Live Search

You may have read our post last week where we talked about how Smart Motion Preview and SafeSearch work together.

As we mentioned, Microsoft is never done when it comes to providing tools to help customers, whether they are large enterprises, local school districts or parents make sure they can provide a safe searching experience when using Bing.

We made two changes that we think will help.

First, potentially explicit images and video content will now be coming from a separate single domain, explicit.bing.net. This is invisible to the end customer, but allows for filtering of that content by domain which makes it much easier for customers at all levels to block this content regardless of what the SafeSearch settings might be. This makes it much easier for filtering software to block unwanted content if SafeSearch has been turned off.

In addition, we will begin returning source url information in the query string for images and video content so that companies who already use this method of filtering will be able to catch explicit content on Bing along with everything else they are already blocking for their customers. An example of such a query string is:

http://ts2.explicit.bing.net/images/thumbnail.aspx?q=974382499649&id=12ae77a7fed979b0502840bedacd2552&url=http%3a%2f%2fwww.explicitsite.com%2fexplicit-picturegoeshere.jpg

Thank you to everyone who shared feedback with us on this matter, it helped us to quickly develop a solution and get it into production.

Mike Nichols

General Manager, Bing

Want more Bing?  How about an interactive Webcast where we’ll walk you through all the cool features in our new decision engine.  Sure you could read the Product Guide (located here) but that would require, you know, reading.  Better just to watch.  

Plus, while you can talk to the Product Guide it likely won’t respond (and if it does let us know - I thought we fixed that bug).   Our webcast will let you interact with the presenter by asking questions throughout the session!

How do you join in the fun?  Three easy steps:

1)      Set your alarm clocks for 10AM Pacific Daylight Time, Monday, June 1. 

2)     Point your browser to  http://ms.istreamplanet.com/search (I’d do this before 10AM just to make sure you’ve got what you need to watch the stream)

3)      Sit quietly and watch the ‘cast OR engage by typing questions in the player.

That’s it!  Tell your friends.  Tell your neighbors.  Tell people you don’t even know.  Post it on Facebook. The Bing Webcast– no prompters, no scripts, 100% danger.

Stefan Weitz, Director, Bing 

Dear Bing (the Author),

We couldn’t help sit up and take notice of your offer of services from one Bing to another.  We were moderately surprised and mildly excited. As you might have guessed, today is quite a big day for us.  Even so, we dropped everything when we saw your press release this morning.  After an emergency meeting (three people were invited, all declined), we’ve decided to take you up on your offer.  We’re not certain what exactly this would involve. We’re not certain it would pay much (nothing, actually) but we look forward to starting a dialogue and hope we can work together soon.  Let’s do lunch. In the meantime we are sending you a case of moderately priced cigars.

Your pals,

Bing.com

This morning, Steve Ballmer is speaking at the D Conference where he’s unveiling our new search service — named Bing. Bing is rolling out internally to Microsoft employees worldwide today and will be available to you and your friends in the coming days.

We spent lots of time listening to you, learning how you use search today and what you’re trying to accomplish with search. We found that search is no longer just a tool for mapping a keyword to a document. If you’re like many people, you’re increasingly using search to help you make decisions: from everyday decisions, like which restaurant to eat at, to complicated decisions, like which digital camera to buy or when to fly and where to stay on your next vacation.

Problem is: search engines themselves haven’t evolved all that much to address the new ways that people like you are using search today.

So today we’re introducing a new kind of search that goes beyond traditional search engines to help you make faster, more informed decisions. It will do this by combining a great search engine (with powerful new features to improve your results for any query), more organized results, and unique tools to help you make important decisions. We think of Bing as a Decision Engine.

So why did we pick Bing as the new brand name? We needed a brand that was as fresh and new as our approach. It needed to be like the product — optimized for the Internet. A name that was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that would function well as a URL around the world. We like Bing because it sounds off in our heads when we think about that moment of discovery and decision making — when you resolve those important tasks. And frankly, the name needed to clearly communicate that this is something new, to invite you to come back, to re-introduce you to our new and improved service and encourage you to give it a try.

In the coming weeks we’ll be using the blog to update you on Bing and provide an inside look at how we’ve designed it to cut through the clutter on the Web and deliver more relevant results to help you make better choices. In the meantime, we encourage you to check out our press release, visit http://www.decisionengine.com, and follow us on Twitter (@Bing) for all the latest news.

Looking forward to sharing Bing with you very soon!

Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President, Online Audience Business Group

This Sunday, Andy Samberg will host the 18^th Annual MTV Movie Awards and unveil the winners in categories ranging from best movie to best kiss, and lots in between.

