Search Engine Watch Forums

JohnW · #1 03-07-2006

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/03/07/D8G72IJ80.html

An interesting article by AP writer Elizabeth Gillespie announces a revamped MS search engine. Comments?

dannysullivan · #2 03-08-2006

Chris has a write-up over here, as well: Microsoft Launches Windows Live Search Beta. The new site is here: Windows Live Search.

I have usability issues already. The site is supposed to work in both Firefox and IE7. Not for me.

Yesterday, if I went to the Live.com home page, I got blank pages in both other than a search box. Then I shutdown ZoneAlarm, my software firewall, and IE7 at least showed modules on IE7.

Today, going to the search.live.com page, I got blank pages other than a search box in both. Talk about minimalistic. Shutting down ZoneAlarm made no difference. But I can at least search and get stuff on the results.

I like the "infinite" scroll where you can go past 10 results without having to click Next. A bit sluggish, however. I'd like the results numbered so I know exactly where I'm at, if I scroll. I expect we'll see others hop to in giving the same option soon.

The little slider to get only title or longer descriptions is interesting, see it at the upper right hand corner.

The Add To Live.com option is interesting, save your regular seraches to your home page.

Doing a search for [cars] and getting all these blogspot domains underscores a better need for clustering -- which is a crucial UI issue -- not to mention better relevancy changes. That along makes me worry Microsoft is doing the AltaVista dance, where every six months we get new Madonna-like changes of apparance (she's a cowboy; she's English gentry) without the crucial under the hood stuff being altered.

Bigger takeaway is that MSN search is no longer to be the favored property. The emphasis is shifting to Windows Live, and it almost feels like what a friend told me about why his rock band used to change its name so often. If they bombed at one club, they could change their name and get a gig again under another one. After two years of hammering how great MSN Search is supposed to be, now we get a new look and a new name, Windows Live Search.

Ugh, what a terrible name. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? I suppose Microsoft sees branding value in tying this into being a "live" online extension of Windows. But since many people who use Windows generally hate it -- they use it because they have to -- I'd argue that linking your search to Windows is just going to cause you to lose even more people. It certainly tosses away whatever brand value they'd been building up with MSN.

Anyway, MSN is now the "content/entertainment" side of the house, with Windows Live being the "services" side that will power MSN but also be a destination of its own.

We were told the image search is suppose to be new, but neither Chris or I could play with that before launch. Meanwhile, as I try to click to the various other tabs (news, images, local, feeds), I'm getting a results count but nothing displayed. And this is within IE7 and even if shutdown ZoneAlarm. OK, I close the entire browser and try again! Now I get some result, only to find Images are said to be not currently available or alternatively, I get the blank page.

At least Windows Live Local is linked to the Local tab -- MSN still uses a completely different local search feature. Expect that's going to change over time. Windows Live Local (aka Virtual Earth) remains the gem of the search offerings from Microsoft to me.

Feed search is nice, in that you can click to add any feed to Live.com similar to what Yahoo has long allowed you to do. Not sure the underlying database -- think it's still powered by Moreover. Now that it's all live, Chris is planning to go back and have a longer talk with the product managers.

dazzlindonna · #3 03-08-2006

Works perfectly for me (FF 1.5). I've had no issues with it at all yet. Having said that, I think the new look and features are brilliant. Simply brilliant.

Jorge · #4 03-08-2006

I've had trouble with firefox and also loading the site. It's still a little shaky in my opinion. As for the results at first glance I see no improvement over MSN search.

Brian M · #5 03-08-2006

http://www.live.com/

shor · #6 03-08-2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jorge

I've had trouble with firefox and also loading the site. It's still a little shaky in my opinion. As for the results at first glance I see no improvement over MSN search.

There is no improvement because it's the same result set as the current msn search, basically with a new wrapper. As Danny said, new look, new name and... that's about it.

Even though it is still in beta, I don't know if or when they plan to improve Live search relevancy. From the live.com blog at http://spaces.msn.com/livecom/ there's a whole bunch of stuff that they're evangelizing but nothing related to improving search, which is a shame because while 'saving a search' is a nifty function, what is the point when the results aren't worth saving?

St0n3y · #7 03-08-2006

Makes it hard to check your ranking position. I rely a lot on clicking from page to page to count for me. But from a both a user and SEO perspective, doing away with the pages is an interesting concept. Wonder if that will catch on.

JohnW · #8 03-08-2006

It may take wpg and people w custom tools a little work to scrape this.

Nacho · #9 03-09-2006

testing query .... Hmmm.. It works, but not the relevant results I was expecting.

Artyom · #10 04-05-2006

Click on 'what's new' under FireFox 1.5. Do you see what I see?

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