Microsoft's new Windows Live Search

basically you may not need to be at #1 or page 1 like traditional SE to get

[sit2510]

[seattlepi.nwsource.com...]

I read in a news today that Microsoft has released its beta Windows Live Search at [live.com...] which would replace MSN some times in Summer. It's quite innovative with a lot of new features consolidated. Its screen fit with your computer. In search, you don't have to go from page 1 to page 2 or 3, but streamline down - so basically you may not need to be at #1 or page 1 like traditional SE to get traffic.

[Dijkgraaf]

The page takes awfully long to load the first time.
Hopefully they fix that, otherwise people aren't going to stick around.
And the "Oops, we seem to be having a problem with this feed. Please try again later." doesn't impress either, oh well it is a Beta.

Yes, no need to change pages for search results, but how far are you going to scroll through results before giving up?
You will probably still need to be ranked near the top for your keywords to get any traffic.

It is more than just a search page, looks like they are integrating your hotmail and their new version of messenger as well.

[Pass the Dutchie]

I like the fact you get a scrolling list of results and that you dont have to go from one page to another. The option to expand or shrink results is also a nice feature.

Despite this if they want to carve up a piece of the Search market then they have to improve search results which are poor.

[designhaus]

love the ability to search within a search result! very clever

[stuartmcdonald]

how you can manage the detail of the results is good, but I hate, really hate the scrolling effect. As with others, took about three quarters of an eon to load.

[vincevincevince]

Usability and accessibility test results summary:

Windows Live search (0/10)
Google Search (8/10)

For illustrative purposes, the result of trying to use both services with lynx 2.8.5dev.16 are shown below.

Windows Live:

Home page:

#             Windows Live
 
 #Windows Live Search
 
 ____________________ Search
 
 IFRAME: naviframe

Resulting page from a search for 'test':

#             Windows Live
 
 #Windows Live Search
 
 ____________________ Search
 
 IFRAME: naviframe

Google:

Home page:

             Google
 
      Personalized Home ¦ Sign in
 
       Google
 
     Web Images Groups News Froogle Local more »
 
 _______________________________________________________
 Google Search I'm Feeling Lucky Advanced Search
 Preferences
 Language Tools
 
     Advertising Programs - Business Solutions - About Google
 
      ©2006 Google

Resulting page from a search for 'test':

           test - Google Search (p1 of 2)
 
 Sign in
 
 Go to Google Home Web Images Groups News Froogle Local more »
 test_____________________________________ Search Advanced Search
 Preferences
 
 Web Results 1 - 10 of about 1,980,000,000 for test [definition]. (0.15 seconds)
 
 Site One Title
 Site One Snippet ...
 www.siteone URL/ - 36k - Cached - Similar pages
 
 Site Two Title
 Site Two Snippet ...
 www.sitetwo URL/ - 36k - Cached - Similar pages
 
 etc etc etc...

If the service isn't made a lot more accessible I hope that Google funds someone in a legal case against Microsoft Live. Personally I cannot stand their interface - it is complex, it isn't intuitive, and it is very very slow.

[natim]

Puzzling why they would use overture results on sponsored listings here when they have adcenter.

[surin_p3]

Wow... this is the best search engine around today...

And I have (and need) only one raeson:
I am on the first page for many of my sites... :)
As opposed to the second or fifth on Google.

The improvements they can make according to me are:

* Faster loading
* It is a bit unclear (the text) on my laptop anyways
* When using the "more or less" text feature in the middle of a scroll it jumps from away from the text you have.

Well thats it for me today. Take care everybody

[afterburner]

I like the fact that they are at least trying different things, got to give them some credit.

[Ledfish]

I have to agree with what someelse said, the load time is terrible.

Other than that I noticed some result listed that had an IP address listed as the url. Would it be better to show the domain name rather than the IP Address. When I see an IP Address rather than a domain name, it just yells spam.

Also on a specific search for a keyword, I found a listing that was nothing more than a test page. The keyword was not even on the page. So it doesn't appear to me that Windows Live concerns itself much with content.

To me, this look like a high schooler's attempt at a search engine. Not what I would expect from Billy Gates and frankly if this is representative of Microsofts search engine development team, I would seriously consider firing the whole team. I realize it is just a beta product, but for a company like Microsoft, that is just plain embarrassing.

