertised as a way to create a custom start page, complete with “Web sites” and more.

The slogan was “made fresh daily.”

MSN as a search engine wasn’t available until 1998, though.

When I tried to visit MSN.com on WayBack Machine, it encountered a 302 redirect that sent me to home.microsoft.com.

Here’s how that domain looked in July of 2007, the earliest available screenshot:

That’s about my era of search, when I was a junior in high school.

At the time of that screenshot, MSN Search had its own web crawler and search index that was updated at least weekly. This was the case starting by 2005.

However, the year leading up to that change has some interesting history.

MSN Search during 2004-2005

This 2004-2005 period was an interesting time for Microsoft’s search products, both internally and relative to its competitors.

A July 2004 CNET article I found talks about how “Microsoft is expected to take its first baby steps on the road to Web search independence on Thursday, with the launch of a homegrown Internet search tool and changes to its Internet search engine.”

There’s also a November 2004 CBC article that discusses how “the new version of MSN Search is based on algorithms that rank relevant pages according to the number of links that point to those pages.”

That CBC article also describes several MSN Search features, including localized personalization, where the “search engine can locate the user’s whereabouts from the user’s IP address.”

As some important context, the CBC article also notes that “Google launched a beta version of its desktop search engine” the month prior. It was October 14th, 2004, to be exact, a move that Ars Technica described as “a shot over the bow of Microsoft’s forthcoming Longhorn O,” and that further integrated Google into computer operating systems. (Google also IPO’d two months earlier.)

Things really get interesting with a May 2005 Seattle Times article that describes how Microsoft’s reliance on other search technology disadvantaged it versus Google:

“Bill Gates knows when he’s been beaten.

Last year, the Microsoft chairman candidly credited Google with winning the first round of the search wars. ‘Google kicked our butts,’ he said.

A few months ago, when asked why the company had used technology from rivals to run its search engine, he admitted something rarely heard from Microsoft’s top brass: ‘We were stupid as hell.’

Microsoft didn’t just miss the boat in search technology. It missed the dock, the pier and the turnoff to the marina.” [Highlights added.]

– Seattle Times (2005)

The article is very long and deeply fascinating.

Here’s another notable excerpt from a section called “Looking beyond Google”:

“MSN’s search team is hardly bothered. The division holds steadfast to a belief that came up repeatedly in the green-light meeting with Gates and Ballmer: Search is in its early stages. That’s part of the reason why MSN decided to build a new search engine from scratch instead of buying its way into the industry. It has time.

And, in many ways, the search battle is bigger than beating Google. Microsoft is carving its path in the next generation of computing — one in which search becomes a platform, not a feature.

Microsoft is in a new version of the 1990s browser wars against Netscape Communications, said Joe Wilcox, an analyst covering Microsoft at Jupiter Research. Back then, Microsoft faced a new universe — the World Wide Web — that could be navigated without Windows. It responded by quickly developing its own browser.

It won’t be long before people regularly search for information from cellphones and other mobile devices that don’t require Windows. That increases the risk to Microsoft, Wilcox said.

‘While Google is a target, the real target is much bigger than that,’ he said. ‘It’s what search represents.’” [Highlights added.]

– Seattle Times (2005)

But what was meant by MSN Search having its own search “technology”?

The early years of MSN

Taking a step back, early MSN Search results (pre-2005) came from Inktomi.

An October 1997 blog post from Microsoft announced “an agreement with search-technology leader Inktomi Corp.” where its “search service will be introduced early next year on both The Microsoft Network Premier subscription service and on MSN.com, the online service’s free Web site.”

What was Inktomi?

According to the company’s homepage circa the year 2000, “Inktomi develops and markets scalable software designed for the world’s largest internet infrastructure and media companies.”

Inktomi was founded in 1996 by a UC Berkeley professor (Eric Brewer) and a graduate student (Paul Gauthier).

Its web search technology was not only used in MSN Search but various other search engines, including HotBot, Looksmart, as well as regional and enterprise search engines.

Inktomi was later acquired by Yahoo! in 2003.

This is where things get interesting.

The Inktomi acquisition meant that MSN Search was now being powered by the web search technology of a competing search engine.

That adds even more context for why the subsequent 2004-2005 period that we just explored was critical for MSN Search to develop its own web index and crawler.

Ironically, Yahoo! started using Bing’s search engine for its results based on a deal in 2009.

I just learned a little more about that history. It turns out the head of search for Yahoo! at that time was Prabhakar Raghavan. He is now a senior vice president at Google, where as part of his duties, he overseas Google Search. (You can decide for yourself how you feel about that.)

A side note about spiders, robots, and naming conventions

What I also find interesting about Inktomi is the origin of the company’s name (pronounced “INK-tuh-me”). It was a Lakota legend about a trickster spider known for outsmarting larger adversaries.

I grew up in Montana, which was near aboriginal Lakota territory in the Dakotas.

Here’s how the Aktá Lakota Museum & Cultural Center in South Dakota describes the legend, spelled “Iktómi (Ik-to-mi)”:

“From Lakota legend, Iktómi is the firstborn son of Iŋyaŋ (the rock) who was initially named Skáŋ.

American Indian culture recognized Iktómi as both a spider and a spider-like man. He was born full-grown from an egg and was the size of an ordinary human. He has a big round body like a spider, with slender arms and legs and powerful hands and feet. He dresses in clothes made of buckskin and raccoon.

The Lakota believe that Iktómi is a trickster and does things backward. His clownish ways cause the people to laugh at him, but he is also a sly and cunning man and a teacher.”

– Aktá Lakota Museum & Cultural Center Website

In Hamsterdam part 53, we also learned about the Lycos search engine, which launched in 1995. It was named for a family of wolf spiders.

Today, we think of search engine “bots,” short for robots, like Googlebot and Bingbot, but “spider” was apparently a more popular term earlier on. Pretty fascinating.

MSN Search becomes Windows Live

After MSN Search began using its own search technology, it was rebranded for the first time.

In March of 2006, Microsoft unveiled a Windows Live Search Beta, which had “rich viewing and organizational tools, extensive search categories such as image and local search, and services that help people customize results.”

Here’s a screenshot of its results from an NBC News article:

At the time, Microsoft said, “MSN and Windows Live will be offered alongside each other as complementary services.”

There was also an academic version called Windows Live Academic Search released in April of that year

But then a few months later, in September of 2006, Windows Live Search replaced MSN Search:

Here’s how it looked around the time of the rollout:

The next big change happened in mid-2008 when Microsoft acquired Powerset, a company specializing in semantic technology. This would be used in later search technologies (presumably Bing).

The semantic web, differences of opinion, and the emergence of Bing

According to a TechCrunch article published when Powerset was acquired, Microsoft wasn’t its only suitor:

“Google was the likely candidate, but they have publicly dismissed the notion of contextual search as a revolutionary step forward.”

– TechCrunch (2008)

Here’s the full TechCrunch article, as it looked at that time in 2008:

But wait …

Google “dismissed” semantic search as not being “revolutionary”?

It seems so!

Well, sort of.

Let’s start with this hidden gem of a quote, taken from another 2007 TechCrunch article:

“… Google’s head of research Peter Norvig pooh-poohs the notion that people are clamoring to write full sentences in search boxes.”

– TechCrunch (2007)

And this is an actual quote from Peter Norvig, referenced from another Q&A article:

“We don’t think it’s a big advance to be able to type something as a question as opposed to keywords. Typing ‘What is the capital of France?’ won’t get you better results than typing ‘capital of France.’”

– Peter Norvig (2007)

I mean, that makes sense, for that query.

We also know Google still drops unnecessary “stop words” when it serves pages, as shown in this recent 2024 video with Gary Illyes:

But for certain types of queries, the context of the phrasing matters, hence the reference to BERT in this 2019 article by Pandu Nayak:

The 2008 TechCrunch article does clarify, however, that “he [Peter Norvig] does acknowledge that there is some value in the technology,” meaning semantic technology.

Here’s another quote:

“We think what’s important about natural language is the mapping of words onto the concepts that users are looking for. . . . To give some examples, ‘New York’ is different from ‘York,’ but ‘Vegas’ is the same as ‘Las Vegas,’ and ‘Jersey’ may or may not be the same as ‘New Jersey.’ That’s a natural-language aspect that we’re focusing on. Most of what we do is at the word and phrase level; we’re not concentrating on the sentence. We think it’s important to get the right results rather than change the interface.” [Highlights added.]

– Peter Norvig (2007)

That was back in 2007-2008.

