Microsoft Delivering Hand-Crafted Search Results?

No, not personalized search...actual hand crafted search results put together by staffers at MSN while you conduct your search...live. At least that's what everyone is assuming based on an MSN job description titled "Hand crafted results. It's kind of hard not to suspect that this job posting is a prank (would any of the big three search engines REALLY be crazy enough to publicly admit that they do this?) but the reality is that if it's a real job listing...it really shows that Microsoft is having some big trouble coming up with a strong enough search algorithm to delivery quality listings.

The job description:

When all else fails, and the ranking algorithms do not pass the confidence threshold, we fall back to delivering handcrafted results. Working on a team of approximately 132 other handcrafters in 26 worldwide markets, you will receive a user query, use all the available search engines to quickly scour the web for results, pick the top 10 results for this query, and send it on to the user. Successful handcrafters can typically find top 10 results for a real-time user's query in less than 3.8 seconds. This is an opportunity to truly connect with customers, because the queries that get routed to you are precisely the ones that the engine cannot answer well. We will have adequate staffing to allow generous coffee and bathroom breaks.

If you are an expert at using at least 3 different search engines, well versed with American English/colloquial usage, and can type at > 149 words/minute as measured by the Simia-Lico method – come join us and delight users real-time!

Many bloggers are joking about the conversations that had to take place in order to even publish this listing... Philipp Lenssen points out that the conversation may have gone something like this...

Man: "Our search engine sucks." Woman: What are we gonna do about it?" Man: We could steal results from a real search engine." Woman: "You mean Google and Yahoo? Isn't that illegal?" Man: "Not if we do it manually, no..."

On the other hand, you've got to be a little skeptical about this. First off, I've not only not heard of the Simia-Lico method, I also can't find ANY reference to it online. The fact that Simia is the Latin word used to classify monkeys as a subset of primates in the categories setup by Carolus Linnaeus. (Simia...simian...monkey...get it?) I can't find any reference to "lico" other than it being some type of Italian word and an acronym for a financial calculation in Canada. I've got to think that if a "method" of measuring typing speed is big enough for Microsoft to use it, that it would show up SOMEWHERE on the web.

I also type faster than almost anyone I know and I can just barely top 125 wpm. I can't even fathom someone pulling in 150, though I'm sure they exist. That said, even if you could type that fast, what are the odds that you could put together "on the fly" search results in 3.8 seconds? Especially if you've got to look at other search engines? Pretty slim. Add in this one line... "We will have adequate staffing to allow generous coffee and bathroom breaks." and I can't help but wonder if some MSN staffers are having a good chuckle as they watch this spread through the blog world...

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