“Do what I mean, not what I say!” [Part 1 of 2]

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...
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3 New Updates to Live Search Mobile

On Monday the 15th 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! Voice Input and Gas Prices Now in Live Search for Windows Mobile Live Search has been...
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New and improved product results in Web search

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...
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Relevance, Relevance, Relevance!

In building 88 on Microsoft’s main campus in Redmond, WA there is a small, but growing group of us that think about relevance constantly. We eat, live and breathe ideas and technology that makes our relevance better. Having worked on this release for a little over 9 months we could not be more excited about the relevance of our new engine.  From our metrics, and more importantly our usage as customers, our new engine is so far superior...
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Microsoft acquires Jellyfish.com

We want to welcome some new folks to the Live Search family – we recently purchased a company called Jellyfish.com, based in Madison, Wisconsin.  Jellyfish has done some really innovative work in comparative shopping engines. We think the technology has some interesting potential applications as we continue to invest heavily in shopping and commerce as a key component of Live Search.  Stay tuned for more great stuff from our...
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Introducing...the new Live Search

This week we’re excited to launch a major update to Live Search that’s relevant, faster and easier to use.  Hundreds of us rolled up our sleeves and dug deep.  We pored over your feedback, analyzed the data and talked to thousands of users.  How major is this?  It’s our biggest update since our debut in January 2005. Here are just some of the areas we focused on: Relevance, relevance, relevance.  We...
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Our New Webmaster Portal and an Invitation to the Private Beta

Shortly after that day in March when we had to take the “link:” operator offline, a small team was formed in Redmond. Its singular focus: to build the next-generation set of tools, content and resources for SEO professionals and webmasters (and get “link:” back in your hands). Creatively named Webmaster Portal (we’re really good at marketing), it will be a single, friendly place to find all tools and information...
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Live Search @ SES San Jose

For those of you attending the Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, CA this week, drop by and check us out at one of these sessions: Search Engine Q&A On Links – Day 3 at 4:45pm (8/22)Join Eytan Seidman, Lead Program Manager for the Live Search crawler, to answer your questions about links. Meet the Crawlers – Day 4 at 10:45am (8/23)More fun with Eytan, here to answer your questions about how to submit and provide...
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Three new features in Live Search Images

We know you love searching for people with our image search engine—we’ve worked hard to make it easy and fun. Now we’ve made it even better. Today we shipped three new features that help you find faces, portraits and black and white images. Try these links to see them in action: without the new features – jimi hendrix with new face filtering on – jimi hendrix filter:face with new portrait filtering on – jimi...
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Live Search Books: Now with In-Copyright Content

Today we’re delighted to announce the availability of in-copyright book content in the Beta version of Live Search Books! For hundreds of years books have been the repositories for the world’s most trusted, authoritative knowledge. But until recently, books have been invisible to the world’s search engines. Change is afoot! Starting today, you’ll find search query results from in-copyright books in Live Search Books. The...
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