livesearch Latest search engine news blog articles from livesearch. http://www.seocentro.com/seo-archives/author/livesearch.html livesearch News Archive http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=11895 The Live Search Powerset team will be presenting next week at Web 3.0 in Santa Clara on October 16-17. Scott Prevost, Powerset general manager, is providing Friday's keynote on The Road to Semantic Search . And I'm hosting a roundtable discussion on Thursday with Alitora, Cerebra, Metaweb, and Thompson Reuters called Semantic Startup 101 - Successes, challenges, and strategic decisions . For details, see Powerset at Web 3.0 next week . Hope to see you in Santa Clara! Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Wed, 08 Oct 2008 23:50:24 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=11827 Today we're excited for our friends at Facebook. Now Facebook users in the U.S. have the option to "Search Facebook" or "Search the Web." In addition, adCenter is delivering search ads alongside those results. For me that means getting great search results while receiving highly relevant ads that are personalized by either my Facebook profile or search query. Find out more about the Facebook team's first implementation of Live Search in their blog . Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:10:27 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=11782 Live Search is headed to New York City for SMX East 2008 ! SMX â€" Search Marketing Expo â€" is one of the premier "all-search" conferences. The goal is to educate and empower marketers, publishers, and advertisers alike to get the most out of search. So if you're headed to the show, October 6-8, come find us at one of the many panels we'll be speaking at. Or stopy by booth #640, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:34:21 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=11610 From cashback to Live Search club we've been building programs to help increase engagement, usage, and loyalty. Today we're expanding our efforts with the release of SearchPerks!, a new program designed to reward consumers with cool prizes â€" like frequent flyer miles, Xbox games, music downloads, and other products â€" just for using Live Search. To participate, visit http://www.getsearchperks.com/ and download the Perk Counter, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:37:25 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=11405 The Virtual Earth team has just released a major update that brings some great new features, as well as enhancements to existing features to Live Search Maps . Some of the highlights include: New imagery. Brings locations to life, with richer bird's eye and 3D imagery of more locations in cities across North America. Weather Integration. Features near-real time local weather and cloud formations within the 3D imagery. Localized maps. Provides maps in English, German, French, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:58:50 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=11157 If you were trying to get a hold of someone in Live Search today, you were probably getting nothing but voicemail as it seemed like everyone was keen to get downtown for the Microsoft company meeting! When I left campus this morning there were 10 buses full of Search team members leaving for Safeco field. After chatting briefly with Harry Shum and a few developers who were waiting for their bus, I headed out on my motorbike to get ready for my demo. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 19 Sep 2008 02:27:02 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=11076 Powerset officially became a part of Microsoft a little over a month ago, and Live Search has been hard at work collaborating with Powerset on several quick projects designed to be ready for testing within 30 days. These projects encouraged early collaboration between our two teams, as well as sharing of respective technologies. Freebase Answers Our first joint project was to expand the coverage of Live Search Answers. Today, many topical queries such as such as musicians, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:59:52 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=10736 Now that the Web is more worldwide than ever, the number of non-native English speakers going online has ballooned, and yet online content in English still dominates. For these users, free translation services mean that an entire world of information can now actually be at their fingertips. We're doing something to help them out. Translation now fully powered by the Microsoft Translator technology is available through Live Search, as well as IE8, the Windows Live Toolbar, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:15:20 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=10574 Elections document the will of the people, or at least the will of registered voters. On November 4 th , you'll be asked to answer many questions, including who should be our next president, as well as questions at your state and local level. Many blogs and analytical sites offer projections, comparisons to previous elections, and details about the issues and candidates themselves, including the MSN Election Guide . Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:51:18 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=10434 Whew, what a busy couple of weeks it's been. We launched our new home page back at the end of July with the goal of using a new picture each week. Then we decided to get a little crazy for the Olympics and rotate the images twice a day. About three days into the Olympics, we realized we just could not go back to one picture a week! So a few days ago we shifted gears again. We're now giving you a new image every day, with hotspots to help spur your imagination. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:48:53 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=9895 A quick note about my upcoming keynote at the Search Engine Strategies conference, Tuesday, August 19 th at 9:00 am in San Jose. Kevin Ryan and the entire SES organization put on one of the best search conferences around. This year I have the privilege to present to more than 4,000 of you down in the Valley. