Microsoft rolls out NEW search improvements

[anandk]

Microsoft Corp., the No. 3 Web search provider in the U.S., is rolling out changes to its search engine aimed at narrowing the gap between it and market leader Google Inc.

Microsoft is quadrupling the number of sites it searches for new information and overhauled the core technology that decides which results to display, said Satya Nadella, corporate vice president for Microsoft's search and advertising group.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070927/...osoft_search_2

[alsiladka]

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’ve quadrupled the size of our index, which means we can return the right results for your searches. Improvements like enhanced ranking algorithms, auto-spell correction and better stop word handling help us return the best results.
Speed. Pages load much faster than before.
Streamlined look and feel. We focused on the end-to-end experience from the homepage throughout the site. For example, search results are now easier to read thanks to work on typography, contrast, colors and spacing.
More high-interest content. You asked us for more in Entertainment, Shopping, Health, Local and Video search and we’re happy to deliver it.
In the coming weeks we’ll blog in detail about the improvements that we’ve made. You can also check out the press release that just hit the wire and the fact sheet for more information.

The end result is a service we believe is better across the board. Enjoy! We’re psyched to hear what you think.**

-The Live Search team

From the WLS blog. I am still getting the old search though.