eBay everywhere on MSN

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 10 Jul 2003 at 11:52

eBay and MSN are to tighten the ties between their services, with direct links to eBay items within a number of MSN areas.

An eBay link already appears at the foot of search results on MSN Search and users can already receive .Net alerts for outbid and auction ending messages through MSN Messenger, but now direct links to individual items will be displayed for searches on the MSN home page, MSN Search, MSN Shopping and MSN Auctions.

Jeffrey Housenbold, VP of Business Development for eBay, said: 'The integration of our services presents an untapped opportunity to attract new buyers and sellers ot the eBay marketplace while enhancing the shopping experience on MSN.'

Aside from MSN users seeing eBay listings, Internet Explorer, the globally dominant browser, defaults to the MSN Search for any text entered into the address bar that does not resolve to a URL. So eBay links will also appear here.

Recent figures from Jupiter Media Metrix and Nielson/NetRatings (Jan 2003 and Dec 2002) show the influence Web portals have over which search engines are used, with MSN Search rated the most-visited (36 per cent), Yahoo! second with 33 per cent and Google showing 24 per cent.

Jupiter Media Metrix has also found that 70 per cent of all online purchases originate from a search-engine search.

eBay and Microsoft first announced a strategic alliance back in May 2001 to promote eBay's online marketplace to the claimed 300 million users of MSN. In this latest step, eBay will also be taking out contextually relevant ad slots across MSN. Financials details of the deal, however, have not been disclosed.

The MSN search engine is currently supplied by Inktomi, with sponsored links from Overture and directory listings from Looksmart.