The Real Live Search – Bing API experiment

Wouldn’t it be cool if search engines were as fast as you could type and actually showed you results as-you-type? As I found out this evening with jQuery in one hand and JSON in another, not only is it possible but turns out to be just as cool as I imagined.

Inspired by the realtime-ness of Google Wave, I wanted to build a prototype search engine that did away with a search button and page loads. Instead, search queries are sent character-by-character to the lightning fast Bing AJAX APIs which returned JSON results easily processed and formatted by Javascript on the page. The UI experience is driven solely by the browser.

The result is a truly “live” search experience which I’ve cunningly dubbed “The Real Live Search” as tribute to the former Microsoft search engine. I invite everyone to give it a quick whirl, but please bear in mind it’s only a couple hour’s work and may bite if prodded the wrong way.

Source: I started Something

Microsoft‘s Bing search engine has started to become publicly available, allowing the world to decide whether the company’s latest effort has the goods to take on Google.

The engine, which replaces Live Search, debuted Thursday at the D: All Things Digital conference and is slated to be fully available by Wednesday. (Microsoft said it would start becoming publicly available Monday, but that it wouldn’t be fully launched until Wednesday.)

Among the other naming changes that go along with the new search, Live Search Cashback is now Bing Cashback, while technology from Microsoft’s Farecast acquisition now powers Bing Travel. Virtual Earth gets a name change (though not an upgrade in my book) and is now Bing Maps for Enterprise.

With Bing, Microsoft is trying to make the case that search today is still an often unsatisfying experience. That is a unique challenge for Microsoft. Although its research shows that most people repeat searches and give up without finding exactly what they are looking for, perceived satisfaction of search is actually pretty high.

To help make the case, Microsoft plans to spend (to borrow a Carol Bartz phrase) boatloads of money on advertising. Estimates in the advertising trade mags have pegged spending at $80 million to $100 million.

That’s key, since very few people currently go out of their way to search using Microsoft’s technology. Most Microsoft searches come via MSN, from toolbars and other methods, while just 1 or 2 percent come from people actually typing Live.com into their browser’s address bar.

“Nearly 98 percent of the traffic at Live.com is passive (coming from MSN, etc.) and Bing will be an attempt by Microsoft to establish its search offering as a destination Web site with high active traffic,” Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Agarwal said in a research note on Monday. “In our view, though Microsoft’s search technologies are ready for prime time, making a call on the success of Bing now will be premature.”

One of the things I’ll be watching is how content creators react to the new ways that Microsoft pulls content into the search pages. The main results page offers the option to hover over the result for more information, while the product search site repurposes professional reviews, user reviews, and other information directly within product search results.

On the video side, Microsoft allows a live preview of videos from within its search results, also raising some questions of fair use.

Of course, other engines also borrow heavily from the sites they are searching. Don’t forget, Google hosts its own cached versions of the pages it searches.

The bigger deal, of course, is whether people take to Bing at all. Microsoft does seem to have generated a good amount of initial buzz, as well as some early positive reviews.

What’s your take on Bing? Drop me an e-mail (ina DOT fried AT cnet DOT com), along with your name and hometown, and we’ll publish some of the responses later this week.

Source: CNET News

Microsoft’s challenge to grow its share of the search business isn’t just a global issue. It’s also a challenge within its own walls.

Despite investing five years and hundreds of millions of dollars on its search product, Microsoft has struggled to get people to use its service, even those whom it employs. Microsoft Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi said the company’s share of the search market–even internally–has been disappointing.

“That’s true,” Mehdi said in an interview last week.

At a company meeting about a year ago, one Microsoft worker recalls hearing that four-fifths of the company’s search traffic was going to Google. Although he uses Live Search personally, the worker, who asked not to be named, said plenty of his co-workers still use Google.

“We are still fighting that battle,” the worker said. Among its full-time U.S. workers, Microsoft says that, for February, Live Search and Google had roughly equal share, at around 48 percent apiece, with little search traffic going to Yahoo or any of the other search players.

Mehdi said that Microsoft has won some internal support for specific products, such as its Live Search Cashback feature, which gives people a rebate on certain products purchased through its search engine. But, he said, broader adoption, even internally, is still really something that is in the company’s future as opposed to its present.

“I think some of that is predicated on us talking broadly about some great experiences and promoting it heavily, which is something I think we are going to do soon,” Mehdi said.