[dazzlindonna]

I absolutely love it. It's simply brilliant. Yes, it's in beta, and needs a few tweaks, but overall I think it is near perfection in design and functionality. Awesome!

[zeus]

I like the results, design, new features and the image layout is also great they give a bigger benefit for the users sites and does not only steal the pictures.

[mattglet]

beta

The ideas are there for sure... I'm interested in seeing how they expand, and make things better after some usage data is collected. The usability factor isn't that great yet, but it shows promise.

[vincevincevince]

Totally non-functional without javascript support (not even an attempt at functionality).

If you scroll down and then hold down the scroll-down button it crashes Firefox 100% repeatably.

The number of problems I find with this are enormous. This is not beta, this is early alpha and should never have been released!

[AhmedF]

I think it looks ince, the roving search feature is interesting, but at the same time I think its crap. The search navigation is really horrible - I cant open a search result in a new tab (what in the ...) and after clicking on a search result and pressing back, it all fell apart.

[trillianjedi]

Very nicely done - I can see big potential here with lots of good ideas.

Implementation needs a little work. Of course it is beta so can't hold that against them, but if they want it launched by summer, someone's going to be having some late nights ;-)

TJ

[rj87uk]

I don't link the way the results are being displayed - It looks too small and stuck in that box... (Using Firefox)

[walkman]

>> If the service isn't made a lot more accessible I hope that Google funds someone in a legal case against Microsoft Live. Personally I cannot stand their interface - it is complex, it isn't intuitive, and it is very very slow.

Sue them because you want to use lynx and can't access the advanced features? It's slow as hell, but nothing a few server farms wouldn't solve.

[vincevincevince]

Sue them because you want to use lynx and can't access the advanced features?

No, because it is very difficult or impossible to use with a screen-reading browser, or screen-reading software.

[Giacomo]

Search doesn't work in my Firefox 1.5.

[r3nz0]

I think Microsoft is shaking with this idea..

The technics are Cewl and almost a incredible w3schools job! Congratulations for that Team Live.com.

But in my opinion they forget that it is all about information... fast and easy..

The scrolling effect in the SERPS are cewl but i still want page navigation links... so build them both!

I only tested live.com on IE sinds my Firefox isnt working anymore.

[edited by: r3nz0 at 3:55 pm (utc) on Mar. 8, 2006]

[Jordo needs a drink]

The referer is only the live site address. It doesn't show the search query or keywords. So you don't know what keywords brought the visitor to your site.

[bedlam]

Totally non-functional without javascript support (not even an attempt at functionality).

True. And in Firefox, watch the Javascript Console while you're on the search page :-o

-b

[Rugles]

It is going to be easy to spam it.

I can see a spammy doorway page I put up 7 years ago ranking #1.

Other than the fact the results are not any better, I like the look.

[Rugles]

The image search is neat. But very slow.

[Bilbo123]

I believe that MSN is a bit misdirected.

Google got their market share by first focusing on great search results. Then the traffic started to flow. Then they built great tools to keep people interested.

MSN hasn't got the first task of search down yet.

[phpdude]

Wow!

If this is their answer to Google, I think Google has nothing to worry about.

I see the old style spam pages generated on the fly loaded with keywords all over the place.

Their current msn search is better than the live search.

You can relax Google, no serious challenge here.

[SuddenlySara]

I really don't like the scroll feature. Much easier for me to use my browser scroll. Search and page is way to slow on my laptop with Verizon's so called wireless broadband.

[SuddenlySara]

Just tried live beta on my home computer and same answer, "The scroll feature is horrible".

Can't tell where I'm at on live? I want a search engine that will give me the results easy and I can scroll with my browser and hit next page and so on.
I use my back and forth buttons on my browser all the time when I search because I do try many pages on a SE to find what I'm looking for.

Live Beta's scrolling feature will help you dig a hole to China but good luck going back to that site you found on the 2nd page...?

[hughie]

that's really really annoying, what's wrong with the browser scroll?

If i want to go to position 65 on google i move my bar and blamo, i'm there in 0.2 seconds. If i want to get there on "live" it takes 3-4 seconds and thus, i'm bored and i've gone back to google.