Back in November I applied for Search Champs v4, offering why I felt I should be invited:

I don’t want to see any one company dominate search (Google). Complacency is a side effect of domination (lest we ironically recall IE?). I’d like to see both Yahoo and Google and perhaps a third dark horse make things more competitive for Google. I have what I feel are a few good ideas for improving search, but the problem is nobody has asked for my input directly. I’m not going to blog these ideas or offer them via email/phone beforehand, but I will share them directly, in person, with the first major search company (besides Google) that invites me and is willing to listen and seriously entertain these ideas.

In my post 8 Things Microsoft can do in 2006 to better compete with Google search and Adsense, I shared a few suggestions and wrote:

I’ve got many more ideas, but am still holding out that I might possibly be invited to Search Champs v4, so for those with the invite power, consider this merely a taste. If you know someone with invites, then please send a link to this post.

Well, somebody must have been listening (thank you) and that post was picked up on Microsoft-Watch and got some really good feedback around the blogosphere.

And guess what? Today via email, I received an invite to Search Champs v4! I looked at my schedule and the same day I was already scheduled be up at Microsoft for a usability study. As luck would have it the Search Champs didn’t start until later in the evening, so there was no scheduling conflict. Woohoo!

Also today, I received an invite to MSN Adcenter and will blog about that separately. Microsoft you are on my happy, happy, happy list today.

Back to Search Champs, I will be required to sign an NDA so I’m not sure how much I’ll be allowed to share from the event, but whatever I am permitted to blog about I will, including if I’m allowed to take any pictures or am given any material that is for public consumption.

Your Input
I can certainly solicit all great reader feedback about how to make MSN search better and take that along with me later this month and would like to do so. I will be happy to add your (serious) suggestions to the list I’ll be taking to the event later this month.

Here you go, a chance to send along information for your dream search engine, to give input to someone who will share. And don’t think I’m going soft on MSN just because I got an invite to this event. No way. Frankly, I rarely use their search engine and there are a number of reasons why I don’t which they will get to hear firsthand.

Now, what features and functionality would you like to see? What do you want most from search engine? Less ads? More traffic to your site? Less ability for people to game the results? Better relevancy?

My notepad is ready. Rock and roll.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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