As you may remember, we did our first awards show instant answer for the Oscars back in February. After all the great feedback, we decided to continue the tradition with our new MTV Movie Awards instant answer. Just type in “mtv awards” and you'll see our pre-show instant answer with the awards show date and air time, pointers to promo videos with Andy, and links to vote for your favorite performances. And if you miss the show on Sunday, check back with us afterwards for a complete list of winners of the coveted Golden Popcorn.

This is just the latest push in our effort to help make finding the right information on the Web easier for you. We know that you don’t want to browse through a sea of links to find out who won the best kiss or best fight. You want the right answer right there on page 1 in front of your eyes — and that's what we deliver with our instant answers.

We’re always looking to improve and expand so let us know what else you’d like to see in instant answer form.

Theo Vachovsky, Instant Answers Product Manager, Live Search

When I last blogged, Derek Jeter searches had tripled and major league baseball was in full swing. Fast forward a few weeks, and while Derek Jeter is probably still a top search (when is he not?), some may argue that the current show stopper is Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who’s leading his team in the Eastern Conference finals of the 2009 NHL playoffs. Or Kobe Bryant, who led the Lakers with 34 points despite the Nuggets’ win to tie the series at 2-2 in the NBA playoffs.

Whether you’re devoted to hockey or basketball, Live Search can help you get your fix—fast. Because if there’s one thing we know about sports fans, it’s that you don’t keep a fan waiting for player stats and scores. So these Instant Answers are going to be particularly useful for all the die-hard NBA fans following the Lakers, Nuggets, Cavs, or Magic; and the NHL fans tracking the Hurricanes, Canes, Red Wings, Hawks, or Pens.

Simply type in, “NHL,” “NBA,” or “NHL or NBA + the date,” and you’ll get a summary of recent games and current standings in the series.

Or enter your favorite player for season stats, recent scores, news, and upcoming game details.

If you can’t watch the games, use Live Search and the NHL and NBA Instant Answer for a detailed account of the games as they happen.

We developed Instant Answers to help simplify key search tasks and save you time. Read more here and take a look at some of the others we’ve talked about recently, such as the Instant Answers for the Oscars, March Madness, Major League Baseball, and the Kentucky Derby.

As always, we welcome feedback on this or any Instant Answer.

Theo Vachovsky, Instant Answers Product Manager, Live Search

As you may know, our fearless leader Qi Lu will be keynoting SMX Advanced on June 3 in Seattle. We’re looking forward to a good discussion between him and Danny Sullivan about the great stuff we have cooking on the search business. This will be Qi’s first public speaking engagement since he took the helm of the Online Services Division in January, and we know that you are all anxious to hear from him.

After the discussion with Danny, Qi will be taking questions from the audience. If you’re planning to go to the conference, or even if you’re not, what questions do you have for Qi? If we get some great suggestions here on the blog, we’ll see if we can work them into his discussion from the stage.

Looking forward to your thoughts,

Whitney Burk, Director, Live Search

Today CNET announced the winners of the 2009 Webware 100 awards (visit the blog post from March for a refresher on the Live Search offerings nominated). Live Search, Live Search Maps, and Live Search Farecast are all winners! The Web 2.0 user community cast more than 630,000 votes to determine the best Web 2.0 sites, services, and applications that are leading the next wave of innovation.

Other Microsoft winners include Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live SkyDrive, and Editor’s Choice Rafe’s Favorite: Windows Live Sync.

Congrats to all the winners and thanks for voting for us.

Melissa Powell, Senior Product Manager, Live Search

There have been a few requests for some international flair on the Live Search team blog, so we thought we’d give you an update on the European Search Technology Centre. Thanks for asking!

There have been several important milestones in the creation of STC Europe:

The first was in Paris, October 2008, when Steve Ballmer and Jordi Ribas (General Manager, STC Europe) announced the creation of the STC Europe. This announcement was well received in Europe and STC Europe became one of the top news stories for 2009 in France. This was a promising start although all the hard work was still ahead!

It was in November 2008 when the first members joined the team – Mike Miles (Group Program Manager, STC Europe/London), Oswaldo Ribas (Development Manager, STC Europe/London), Travis Barrett (Group Program Manager, STC Europe/Munich), and Andreas Bode (Development Manager, STC Europe/Munich).

Then in early January 2009, Mike, Oswaldo, and Jordi moved to London. You can tell we moved in January since Internet search volume increased significantly that month for grocery stores, garbage service, TV, internet, HOT WATER, etc. BTW: January was THE WORST WINTER IN LIVING MEMORY in London.

Europe is an important market for Search and one we’ve been focusing on a lot recently. Here are some of the more significant reasons why, counting down to number one:

7. Live Search in the U.S. has improved over the past few releases. We have some unique features (Live Search cashback, to name one). And we’re starting to develop the business through distribution partners. In short, while there is still a lot to do, the U.S. product is mature enough for us to start spending more energy elsewhere.

