Microsoft RSS Search coming on Monday?

MSN has been busy this week crawling all the syndication feeds it can find. It looks like Microsoft is getting ready to announce feed search for MSN Search on Monday morning.

The move is not too surprising as we have seen MSN dabble in RSS search with the small Start.com research project in public for a few months now.

Are you curious what MSN has been up to? Check your server logs for IP addresses 207.68.146.41 and 207.68.146.47 to see the initial probe and 207.68.146.53 for the deeper revisit.

  • 207.68.146.47 – – [21/Jul/2005:00:15:05 +0000] “GET /robots.txt HTTP/1.0” 200 37 “-” “msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)”
  • 207.68.146.41 – – [21/Jul/2005:00:25:26 +0000] “GET /blog/index.atom HTTP/1.0” 200 45153 “-” “msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)”
  • 207.68.146.41 – – [21/Jul/2005:01:04:33 +0000] “GET /blog/index.xml HTTP/1.0” 200 35352 “-” “msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)”
  • 207.68.146.53 – – [21/Jul/2005:05:39:59 +0000] “GET /blog/2005/06/google_sitemaps.xml HTTP/1.0” 404 230 “-” “msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)”

Robert Scoble has been trying to generate buzz around the new product all week.

Expect more details to emerge Sunday evening and Monday morning as embargoes expire and Microsoft starts talking about the new product.

Update: Scoble says MSN Search is not launching RSS search on Monday. Why didn’t I call Scoble to ask? I expect a “no comment” on discussions about future product from a public company. I still think it’s obvious MSN is integrating RSS search from my server logs, but no concrete release date at this point.