Microsoft has unveiled major changes to its Live Search service intended to give it a better foothold in its ongoing battle with Google…
“Seeking to narrow the gap with Google, Microsoft Corp. unveiled a retooled Web search service that aims to deliver more relevant results and combines text, video and other information onto a single page.”
Seattle — The Redmond giant has concentrated its improvements on the nuts and bolts of the search engine, enhancing its core search technology and strengthening the vertical search areas of entertainment, shopping, local and health.
Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, said “Windows Live Search” is now on an even technology footing with offerings from rival search engines after years of playing catch-up since it started developing its own Web search in 2003.
Microsoft is angling to swipe some of the search market from Google and Yahoo, has given its Live Search service an extreme makeover. In addition to improving the way Live Search makes queries and presents search results, the company has added channels for entertainment, shopping, and health searches, trying to shrink Google’s big market share lead.
“Among other improvements, it has quadrupled the size of its search index to more than 20 billion Web pages.”
The overhauled Live Search, announced Wednesday, automatically packages results for some search queries — such as celebrity, business and product names — in a way that looks like a specially designed page on the subject, not a standard list of results.
“For example, a search for a particular model of camera generates a page with key information about the product — divided into sections for thumbnail images, prices, excerpts from user reviews, and collective user ratings, which the search engine calculates automatically from multiple sites.”
“That is one of the changes in the revamped search site, at live.com. The changes are rolling out in stages starting this week, through next month.”
Its new presentation is in line with an industry trend to step beyond traditional text links, with unified search results that offer Web sites, news, pictures and video on one page.
Rivals Google Inc. and Ask.com made similar changes this year, and Yahoo Inc. is moving in that direction.
“Microsoft is realistic. It does not think it is going to wake up tomorrow and overtake Google,” said Allen Weiner, an analyst at research firm Gartner. “Right now, Microsoft wants to establish itself more firmly with its existing users.”
The renovation — the biggest update for the platform since it hit the Web nearly three years ago — could help Microsoft chip away at Google’s gargantuan share of the search market.
“We know what kinds of things consumers are searching for, and we have invested in those key high-interest verticals, including entertainment, shopping, health and local search,” said Satya Nadella, corporate vice president of the search and advertising platform group at Microsoft.
We have made dramatic progress in delivering a better search experience to our customers, “With the core platform in place, we intend to win customers and earn their loyalty one query at a time,” said Nadella.
With the new features in Microsoft’s Live Search, certainly Microsoft would like to take market share away from Google, but according to Weiner, that is a longer-term initiative. From his perspective, the goal of the Live Search update is more along the lines of getting people who have already used Live Search to use it more.
“With this update, our engineering focus is on the areas that matter most to the 185 million consumers who use our service every month,” said Nadella.
Up to 40 per cent of searches fall into the categories of entertainment, shopping, health and local search, and the enhanced Live Search is geared towards delivering relevant content in a compelling way across these key vertical search areas.
After analyzing consumer feedback received since Live Search’s January 2005 launch, Microsoft targeted four high priority changes: improve the relevance of the search engine’s results; speed up the rate that Web pages load; improve the look and feel throughout the site; and provide specialized search channels for entertainment, shopping, health, local and video.
Microsoft has quadrupled the size of its index — that is, the number of documents it searches — in order to provide more relevant search results. Now, it will troll more than 20 billion Web pages. In addition, engineers enhanced the search engine’s ability to predict the intent of the query.
Live Search will better identify keywords and phrases to make connections between seemingly disparate words and return more relevant results.
Microsoft ranks a distant third in Web search, with just 11.3 percent of the U.S. search market in August versus 56.5 percent for Google and 23.3 percent for Yahoo, according to research firm ComScore. Yet analysts note Microsoft is one of the few companies with the wherewithal to close that gap.
“It is very, very challenging but Microsoft is one of the few companies that is in a position to take a really long-term view of this whole game,” said Greg Sterling, founding principal of research firm Sterling Market Intelligence.
Microsoft ceded a head start to Google in Web search and then watched it create a multibillion-dollar business on the back of selling advertisements tied to search results.
Google is now one of its main rivals, using its Web ad money to invest in threats to Microsoft’s core desktop software business by offering Web-delivered software as a “service.”
Last quarter, Google earned net income of $925 million, almost entirely from ads. That lagged Microsoft’s $3 billion overall profit, but Microsoft online services business posted a loss and the unit’s revenue grew at a third of Google’s pace.
“Also a new video search feature offers smart motion previews, facts and news on celebrities and a new xRank celebrity ranking tool.”
The upgrade has already drawn some favorable reactions.
“The video search is great with the preview capability that automatically extracts highlights,” said Van Baker, a Gartner analyst. “The local maps capability has some great new features, [and] the overall relevance seems much improved — but time will tell.”
“I also like what they did with the health vertical,” he added.
Additional improvements include a cleaner user interface that makes the results pages easier to read and use, and a more robust Answers platform that provides instant access to information from trusted sources while increasing relevancy.
Ask.com, the search arm of IAC/InterActiveCorp, started a search service this year, “Ask3D,” that divides results into panels for links, images, video and other information.
Google released “Universal Search” to draw results from separate properties covering local information, images, news, video and books.
“The first step was to have a credible product,” said Nadella, who joined the search team six months ago. “Google has been ahead of us and we believe with this release we have caught up and we can compete effectively in terms of search quality.”
“By spiffing up the algorithm in a way to create greater relevance and creating new verticals, Microsoft wants to get greater buzz going in and among those who use Live Search,” Weiner said. “Part of what happens when you do that is you gain momentum. Momentum is what Microsoft needs, in addition to some other things, to compete with Google.”