James.Random()

Live Search is sneaking up behind Google in terms of relevance all the time and also the Live platform is constantly releasing new and cool stuff.  Recently, I posted about Virtual Earth 3D which was introduced to complement our mapping technology but I just realised I've not even mentioned the Image, News, Feeds or academic verticals in Live Search. 

Today we had a lunch and demo with David Graham, the UK Product Manager for Microsoft's Search which was very interesting indeed.  He highlighted the following things in his talk and I wanted to share them with you:

Getting serious about getting search market share:

• New TV Advertising in the UK
• National Print
• Heavy online presence
  • Check out who's driving The Register's Search

Live.com

A Search driven, personisable experience.  Personalised includes

• Feeds, Live Gadgets, Mail etc
• Personal Dashboard

Live Search Verticals

• Web
• IMages
• News
• Maps
• Academic (Beta)
• Feeds (Beta)

Images Search

• Innovative UI experience - good feedback from Blogosphere and press
• Live preview and resizing
• Infinite Scrolling
• Work with image easily - scratch pad, email it etc.
• Results from orginal query after clicking an image

News Search

• Localised
• No ads

Web Search

• Automatically answers questions and gives search results
• Answers mathematical forumlas and algebraic expressions
• Weather results
• Advanced query syntax (see the help section)
  • filter by site or document type
• Definitions
  • e.g. define:switch
• Interesting advanced search stuff
  • url:microsoft.com - check if a domain is listed by Live Search
  • which other servers are running on the same IP address?
  • who else links to my domain?
  • which links are on this domain?

Local Search (Maps)

• Rebranded to "Maps"
• Microsoft UK link to local live map
  • Campus information and picture highlighted
  • Search collection includes
    • Shuttle bus info
    • Train station
    • Taxi rank etc
    • Zoom to street level
• Build Collections using the scratch pad
  • Good for plannig trips
  • Useful for sharing your location so friends/family/customers can find you easily
• Traffic Warnings
  • Hotspots painted on the map
• Bird's eye view of map
  • Geometric UK cities added in the last few months - so very recent images
• Virtual Earth 3D
• Love Lewisham Project
  • A Local London Borough's initative to combat anti-social activities like grafitti and rubbish dumping.  Residents are encourage to upload their photos to the Love Lewisham website and the locate their photo using Live Maps - the council then sort out the problem much more quickly.  What a great way to bring the community together!  Check out a screenshot of the website here:

Finally, a more light-hearted view of the "battle" between Live Search vs Google can be seen here: