Microsoft took the addresses off the fall release of its Reside Lookup engine on September 26 at its invitation-only Searchification occasion for press and analysts.I wasn;t there, but like many, I was briefed and embargoed about what;s new in the fall update. (The embargoes ended at midnight EST.) I;ve posted a couple of screen shots of some of the new Reside Lookup enhancements end users can anticipate to get rolled out as component with the fall release in between now and mid-October.There weren;t a whole whole lot of surprises, because of this of an early post and display shots from a Microsoft Reside Search product supervisor (subsequently eliminated) that had been grabbed by the LiveSide.Net web page. But listed here are my 5 take-aways about what;s new and what;s coming next from Microsoft within the Live Lookup arena.one. Microsoft;s search index can be a lot larger now. Microsoft officials mentioned the Live Search index has grown four-fold because the very first release. (Unfortunately,
Office 2010 Professional Key, that amount is fairly meaningless, given that Microsoft won;t say how massive the original index was.) I have heard from one of my contacts that Reside Lookup is now indexing 20 billion paperwork. (Update: It seems to be like Microsoft made the decision to start spreading the twenty billion figure about.) ButI heard from one more supply that it;s thirty billion. In either situation,
Office Professional 2007 Key, it;s a good deal a lot more comparable to Google;s index, with regards to protection and ranking of paperwork within the index.
2. Reside Search;s relevancy is noticeably improved. “The important part of this is what shows on page one (of lookup results), and here Microsoft have made the advances in relevance they have been talking about for the past couple of years,” stated Chris Overd, 1 with the principals with LiveSide.Net. “This makes today;s beta release of Live Search a significantly stronger competitor to Yahoo and Google.”
3. Microsoft is focusing on improving search in 4 verticals with this release. These are: shopping, entertainment, health and local/maps. Microsoft estimates 10 percent of consumer lookup queries are entertainment-related and between three and 5 percent are health-related. There was a reason (really a number of of them) that Microsoft bought the Medstory health-search engine. Microsoft officials say they will add a lot more verticals to their focus with each subsequent Reside Search release.4. Speaking of subsequent releases, Microsoft is sticking to its plans to do a major spring and a drop release every year of Live Search,
Windows 7 Professional Key, with incremental updates coming in among. The spring release, according to Reside Search General Supervisor Derrick Connell, will bring enhancements about “community.” (He wouldn;t elaborate.) This doesn;t sound like tagging/social bookmarking kinds of stuff, as Connell told me that Microsoft decided those features appealed to too small a percentage with the potential user base. Maybe we;ll see a lot more peer reviews/recommendations across areas beyond shopping…? Just a guess…. And what about rumors I had heard regarding Reside Search allowing end users to lookup their Outlook e-mail? “There;s a tie-in there,
Office Enterprise 2007 Key,” Connell mentioned, and Microsoft will have extra to say about it later.
5. Microsoft is still kicking about the idea of possibly rebranding Live Search. “Live it,
Office Home And Student!” just doesn;t have the ring of “Google It!” Connell told me Microsoft “will continue to look at branding.” No hints on what Microsoft ultimately might use as the new name, however.What do you think of what Microsoft;s done with lookup this go-around? Do you think its enhancements will give it any kind of traction against Google and Yahoo?