Live Search to become the latest to try 404 redirects

In its scramble to avoid sliding to as low as fifth on the scale of search engine providers this year, Microsoft today has begun grabbing misspelled URLs pointing to its own hosted domains, and redirecting those users to Live Search.

A Microsoft spokesperson has informed BetaNews that customers of Microsoft-hosted domains -- which should include subscribers to its Office Live Small Business Web hosting service -- will notice changes in how their sites behave. Specifically, when a user types in a URL for a non-existent page, rather than the 404 message she would expect to receive from her Web browser (or her add-on toolbar), she'll be redirected to a page on Microsoft's Live Search.

BetaNews saw the first evidence of this behavioral change this morning. First using Firefox 3.0 RC1 on Windows XP SP3, we tried a simple mutation of an existing .ASPX Web page hosted on a Microsoft domain. In our first test, we changed the name of the page file to something we knew would not exist. The site responded by giving us the index (default) page of the site where that non-existent page would have been hosted -- which, arguably, is nicer than getting a cryptic error message.

Next, we tried mutating a directory name in a known URL. As advertised, the Web site responded not with the 404 message you'd normally see in a Web browser, but with a custom-made explanation page clearly hosted by Live Search. Though the Windows Vista logo does appear on this page, the Windows name does not; Microsoft is currently calling this part of its service just "Live Search."

For stage II, we tried the same permutation on Internet Explorer 7 running on Windows XP SP3...but this time, using the latest Google Toolbar. Last February, by intercepting regular 404 messages and redirecting them to Google search pages. Which search page would win out this time: Google's or Live Search's?

Since it's Microsoft's own Web site logic that's handling the redirects, BetaNews confirmed, Google's toolbar never sees the "regular 404 message" and therefore cannot issue its own redirection. So Microsoft's new diversion sidesteps Google, with the advantage of retaining Microsoft domain users within the fold.

The spokesperson told BetaNews that the company will soon be issuing a new SDK for webmasters enabling them to handle their own 404 redirects the same way that Microsoft is now doing, regardless of whether their sites are hosted within a Microsoft domain. However, in keeping with the company's recent adherence to fairness promises, the SDK should enable Webmasters, we're told, "to redirect to a search engine of their choice."