Press Room
Case Studies
Wilder Coe
Press Room - August 2008
Microsoft’s New “live” Search Engine, how will affect SEO?
Microsoft has recently launched their own take on Google. It is known as live search or “live”. It’s basically a re-branded version of the current MSN search engine. Live does how ever use a much more up-to-date database than before which, according to the web community, is targeted to operate in a very similar way to Google’s top secret algorithms.
“live” is now a web 2.0 based search engine, just like Google meaning it focuses on finding as much information about a said subject for the user in one place, a “universal search” if you like. This could be anything from pictures, blogs, news feeds, videos, podcasts, forums and most importantly informative web pages.
Google is currently the preferred search engine for around 70% of searches worldwide. Live/MSN are currently 9.2% with yahoo trailing behind with around 7%. So although “live” is a new take on Google by no means will “live” be able to overtake it as the new major search engine.
New Features of “live”
Strengths:
- Large, fresh, unique database
- Query building Advanced Search and full Boolean searching
- Cached copies of Web pages including date cached
- Automatic local search options.
Weaknesses:
- Uses the same database as before
- Limited to 10 words in a query
- Advanced search not on front page, but available after running a search.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) & “live”
A new search engine should mean new SEO tactics, but “live” is focusing on replicating Google’s approach to searching the web. This should mean live will be looking at the same features that Google does when deciding where to rank websites but “live” is still using the same database as the MSN search engine, this means their methods of obtaining high web rankings are still the same as the old MSN engine.
To ensure your website is indexed by “live” we are now able to submit XML sitemaps directly to “live” using “live webmasters tools”, where as with MSN this was not possible, this should ensure all your web pages are indexed in the “live” database.
Conclusion on “live”
While “live” is a significant improvement over MSN, it brings new information to a user without them feeling intimidated; it has a classic style of navigation and is easy to work with. One might say it has been designed to be easy to use for the less competent PC user.
In programming terms, “live” shows off some good technology but one could say these just seem to be tweaks of what Google has already achieved. In this respect webmasters and SEO’s are not afraid of “live” taking over Google, it just doesn’t seem possible at this moment in time. But what all webmasters will say for now is that we must keep an eye on “live” and continue to produce websites that implement the best known SEO practices.
