Live Search 2.0 Launches
Last week at the Searchification event, Microsoft launched the new version of Windows Live Search, also revealing a very different focus for the division. The new Live Search is powered by a more advanced algorithm and search index, featuring an index that is four times the size of the old one (reportedly containing 20-30 billion objects, very much comparable to Google). Relevancy and speed have also been improved, and that is noticeable if you run a search right now.
The results page is not that much different from before, though it features more of a move to the “universal search” method favored by Google (with lots of integration of news, image, and other search verticals into the main results). It also now features a list of important pages within the site that gets the top result, another feature Google is known for. The results page is cleaner, though, due to the removal of the Live “flair” that is happening in all Live Wave 2.0 releases.
One thing that is new is the video search engine. It features two different views you can toggle between, a grid based view or a regular results view with lots of text, and mousing over a preview thumbnail actually starts playing the video, complete with sound. What’s surprising is that the page doesn’t take more than a second or two to load, so they’ve found a brilliant way to put 20 video previews on a page and load them instantly.
Microsoft also announced Live Search will be focusing on four search verticals going forward: Entertainment (images and video), Local (maps), Shopping and Health. LiveSide has a look at the new Entertainement and Shopping search experiences.
Microsoft is also now saying that its goals for Live Search are very different. Rather than focusing all their efforts on catching Google, the new focus is on playing to the needs of the 70 million people who already use Live Search, giving them more reasons to stay and reasons to run more searches. Once those people become truly happy customers, they’ll push the growth by telling their friends. The goal isn’t growth, but rather retention and more searches per user, which should put the focus squarely on the quality of the product, and not the product as it relates to Google’s.
I kind of like the new results look. It works 10X better than ever. It looks too much like Google though. Makes it seem like a copy cat.
Nathan, do you use Live Search? Have you tried it out yet? Do you like it at all?
I’m interested, because I also know you do the InsideGoogle blog.
So which one do you go for?
Comment by Michael | October 1, 2007
I’ve used Google, if only because Live didn’t previously work in Opera, my browser of choice. Now that Live works better, I’ll be giving it more of a shot, though the results don’t match my expectations.
I’ve argued since I started blogging three years ago that Google’s strength was that users are so familiar with its results that other search engines appear to have the “wrong” results if they are different from Google’s, unless they are spectacularly better. Live needs to be spectacular, or match Google’s bias for blogs and recent news to give me my “expected” results, otherwise its too unfamiliar.
I’m thinking of making one day a week a Live Search Day until I can break out of my shell and give it a fair chance. I really like the search engine, but I need to force myself to get used to it.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | October 23, 2007