Microsoft took the addresses off the fall release of its Reside Search engine on September 26 at its invitation-only Searchification event for press and analysts.I wasn;t there, but like a great number of, I used to be briefed and embargoed about what;s new within the fall update. (The embargoes ended at midnight EST.) I;ve posted a few screen shots of a number of the new Live Lookup enhancements customers can anticipate to get rolled out as part with the fall release among now and mid-October.There weren;t a entire whole lot of surprises, consequently of an early publish and screen shots from a Microsoft Live Lookup product manager (subsequently eliminated) that had been grabbed by the LiveSide.Net web-site. But here are my 5 take-aways about what;s new and what;s coming next from Microsoft in the Reside Search arena.one. Microsoft;s search index is actually a whole lot bigger now. Microsoft officials mentioned the Reside Lookup index has grown four-fold since the first release. (Unfortunately, that number is considerably meaningless, offered that Microsoft won;t say how large the original index was.) I have heard from one of my contacts that Reside Lookup is now indexing 20 billion paperwork. (Update: It looks like Microsoft made the decision to start spreading the 20 billion figure about.) ButI heard from an additional supply that it;s 30 billion. In both case,
Office Home And Business, it;s a great deal more equivalent to Google;s index, when it comes to protection and ranking of documents within the index.
2. Reside Lookup;s relevancy is noticeably enhanced. “The important component of this is what shows on page 1 (of lookup results), and here Microsoft have produced the advances in relevance they have been talking about for the past couple of years,” mentioned Chris Overd, one of the principals with LiveSide.Net. “This makes today;s beta release of Live Search a a lot stronger competitor to Yahoo and Google.”
3. Microsoft is focusing on improving search in 4 verticals with this release. These are: shopping,
Windows 7 Ultimate, entertainment, health and local/maps. Microsoft estimates 10 percent of consumer lookup queries are entertainment-related and in between three and five percent are health-related. There was a reason (essentially several of them) that Microsoft bought the Medstory health-search engine. Microsoft officials say they will add additional verticals to their focus with each subsequent Reside Lookup release.4. Speaking of subsequent releases, Microsoft is sticking to its plans to do a key spring and a drop release every year of Live Search,
Windows 7 Home Premium Product Key, with incremental updates coming in among. The spring release,
Office Pro Plus 2010, according to Reside Lookup General Manager Derrick Connell, will bring enhancements around “community.” (He wouldn;t elaborate.) This doesn;t sound like tagging/social bookmarking kinds of stuff, as Connell told me that Microsoft made the decision those features appealed to too small a percentage of the potential user base. Maybe we;ll see extra peer reviews/recommendations across areas beyond shopping…? Just a guess…. And what about rumors I had heard regarding Live Search allowing people to lookup their Outlook e-mail? “There;s a tie-in there,” Connell said,
microsoft Office 2010 Activation, and Microsoft will have more to say about it later.
5. Microsoft is still kicking about the idea of probably rebranding Live Lookup. “Live it!” 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 search this go-around? Do you think its enhancements will give it any kind of traction against Google and Yahoo?