Live Search is undergoing a major metamorphosis, according to Microsoft, all in an attempt to better compete with the big boys of search like Google and Yahoo. Yet despite quadrupling the size of its index and supposedly improving relevance and performance on the search engine, the service still has a ways to go before winning over Google users.
Our Compiler homies have a nice roundup of the engine's new features (and why many of them are still disappointing), so we thought we'd aim a few follow-up questions at Microsoft regarding its strategy with Live Search and the company's quest for ad dollars.
Wired News: Satya Nadella, corporate vice president for Microsoft's search and advertising group, told the Wall Street Journal that Live Search can now complete with Google. Was the implication that it wasn't competitive before?
Microsoft: What Satya said was that with the progress we have been making on core relevance, we think we are competitive on relevance with Google and a bit ahead of Yahoo. We believe relevancy is not defined by math – it's defined by people – and relevancy likely has a unique meaning for every searcher. Our goal is to build and deliver services that bring new levels of control and personalization to the web experience. Our internal statistics show that Live Search relevance has steadily improved over the last few years. Microsoft is continuing to innovate in search, getting the basics right, and cracking the code to more deeply engaging its customers across the network. We believe the improvements we’re delivering now close the gap with our competitors.
WN: Brad Goldberg is quoted as saying these new features are geared more for existing users. Why not focus more on trying to lure Google and Yahoo users over to your side at this point?
Microsoft: With this release, we believe we've made the right investments to drive increased loyalty from our existing customer base and higher rates of adoption from other consumers. We believe that if we can increase engagement with our current customers and encourage them to do more searches with Live Search, our overall market share will increase. And to be clear, we do think many of the improvements to Live Search (all the relevance work, bigger index, more work around query intent – things that will help with tail queries) may well be very attractive to users of other search engines. We see that 80 percent of folks use multiple engines, we are starting with our customer base, but if we build the best experience in terms of relevancy, verticals, answers, etc, we thing it will resonate across all searchers over time. It is a long term game where you build loyalty one query at a time.
WN: How are the new changes to Live Search tied to Microsoft's overall plans for search-related keyword advertising?
Microsoft: A more relevant and engaging search experience will increase page views and query volume, which we think will make advertisers happy, and allow us to deliver the right audience to our advertising customers in a way that will drive great ROI for their adCenter campaigns.
WN: What's the thinking behind singling out search categories like shopping, local, health and entertainment in this update?
Microsoft: We chose to look at blended search differently and focus on high interest vertical content areas where the majority of searches are happening and making sure those search results as rewarding as they possibly can be. This is really about looking at the types of queries people are doing (40% of queries fall into these buckets) and nailing the experience for searchers in these areas, even as we continue to improve the core engine. We believe the innovation and improvements we’re delivering are distinctly unique to our Live Search product.
WN: Is Microsoft working on something that neither Yahoo or Google are doing at this point [relating to search]? It seems like you'll have to do something neither company has done before to adequately compete. Any hints?
Microsoft: We are constantly working on new innovations, however, we have nothing to share at this time.
Photo: Liveside.net
