MSN to increase cross-over between search and editorial

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MSN is to increase its use of Microsoft's Live Search engine within its editorial channels, Microsoft UK's executive producer, told Journalism.co.uk.

Live Search queries for related articles and multimedia are currently embedded by editors within original content on the site and 'relevant links' panels.

But the portal is also planning to build a range of pages built entirely on search queries, Peter Bale said.

"Bringing together those two paradigms of search and editorially judged content is going to be really interesting and it's certainly going to change the MSN proposition - to being 'news you can use'," he said.

"The head story will be our own content and what we think people need to know about, but it will also have supplementary value by including search queries."

A high level of editorial choice is currently involved in embedding search queries within MSN's content, but this is likely to become more automated, Bale added.

"It's a very challenging issue getting journalists to think how to bring content from search engines through to their stories or pages. We like to think that they [search and stories] are indivisible," he said.

"They [links] are going to keep the reader for longer and the reader is going to come back expecting there to be other interesting material for them."

Bale, who was speaking at an Association of Online Publishers (AOP) event yesterday, also discussed MSN's editorial experiments with new storytelling tools Photosynth and Deep Zoom .