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Nielsen/Netratings yesterday released their USA search stats for November and the net for year over year number of searches (in provider rank order) is:
It’s one thing to lose share, but MSN/Windows Live Search actually lost traffic while the overall search volume grew and that is the the same story as in October and recent prior months as well. It’s not a pretty picture considering how much effort Microsoft has put into Windows Live Search.
On a related note, Topix.net’s Rich Skrenta sparked a lot of discussion with his observation that based on referrals to prominent websites, Google’s ability to drive traffic is considerably greater than even its first place search share ranking would indicate. Microsoft’s Don Dodge summarizes the discussion nicely.
Catherine Holahan at Business Week online reviews the Internet search wannabes (including Microsoft) trying to steal Google’s crown with new search technologies. Meanwhile, Danny Sullivan has a little fun with another wannabe that has rediscovered “natural language search” for the nth time.
Jupiter Research’s Michael Gartenberg got a sneak preview of Crossbow and Photon (the next versions of Windows Mobile previously mentioned here) and he’s impressed:
I can’t really tell you all that much about then except that Microsoft is totally changing the way they’re thinking about mobility and it shows.
LiveSide’s Harrison Hoffman has the buzz on Windows Live Marketplace (codenamed Agora) which seems to be a tool for “Internet based retailers/sellers to add catalogs of their available products to the Windows Live Product Search database.”
Even further out is Nemo (work on which is on hold):
Codename Nemo is designed to be an add-on for Windows Vista (Home Premium and Vista Ultimate editions), that integrates Spaces, Messenger and Live Call into a UI designed for large monitors and TVs. Nemo essentially creates a Windows Live Media Center, and is optimized for use by Microsoft Media Center remote, as well as keyboard.
The Windows Live Mail team is rolling out the “M8″ enhancement to their beta.
Brier Dudley has some fun with Windows Media Player 11 beta 2:
Apparently there’s a glitch that makes some recorded TV shows vanish after three days, degrading the TiVo-like experience of Media Center.
I wonder if there’s some link to the copy prevention software used in the Zune media player…
If Microsoft is ever to get out of 3rd place in Web search behind Google and Yahoo they are going to have to do something different. One of the cards they plan to play is an investment in improved search technologies and while there were some on display when Windows Live Search launched last week, it looks like there’s another one up their sleeve - faceted search. Paula J. Hane at Information Today:
Last week, Microsoft announced a major upgrade to the new search engine it has been testing since March. It has moved its Windows Live Search and Live.com out of beta status and said that Live Search will power the search capability on MSN, the company’s news and entertainment portal. A new feature is the Related Search function, which is designed to help users refine a query by simply clicking on a list of related terms. The unusually low-key and minimalist press announcement generated little excitement. After some poking around, Information Today, Inc. learned from search expert Stephen E. Arnold that Microsoft has even more potent technology ready to deploy.
Unlike the upgrade to Live.com, which, according to a Microsoft spokesperson, just uses algorithms that mine previously submitted queries to the engine, the new and unannounced search system brings faceted search to a Microsoft application. Try it yourself at http://rwsm.directtaps.net. The Microsoft project, called Search Results Clustering (SRC), currently offers a search beta and downloadable toolbar.
What Microsoft is doing is called text mining. This is jargon for discovering people, places, things, and other facts from text. These facts are then organized so a user can point and click on a category and see the related information. The approach is the secret sauce for such companies as Exalead in Paris and Endeca in Boston.
Arnold, who is the author of Enterprise Search Report, 3rd edition, and the forthcoming Text Mining Report, said: “If Microsoft makes this function part of SharePoint, it will pose a serious threat to companies offering SharePoint-specific search enhancements and be a strong competitive challenge to Google and its Appliance and OneBox API. If Microsoft puts this technology in Live.com, that service will almost certainly see an increase in traffic. Microsoft had to do something, and this Vivisimo-like clustering may be one of Microsoft’s most significant advances yet.”
There’s much more by following the link, but the project is from Microsoft Research Asia’s Search Technology Center which was established in October, 2005 and is apparently yet another Microsoft organization working on search technology.
As for faceted search itself, the basic idea is to not only provide search results for the specific term provided by the user, but also for various “facets” of the specific term. An example would be if the user searched for “boots,” facets might be “fashion,” “western,” or “mens” which further segment the search space. The user then could click on the facet of interest which would have more facets.
The real trick, of course, is to discover meaningful facets for arbitrary search terms and the Microsoft project performs it via on-the-fly cluster analysis of the results of the original search term. Hit the link in the quote above and kick the tires for yourself.
After dropping slightly in July, Google’s search US share was up slightly in August:
Google Inc.’s share of the 6.5 billion Web searches conducted in the U.S. in August inched up, reversing a loss the company saw in July, according to reports from comScore Networks and Nielsen NetRatings released Tuesday.
Data from comScore, an Internet research company, showed Google held a 44.1 percent share of U.S. search queries, up from 43.7 percent in July. Nielsen NetRatings estimated the share at 50.2 percent, up from 49.2 percent last month.
Microsoft is reportedly in 3rd place as usual and comScore has them at %12.5 down from %12.8 in July and %15.8 a year ago, while I have yet to see the Nielsen details for Microsoft. As always, we’re talking small changes in the monthly numbers, but if you would like to try to discern longer term trends, Danny Sullivan has the Nielsen numbers graphed for 19 months up through July at SearchEngineWatch.
Market Watch says Windows Live Search has already launched:
Microsoft Corp. late Monday said it officially launched its Live Search service, the successor to the Web-search tool on its MSN portal. The company, which had previously released Live Search in test form, said the new service is available in 47 markets globally, with users able to use its Live.com Web site for personalized Internet searches. Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., additionally said its Live Search Local service is now available in the United States and the U.K.
Frankly, it’s hard to tell because of the ubiquitous beta logo on the live.com header and the AP says the official launch isn’t until tomorrow, but presumably it’s imminent.
Update: Press release:
Microsoft Corp. today announced the release from beta of Live Search and of Live.com in 47 markets worldwide, and final availability of Live Local Search in the U.K. and the U.S. Microsoft also announced that Live Search will now power the Web search capability on MSN®, the company’s media and entertainment portal, attracting more than 465 million unique users worldwide per month.
…
Additional details can be found on the Live Search and Live Local Search team blogs at http://livesearch.spaces.live.com and http://virtualearth.spaces.live.com, respectively.
At the moment, there’s zip at the blogs and MSN is still showing the old MSN Search.
Update 2: Mary Jo Foley reports that the transition from beta to final will take place gradually through the 14th.
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