Just over a year ago, MSN seemed like the brand Microsoft wanted to deny ever existed. Almost like some embarrassing former leader of a country, the MSN name was excised or replaced in favor of the new Windows Live brand. But now MSN is back on Live.com, in the form of a new MSN button.

Spotted via ResourceShelf, the button appears next to other search options such as Web, Images, News and Maps. Clicking on the MSN option brings back matches from MSN’s own content, such as MSN Cars, MSN Video, MSN Music and so on:

[Side rant: you'll notice the top result in the screenshot is a UK site, since I'm in the UK. Indeed, all my search results are heavily skewed toward the UK despite making use of the Location Settings option to say I'm in the US. Live is getting downright infuriating by not allowing me (or others) to override this heavy country flavoring of results if we want to.]

Late last year, we saw Steve Berkowitz decide to save MSN. The new button is another sign that MSN is coming back to life. To underscore this, consider my recent review of Live’s search options. Academic search, feed search, book search, video search and more don’t get button treatment — but MSN now does.

Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: General

About The Author: Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series. He maintains a personal blog called Daggle (and maintains his disclosures page there). He can be found on Facebook, Google + and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan. See more articles by Danny Sullivan