This is just hilarious, but kinda sad for Microsoft.
I was in a class, and asked who amongst the students were going to TechEd this year. I had a couple of strange looks, so I pulled up Internet Explorer and went to search for the event site. Knowing that searching tends to be the best way of finding sites like this, I went to live.com and entered teched australia. No such luck. So then I tried the competitor search company, that term that is in the dictionary but I imagine Microsoft employees are discouraged from using to mean ‘internet search’. You know the one. If you don’t, then just look at the links below.
Try these two links. Today, one is vastly more useful for finding the site that I’m after. I imagine that this will change, and I think the fact that the Australian company Teched appears at the top of the live.com results is perhaps a nice reflection of the fact that MS clearly don’t use live.com to advertise their own sites. Just a shame that live.com’s first mention of the TechEd Conference on the microsoft.com site is actually to microsoft.com/australia/teched2006, even though this seems to redirect to this year’s site.
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=teched+australia&mkt=en-au
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=teched+australia
http://www.microsoft.com/australia/teched07/index.aspx is the site if you’re actually trying to find it – but also check out the discussion about the flairs this year. I think if people start to make pictures that use finger gestures, it could quickly get “out of hand”, but let’s see what happens. I’d love to see Microsoft give out Finger Brushes to delegates, just to see how much mess people can make of the Gold Coast. After all, Painting Has Never Been So Fun!
This Post Has 4 Comments
Hey dude,
I am not sure what you did on Live.com but teched australia comes up as number 1 for me so I suggest you get facts right before you put something or someone down in future.
If anyone doesn’t believe me go to http://www.live.com and type in the words teched australia and see for yourself.
Cheers,
Martin
Martin,
Ok, here are the links that I get presented with:
Sponsored link:
rc12.overture.com (says something about clk.atdmt.com)
Other links:
survey.teched.com.au
http://www.teched.com.au/web_dev.php
http://www.infosalons.com.au/TechEd2007/start.asp
http://www.infosalons.com.au/teched07/start.asp
techtalkblogs.com/blog/archive/category/1014.aspx
http://www.stillhq.com/aus-dotnet/archives2/msg00692.html
exchangeis.com/photos/teched_2005_gold_coast_-_australia/ picture32.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/australia/teched2006
stage.infosalons.com.au/Teched07/start.asp
I’m not meaning to put anyone down with this post, I just thought it was interesting that the Microsoft search engine doesn’t seem to weight the Microsoft sites above the others. I’m sure most search engines would favour their own sites.
Rob
Hi Rob,
Sorry, actually there is a problem and we are both right! 😛
If you use the Live Search box (add in) in your browser, either IE7 or Firefox I do get the results you reported.
However, if I type in http://www.live.com into my browser address bar and then enter the words teched australia it does come up as the number 1 ranked site.
VERY WEIRD!
Cheers,
Martin
I’ve just noticed that if you change the ‘mkt’ parameter to en-us, then sure enough, the proper site appears atop the list. I guess Americans might want to find it more urgently than Aussies?