6. Europe is a big Search market. Currently around $8B, Europe represents 40% of the non-U.S. Search opportunity over the next few years...

5. STC Asia was established and is making good progress. Asia represents a significant growth opportunity for the Search market over the next few years (especially as China becomes increasingly connected). We established a Search Technology Centre in Beijing a few years ago that is focused on developing Live Search business in that region. Steve Macbeth, General Manager, STC Asia, is at the helm. Following STC Asia’s model in Europe was a logical next step.

4. We’ve recently made strong European acquisitions (e.g., Ciao and MultiMap) that will help expand our user base as well as increase the breadth of our technology stack.

3. We need to improve our understanding of the European Search user.

2. We have strong Internet reach through our network across MSN, Windows Live, MultiMap, and Ciao in most European Markets (upwards of 80%), representing a big opportunity to increase traffic to Live Search.

1. The ‘10 blue link’ Search paradigm hasn’t changed that much over the last 10 years, and we believe that European Search users are ready for a change.

So what are we doing about it? It’s hard to talk about all of the exciting things that we are working on without giving up too many details, but here are a few of the highlights:

· Core web relevance – this is the primary focus of our team in Munich. We’ve made some strong hires in Munich and are already starting to see some gains in core relevance. Much more to come from this team.

· Local – including integrating the MultiMap team and product into Live Search Maps.

· U.S. feature parity – there are a lot of features that work well in the U.S., but haven’t yet been extended to Europe, so we’re working on that.

· Making the most of our online assets – think MSN + Windows Live + MultiMap + Ciao = better Search experience for Europeans.

· Other exciting stuff that I can’t mention for fear of being made redundant.

We believe that Search will be much improved and radically better for consumers in another 10 years, and, even though we have much work and challenges ahead, we are excited about the opportunities to innovate in Europe with Live Search. We encourage you to visit this space and continue to use Live Search to see our progress.

À bientôt, Bis spatter, Cheers!

Mike Miles, Group Program Manager, Live Search

Want to know what’s been going on behind the walls of the Powerset division of Live Search lately? Check out the Powerset blog for the first in a series of Powerset video podcasts.
This week Mark Johnson sat down with Dave Fayram, a software engineer working on Powerset’s semantic search infrastructure, to discuss the semantic web.
Stay tuned for more podcasts, and if there are hot topics you’d like to hear about, let us know in the comments.

Katie Conry, Powerset division of Live Search

Today MSN announced a new version of its local offering MSN City Guides, one step in a long term plan to help users stay in the know wherever they are. The new MSN City Guides is an entirely re-vamped site, featuring a new design with integrated Live Search, Live Search Maps, video, content sharing, and more. New integration with popular social networking services such as Windows Live and Facebook makes it easy to organize events with just a few clicks. With Live Search and Live Search Maps integrated into the new experience, making a decision about what to do and where to go just got a lot easier.

Thanks to Live Search, local search results are integrated throughout the site so you will now get relevant results for all ZIP codes in the U.S. Filtering capabilities will help make it easier to decide where to go based on your chosen criteria. For example, type in “baseball” as an event search and you can sort by relevance, date, type, or within a certain mile radius.

You can also find listings for local businesses, with easy links to Live Search Maps and one-click directions– right from MSN.

Now go out and explore your city with help from the new MSN City Guides and Live Search!

Lisa Tiedt, Director, MSN

The Live Search mobile team has just launched two great new features to help make the mobile web your own: MSN video search and an MLB dashboard.

Looking to fill some time while you’re on the go and feel like grabbing a video news clip from Obama’s First 100-Days event? Now you can! Type “obama” in the search box on your mobile phone, and scroll down to the “MSN video” section of the results page to tune in.

Trying to keep track of the latest statistics for your favorite baseball team when you’re away from home and missing the big game? Just search for “mlb,” and we’ll give you a dashboard where you'll quickly find the latest scores, news, and standings for your favorite team.

You can get all these features plus local business listings, maps, directions, and optimized web search by visiting m.live.com on your web-enabled mobile phone.

Happy roaming,

Jeremy Beasley, Product Manager, Live Search Mobile

Bring all your search questions, and of course there will be plenty of food, drinks and opportunities for networking. Follow @janeandrobot on Twitter for event updates and last real time logistical information. See you there!

-- Nathan Buggia, Live Search Webmaster Center

I’ve spent a lot of time on airplanes in the past few weeks.  All that thinking about flights got me thinking about trying new things: new foods, new hotels, new smells in taxi cabs. That got me thinking about how we try new things in search.  And that reminded me of what we call it here when we try new things: flighting (which you may recall from Ramez Nam’s post earlier this month.) And that, my friends, is a play on words. 

This is how we do it: 

UX video is up

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/StefanIs/StefanIs005/

Enjoy,

Stefan Weitz, Director, Live Search