And, of course, Microsoft’s lackluster search share isn’t limited to Redmond. The latest monthly statistics, released Friday, show Microsoft with just 10.3 percent of the U.S. market, according to Nielsen Online, compared with 64.2 percent for Google and 15.8 percent for Yahoo. More importantly, the company had year-over-year growth of less than 1 percent compared to 16 percent growth for the market as a whole.

Microsoft is hoping that the next version of its product, code-named Kumo, will prompt more people both within and outside the company to give Microsoft another chance. The company has been testing it internally since last month, Microsoft hasn’t said much about Kumo, but several screenshots obtained by CNET News provide a glimpse.

The revamped search page shown in those prototypes focuses on several key changes, including using the left hand for navigation and refining a query as well as splitting the results into various categories. In the Taylor Swift page, for example, the left-hand navigation allows a user to quickly shift to images, songs, or lyrics by Swift. The results, meanwhile, are also split into different sub-categories.

Another screenshot, of an Audi search, breaks things down into an initial result with facts such as price and fuel economy pulled out in bold, followed by general Web results, then results by cratgory, such as Audi parts, used Audis, and Audi accessories.

The company is also expected to rely heavily on technology from the many search companies it has purchased. The health search engine from Medstory and travel engine Farecast are already part of Microsoft’s search products. The next version of Live Search, which may or may not use the Kumo name, is expected to draw on those as well as semantic search technology from last year’s acquisition of Powerset.

Mehdi said the new product reflects the fact that roughly half of all queries are actually repeats of earlier questions as well as the fact that people would like to get more out of a search query than just a link to a page that might have the answer.

“It is an awesome keyword-to-URL-mapper,” Mehdi said, referring to the search engine of today. “What it is not well suited for is cases where you are looking for more than just a URL, (if) you are looking to get some insight or you want to actually make a decision. Our interpretation of the data is there is a lot of unmet need.”

Microsoft has been saying for years, though, that search could be dramatically better than it has been. But, at least thus far, the company has failed to deliver a product that consumers feel proves that thesis to be true.

Mehdi said that the company thinks this time it may be able to make its case. Plus, he said, the company doesn’t need to persuade the whole world to drop Google. What Microsoft does need, he says, is for some vocal minority to decide its search engine is better than its rival’s.

“We need a fan base of people that love what we are doing,” Mehdi said. It doesn’t even need a lot of fans, he said, just a loyal following that can serve as the service’s champions.

But the company also needs to grow faster than it can just by working on the product itself. That’s where the company’s giant cash hoard comes in handy.

For starters, the company is reportedly planning a $100 million ad campaign to accompany a mid-year release of the product. Beyond that, Microsoft has been paying heavily to make its search engine the default on new computers and devices, including deals with Dell and Lenovo.

Mehdi didn’t confirm the ad spending or say when the new service will debut, but did say that Microsoft is putting more resources into the coming launch.

“We felt like we had enough now with this effort to get behind it and make a big push and that’s what we are going to do,” Mehdi said.

The biggest potential for growing Microsoft’s share, though, would be some sort of tie-up with its nearest rival, Yahoo. Microsoft has been pushing for a search deal ever since it failed to buy all of Yahoo last year. It has had occasional talks with Yahoo since then, although things had been relatively quiet in recent months as Yahoo replaced Chief Executive Jerry Yang with Carol Bartz.

Last week, though, it was reported that the discussions were back on again in recent months, including a face-to-face meeting between Bartz and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Source: CNET News – by Ina Fried

Those of us with too much bandwidth and too little life (yours truly included) are wondering just why Microsoft chose to make a snow leopard the backdrop photo on Live Search on Thursday.

Even though Microsoft puts a new picture on the site each day, surely it hasn’t exhausted all the images that are not references to competitor’s products.

As TechFlash points out, the fact that Microsoft has the mascot for Apple’s next operating system could be cluelessness on Microsoft’s point. Or it could be hubris.

But another crazy thought crossed my mind. What if Microsoft has landed a deal to make Live Search the default in the next version of the Mac OS. For a long time now, Apple’s Safari has had a Google search bar built-in. I don’t know how much traffic that generates for the search giant, but it would seem to be at least as significant as some of the PC deals that Microsoft is paying good money to get.

Obvious animosities aside, mightn’t a deal make sense. Microsoft has talked about needing to spend some money to boost Live Search share.

If it is the case, would Microsoft and/or Apple be crazy enough to tip their hand? It seems unlikely. But, even if that’s not the reason that the Snow Leopard is there, would such a deal make sense?

Source: CNET News – by Ina Fried