Live.com Search Engine Review
Microsoft rolled Live.com out of beta. Live.com is Microsoft’s new search engine that will replace the old engine at MSN.com. MSN will still exist, but all search will be driven by the Live.com technology.
At first blush, Live.com looks like Pastel Google. The colors are softer more subdued. For example, a search result consists of a Title, Description and a link. The title is a much softer blue than the bold blue of Google. The description is actually a dark grey not a true black like Google. And the link is a soft green, not a bold green of Google. In terms of readability, I find Google much easier to read. The softer subdued colors of Live.com make my eyes work just a tad harder.
How relevant are the results? It is hard to say without a lot of comparison but having done a few searches it is clear that the results are very different from Google in most cases. In general, some terms seemed more relevant other terms were less relevant when compared to Google. The verdict here is that search engines in general still have a way to go in pinpointing relevancy.
I think Live.com nails the interface for image search. It works like usual: type in a term, a bunch of images appear, etc. Clicking on the image will open up the image’s site of residence within the Live.com window. The other images Live.com found are moved to the left nav bar where they can be scrolled. Clicking on other images will bring up the original webpage within the main content window, all without leaving Live.com. Slick.
Live.com News search is sorta, well, blah. Nothing to exciting here.
However, they bounce right back with a pretty snappy local search. I typed in
“coffee shops”. Live.com uses your IP address to guess where you live. In this case, it was accurate and brought up my city. It populated the map with little numbered flags. Each number corresponded to a name and address in the left nav bar. I verified the list consisted of all coffee shops and no chinese buffets or McDonalds were thrown in. I only wish it search beyond the boundaries of the actual city. In metropolitan areas, it would be helpful to see the wider scope of possibilities.
Other items are still in BETA: feed search, QnA (Questions and Answers), Video, Academics and Products.
Overall, it still seems too Google like. I would have preferred a different approach to the User Interface like Snap. I guess a search engine is a search engine and a search result is a search result, but it seems there is room to provide more creative possibilities then a title, a description and a link.
[tags]search, engines, search+engines, google, live.com, microsoft, msn[/tags]
Posted by Paul Flyer on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 in Search Engines
