MSN SEARCHIFICATION
MSN has just held “searchification” to showcase their new suite of features being rolled out in their Fall update.
There is plenty of new stuff to write about – read all the details in a live blog.
Here are the standout points
1) Query intent: by playing with stop words, stemming, term equivalence and punctuation analysis, they have vastly improved relevance. Ie, it now knows that a search for “the office” should be related to the TV show, not the Microsoft product.
2) Structured Information Extraction: aka grouping and verticals.
3) Rich Answers: MSN’s answer to Universal Search. The coolest thing here is the video search. Not only does it find video content on any site (ie not just YouTube/MetaCafe), it allows a user preview the video inline (ie on the search results page), going as far as taking you to the most relevant bit of the video based on your query.
4) Webmaster tools: another me-too to catch up with Google’s Webmaster Central.
So, it looks like MSN is catching up with (and exceeding in some areas) Google in terms of features. But, with Google so ingrained with users, even if MSN delivers better results, who would ever realise?
Try out the new search:
http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=brad+pitt&go=&form=press – this search includes “rich answers” and a celeb ranking tool (supremely useful in everyday life, I’m sure).
Make sure you change the final variable to &FORM=PRESS if it doesn’t get carried through to subsequent searches (the new search features are still in beta).