What I find interesting about that time period is in the last Hamsterdam History lesson, we looked at Wonder wheel, a Google feature from 2009 that, to me, resembled a knowledge graph.

The Google knowledge graph (built on semantic technology) wasn’t unveiled publicly until 2012.

However, if Microsoft was using semantic technology starting around 2008, maybe Google was, as well.

But let’s get back to the origins of Bing! (My exclamation point; not to be confused with Yahoo!) 😉

In June of 2009, Microsoft launched Bing, replacing Windows Live Search.

Bing was described by Microsoft as “a new Decision Engine and consumer brand, providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions.”

While that “Decision Engine” framing hasn’t stuck, Bing as a brand has.

And if we look at how Microsoft described a “Decision Engine”:

“Bing is specifically designed to build on the benefits of today’s search engines but begins to move beyond this experience with a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

The result of this new approach is an important beginning for a new and more powerful kind of search service, which Microsoft is calling a Decision Engine, designed to empower people to gain insight and knowledge from the Web, moving more quickly to important decisions.” [Highlights added.]

– Microsoft Blog (2009)

We can start to see in the origins of Bing as a “Decision Engine” the origins of Copilot as an AI “Answer Engine,” where knowledge from the web is leveraged (but not so much searched directly) to move users “more quickly to important decisions.”

Bing had advancements along its history. Like in 2017, it launched “Intelligent answers” that used “deep neural networks to validate answers by aggregating across multiple reputable sources, rather than just one.”

Deep neural networks are of course a type of machine learning (AI).

It’s also interesting those intelligent answers and other AI-based “intelligent search features,” like conversational AI search and image search with computer vision, came out the same year as Google’s Transformer architecture, which GPT models like GPT-4 are based on.

Another interesting side note is Bing had a “new partnership with Reddit” announced in 2017. Just saying. 😉

But back to the AI!

In February of 2023, Bing Chat, “an all new, AI-powered Bing search engine” was officially launched.

The new Bing, as it was also known, used a “next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT and customized specifically for search.”

A month later, Bing confirmed it was now running on GPT-4 (the same OpenAI model that powers ChatGPT Pro today, which also leverages Bing’s search results).

Later that year, Bing Chat was rebranded to Microsoft Copilot (with Bing), the name we know it by today.

A month later in December of 2023, Bing announced its latest AI-driven search feature, deep search, “a new Microsoft Bing feature that provides even more relevant and comprehensive answers to the most complex search queries.”

Deep search “builds on Bing’s existing web index and ranking system and enhances them with GPT-4,” which “takes the search query and expands it into a more comprehensive description of what an ideal set of results should include.”

Here’s how the results look for “Hamsterdam SEO”:

That’s the state of the world of Bing and Microsoft search engines as it exists now. In a way, we can see both timeless themes focused around quick answers combined with progressive AI technologies enabling those realities.

What will the future hold? I’m not sure.

But I can bet paying attention to the past can only help us envision it.

The context of the 2004 “Hello, World” blog post

Returning to the original “Hello, World” blog post from November of 2004, we can start to put it into a little more context now.

At that time, MSN Search was still using Inktomi (owned now by Yahoo!, a competitor). It was falling behind Google in search, according to press and company statements by people like Bill Gates, plus Google had just IPO’d and released its desktop search engine. Also, Microsoft was in the process (or thereabouts) of converting MSN to using its own crawler and web index.

That would mark the type of monumental circumstances that would lead the MSN Search team to want to “start our own blog so that we can keep you all up-to-date on what’s happening with our product, our team and our industry.”

As an SEO, I can say I’ve always been appreciative of how transparent and communicative members of the Bing search team have been during my career.

I still remember my first introduction to search engines as an elementary school student in Montana. It must have been around 2000, when I would have been in the 4th grade.

Our teacher took us to the library and introduced us to Google.

As far as search engines go, Google has been my main focus ever since, both personally and professionally.

Maybe that’s starting to change.

In the second paragraph of the 2004 Bing (then-MSN) blog post (you know, the line that’s in the same <p> tag as the first paragraph, ha), are some evergreen final words that feel as relevant today as ever: “Keep watching this space for updates.”

Oh, we will. 😉

Come back next week

Thank you for taking the time to check out this week’s Hamsterdam History lesson!

Revisit us next week for a new lesson, or explore past lessons below.

Until next time, enjoy the vibes:

Thanks for reading. Happy optimizing! 🙂

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