So Microsoft recently started Club Live, an online game area with mostly word games. The games are pretty fun, but nothing extraordinary (although I do like Flexicon, their crossword game). Normally, this wouldn’t be much to speak of, but the catch is that all of these games have a half screen with an embedded window that goes to MSN’s pathetic online search function. Now, on the crossword puzzle, it simply keeps it there for a resource and auto-searches the last word you filled in. Not anything extraordinary, there.

However, in the anagram game, Chicktionary, you attempt to make as many words as you can out of a 7-letter combination. Every time you search, whether it’s a word or not, it does an MSN search for whatever you typed. This means they’re getting hundreds of searches for each time an individual plays that game. This is pretty obviously meant to jack up their number of monthly searches. Pretty sad.

What I don’t understand is, what’s in it for them? Is their Alexa ranking going up all that big a deal? That’s about all I can see in it from an industry-advantage standpoint. If they’re trying to show some superiority over Google in their algorithm, they’re doing it all wrong. I’ve been so frustrated by their responses that I’ve had to switch windows to get to a Google search open for good help on the anagram game.

Bottom line: Microsoft should be putting their resources into making an actual usable algorithm if they want to win searchers back from Google, not “tricking” them into using MSN through word games.