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Getting more than 250 results

On Monday it was observed that MSN Search would give access to 1000 search results like Google and Yahoo for the first time:

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?p=90787

I've tried accessing more than 250 results with the MSN API, but so far the most I've been able to get is 290 results. Is MSN going to up the number of returned results for the API like they have for the public web interface?

Thanks,
Frank

fmccown

Hi Frank

I don't mean to be cheeky or anything, but why would you want 1000 results? Or even, why would you need more than 250? Although, I see the point of it being nicer to have fewer limitations.

Just curious.

Best,
Mark.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Specialists: http://www.bsolveit.com

BSolveIT

Mark,

As an academic researcher, it is very useful to access as many search engine results as possible. For example, when testing the precision (the number of results that should match a specific query) of a search engine to a given query.

My current interest involves my project Warrick which reconstructs lost websites:

http://www.cs.odu.edu/~fmccown/research/lazy/warrick.html

The more results I can get, the quicker Warrick can reconstruct websites.

Also SEOs want to know how many URLs from a website are indexed, and it is useful to use a site: query and then traverse through all the results. The estimated number of matches that search engines give are often greatly overestimated, so being able to actually check every result gives more accurate numbers.

Frank

fmccown

The announcement about more than 250 results was regardin the MSN Search website, not the web serivce.

I believe you need to upgrade (i.e. pay for) to a commercial application ID to get more that 250 results; but I can no longer find a reference to this.

http://www.peterRitchie.com/Blog | MSDN Forums Moderator | Microsoft MVP - Visual Developer, C#

Peter Ritchie

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