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:50:52 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=9622 Microsoft is into the Olympics in a big way through our partnership with NBC on NBCOlympics.com , the official online home of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing! And Live Search is ready to help you find everything you want during the games. Feeling competitive? Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:02:32 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=9583 Today we are bringing our Webmaster Tools out of beta and releasing several new features that help webmasters see how Live Search crawls and indexes your sites. As a website owner, you can use these tools to improve your results on Live Search when a someone is looking for your site. The new Webmaster tools give you more data about referring links, identify issues Live Search encountered when crawling your site, and help you improve the overall indexing of your site. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:07:34 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=9293 Today we're releasing an update to the Live Search home page that received positive feedback from customers in trials last month. The new design features background images that will change frequently, augmented with what we call "hotspots." These interactive areas highlight parts of the image and help you explore search results related to the highlighted area. Users who have tested this new home page have found it both engaging and a great place to start a search. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:27:45 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=8176 We're excited to announce that we've reached an agreement to acquire Powerset , a San Francisco-based search and natural language company. Powerset will join our core Search Relevance team, remaining intact in San Francisco. Powerset brings with it natural language technology that nicely complements other natural language processing technologies we have in Microsoft Research. More importantly, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:22:52 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=7426 Now all of eBay's "Buy it Now" offers will be eligible for cashback rewards . With eBay's expansive catalog of products, from jewelry to electronics, you'll start to see more cashback ads appearing in our search results. That means more ways for you to save. You'll see three primary differences between this user experience and other cashback user experiences: There's an eBay ad with a cashback gleam (the cashback icon in the image here). Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:48:41 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=7083 One of the most exciting developments we've had in the last year was the success of our inaugural Search and Give program where your queries helped to raise more than $250,000 for local schools and non-profits. Over the course of the year the program generated cash donations for more than 20,000 organizations ranging from schools to non-profits such as Doctors Without Borders and ASPCA (The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:00:16 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=7022 We at Live Search are pleased to announce another collaboration with Yahoo and Google aimed at making webmasters' lives easier. Webmasters have long used the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) to control how search engines access and display their content. The REP offers an easy and efficient way to communicate with search engines, and is currently used by millions of publishers worldwide. Over the past few years, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:50:12 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=7004 Has this ever happened to you? You search online for information and click a promising link only to get an error page staring back at you: These generic 404 error pages leave you stranded, with no option but to click the back button and start over, or just give up altogether " not very helpful. We thought about this problem and realized that we had all the pieces to offer something much more useful. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:58:40 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=6956 With today's HP announcement and the recent MSN toolbar release, I want to discuss our recent moves in the toolbar space. Overall, these distribution deals come down to three things: 1. Live Search is ready for primetime These types of deals require a search engine that can stand on its own, as we all know how easy it is to switch to another search engine. Sure, Live Search has room to improve, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:46:33 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=6895 Check it out: We realize that often you just need to get a sense of what your query is about. Wikipedia is great for that " you can learn enough from the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article to start you out on the right path. For Wikipedia results, we now show a good portion of the first paragraph and a few links from the table of contents. You can see more about the topic right there and see what else the article offers. We hope you learn more, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 30 May 2008 21:56:24 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=6622 Today we informed our partners that we are ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and that both sites will be taken down next week. Books and scholarly publications will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes. This also means that we are winding down our digitization initiatives, including our library scanning and our in-copyright book programs. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 23 May 2008 16:59:52 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=6286 In our last release of Live Search for Windows Mobile we snuck in a little feature that allows users to send feedback directly to the engineering team. Since then, we've received tons of messages from users, many of which have been requests for new functionality. So what's the moral of the story? Ask, and you shall receive. Here's the list of some of the cool stuff we've built in response to user feedback. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 16 May 2008 01:15:07 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5843 Along with the release of our new search experience, we'd like to give some background into the design team and process that went into all the changes you see. You might not immediately think of design as being a critical part of a search product, but we think it is, and we have a growing team of designers, researchers, and developers who believe it, too. We have a growing, pro-design community here at Microsoft as well (only fitting to plug Microsoft Design ). Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Tue, 06 May 2008 22:39:25 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5674 We've introduced our "Renaissance" release of Live Search QnA Beta . Our re-birth signifies the beginning of a new set of features that we'll continue to grow. We had three goals for this release: Focus on the QnA experience for new users. Encourage users to discover content and functionality in new ways. Highlight and award higher quality content by featuring members who are Top Contributors in given areas of expertise. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 02 May 2008 01:13:35 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5653 Just when you thought we'd stop at Celebrities, we now bring you (drum roll, please) Musicians ! xRank TM provides much more than just a way to track search trends " it's much more than that " it's a social commentary. With xRank TM Musicians we bring you the "mob's view" on what's shaking up the music industry. Sure, you've got Top 40s, billboard charts, and album sales, but what's more socially relevant than what you and your peers are searching for? Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Thu, 01 May 2008 18:23:03 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5598 With the recent update of the Product Search experience ( http://search.live.com/products/ ), users can both research and find deals on products within Live Search. We've incorporated feedback from our users during the beta cycle and revamped the user experience, so now users can search and refine products by user opinions, brand, category, and price ranges. In addition, users can sort results by best user, expert rating, and price. Try it out, and send us your feedback ! Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:52:22 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5471 We've just released the latest updates to our browser-based mobile search at m.live.com. One of our major efforts was to bring the power of product search to the convenience of a mobile phone. Think about how much time people spend shopping in brick-and-mortar stores " without the ability to do the product research they're accustomed to from their PCs. We took the great product search features from Live Search and made them easy to use on your mobile phone. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:23:29 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5352 You wanted it, and now you have it. We've incorporated RSS feeds into the browse and search results experience. Subscribe and stay up to date with stories from all categories or for specific searches that you perform. We appreciate all the feedback that you've given us. We take it all seriously and do our best to respond. Try us out ( http://news.live.com/ ), and keep the feedback coming! Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 25 Apr 2008 00:51:39 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5334 Those of you who search for stuff related to celebrities in your spare time raise your hands. C'mon now, don't be sheepish about it " we know the numbers, and we know you do it because we do it, too. Here's a thought. What if we could rank who you and all other Live Searchers like to search for? And then there was born a child unlike its siblings, a Live Search feature whose sole purpose was to be " gasp " FUN?! Check it out here . Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:13:09 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5231 When we were thinking about what searches we could improve on for this release, one thing we realized was that we actually were already getting a lot of searches right. A bunch of these were searches about a particular website you wanted. We returned the website, and you went there. Good times. But you didn't stay there. We did some research, and it turns out that after you made it to that page, you often tended to go to a few predictable places afterwards. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:36:15 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5027 With the launch of the new browse experience for News ( http://news.live.com ), we now bring you the most relevant stories of the day bucketed in categories, such as top stories, local news, and business. At the same time, the news team has revamped the news results page to incorporate many new features to improve your search experience. Add us to your homepage , try it out, and give us your feedback! Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:14:18 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=5020 In upcoming weeks some of us on the Live Search team will write about the changes we've made for this release across the Live Search family " from Web search through News, Video, and Products. As you put Live Search through its paces, let us know how it works for you. We'll do our best to read all your comments and answer the most common questions. We're building more than a search engine. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:01:04 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=4729 Our Maps team released new versions of Live Search Maps and Virtual Earth 3D yesterday. Here are some of the highlights: Directions and Traffic enhancements, including 1-Click directions (Party Maps!) Improved 3D cities (Las Vegas is shown below) Labels in Birds Eye imagery Exporting collections to your navigation or GPS device Tour enhancements, including HD movies Many more details are in Steve Lombardi's post over on the Live Maps/Virtual Earth blog - enjoy! Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:43:52 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=1668 With the winter in full swing, we're excited to announce snow reports for skiers and snowboarders! Search for any ski resort in the United States or Canada to get conditions before you head to the mountain. Links to the resort's site and a link to a map are also shown. Below is the report for Whistler (a great place in British Columbia): Of course, we have to be careful about showing conditions only when they're relevant. For example, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Thu, 07 Feb 2008 04:59:00 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=1032 The source code for www.tafiti.com is available! What is Tafiti? It is a search visualization website which brings a new user experience to researching (searching and storing results). It was originally created by Microsoft to demonstrate Silverlight and the Windows Live Search APIs. Today the Windows Live Platform team announced the release of the Tafiti Search Visualization source code to CodePlex which means any developer can download, modify, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:34:00 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=1033 This week we're excited to announce that the Live Search Webmaster Center has moved out of its closed beta and we are now open for a public beta. In conjunction with this release we want to announce the creation of the Live Search Webmaster Center blog . In an effort to serve our webmaster community better we will be sharing information on how to improve your crawlablity and visibility. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:34:00 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=1034 Users have told us that product reviews are one of the most important research tools they use when shopping for products. The Internet has lots of reviews, but they're usually spread across many sites, which makes finding and reading all of them time consuming. Our team saw this as a great opportunity to help. As alluded to in a previous post, we recently launched a new feature that finds, analyzes and summarizes reviews from across the Web in a single place. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Mon, 12 Nov 2007 19:52:00 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=1035 As far as I can tell, it's still not exceptionally well-known that the homepage for the Microsoft Zune is actually www.zune.net , and not zune.com. You'll find two things if you assume the latter: that there's no page for you at that address, and until recently, if you get forwarded on to your default search engine, chances are pretty good it won't help you figure out what went wrong. Our result page, in fact, had no results at all. Oops. In the past, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:31:00 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=1036 Software engineers tend to spend a lot more time working out at the driving range than they do the putting green. Left on our own we'd all be working on stuff like 3D Birds Eye navigation or robotic building modeling ; doing a local search for a coffee shop would require first getting strapped up like this Microsoft Researcher to the right so that we could predict where you wanted to find it and if you prefer decaf. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:53:47 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=1037 Continuing on with our "Do what I mean, not what I say", blog post from last time, here are some additional categories we tackled with this initiative. Equivalencies "We do really badly on the query ca chp " a coworker complained in one email. "Ca chp?" I thought. "What the heck does that mean?" It turned out it was pretty simple: "ca" was short for California and "chp" was short for California highway patrol . Obviously, Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Mon, 29 Oct 2007 05:37:00 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=1038 Yes, that's an odd title, let me explain. We've been working on returning the very best search results for your intent , not just for the particular search terms that you happen to have chosen as a vehicle to transmit that intent. There's an important difference there and it's been our focus for quite some time. For example, let's suppose that you've decided to move to the state of Arizona. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Wed, 24 Oct 2007 06:40:00 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=1039 On Monday the 15 th we also released a number of updates for our Live Search Mobile products , including: Voice input and gas prices in Live Search for Windows Mobile, A new beta for BlackBerry devices, and Improved mapping and directions in browser-based search for any mobile phone Details are below - please check them out and let us know what you think! Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:32:00 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=1040 On Monday we announced a new service that brings the power of local search to any phone-and lets you access it just by speaking. Think about all the times you need to find quick local information: you're driving home from work and need make reservations at your favorite restaurant. Or maybe you're already downtown, and want to get movie times for theaters nearby along with a map and directions. Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:22:00 GMT http://www.seocentro.com/cgi-bin/rss/go.pl?uid=1041 It's no surprise to anyone who uses the Web that shopping is one of the leading online activities. Many people use the Internet to research their next purchase or buy products online. We're here to help you find the product information you care about and make informed decisions. We've recently launched a richer experience when searching for products"from broad categories such as digital cameras to specific products such as Nikon d40 . Search Engines News SEO News livesearch livesearch Wed, 10 Oct 2007 06:58:00 GMT