Microsoft challenges Google one query at a time


27 Sep 2007

Running for over a year now, Microsoft’s Live Search site has received a mini makeover, focusing on improved search results in the areas of shopping, health, entertainment and local interest.

The Microsoft Live Search site is currently at number three in the market with Google in the lead followed by Yahoo!.

Microsoft said it had used customer feedback from among its 128 million users per month to develop “richer and deeper” search results including better data extraction.

This means that specific information can be extracted from the internet such as reviews and customer ratings of products or videos, pictures and gossip on celebrities.

The Live Search Answers section has also been improved to provide more specialised answers and now includes image and mapping searches.

“We know what kinds of things consumers are searching for, and we have invested in those key high-interest verticals, including entertainment, shopping, health and local search,” said Satya Nadella, corporate vice president of the Search and Advertising Platform Group at Microsoft.

“With the core platform in place we intend to win customers and earn their loyalty one query at a time.”

In other news Microsoft is currently fixing a bug in its Office 2007 version of Excel in which calculations that should result in 65,535 are displayed as 100,000.

The official Microsoft blog ensured users that this issue only crops up in Excel 2007 and Excel Services 2007, but not any previous version.

By Marie Boran