Microsoft’s Live Search had a major update this week.

Live Search (also known as Windows Live Search and MSN Search) went through a metamorphosis this week, the main changes being the following:

The index has quadrupled in size

The numbers are not official, so we do not know how many documents are indexed by Live. Mary Jo Foley believes the number is 20 billion.

The ranking algorithm has been “enhanced”

This means that it has been tweaked to sort out spam and to deliver more relevant quality sites. Microsoft says that it is using user “click-stream data to inform ranking and relevancy processes”. This means, for instance, that they track how long a searchers spends on a site before returning til the Live search result page, looking for more.

Vannessa Fox reports that the improved ranking algorithms use neural networking ranking that are loosely modeled from biological neural networks.

There is now an autospell correction

If Microsoft believes you have misspelled a word, it will suggest an alternative.

Live has improved its stop word handling

Meaning that it will ignore common words like “the”, “an”, “of” etc.

Live reports that “search results are now easier to read

Testing Live from Norway is a mess, because it delivers different designs to different browsers, and insists on redirecting us to the Norwegian site, which is different from the American one.

But we do believe we have found the new look, and it is — indeed — easy to read, transparent and uncluttered, thanks to improvements in typography, contrast, colors and spacing.

Live adds vertical search result integration

Live does now, like Google, include more entertainment, shopping, health, local and video search results in the regular web search results.

In Microsoft’s words: “Core search innovation enables Microsoft to build rich vertical experiences that update on the fly. This technology extracts information from across the Web on products (including ratings and reviews); businesses (including locations, contact information, photos, hours of operation, ratings and reviews); celebrities (including buzz, images and videos); and more.”

Expansion of Rich Answers

Live provides specialized responses to queries about specific areas such as weather, images, entertainment, sports, stocks, addresses, maps or facts.

Search result pages also load faster.

Live is on the right track.

All in all it seems to us that the Live team has done a great job in improving Live Search, making it an interesting alternative to the Google giant. The fact that they spend so much time and money on the quality of search results, is also highly relevant.

The major reason for people using Google as opposed to other search engines, is that they perceive that Google’s search results are of a higher quality. If Live manages to reduce the amount of search engine spam and deliver more targeted and accurate search results, searchers may give it another try.

But what about image?

Unfortunately for Microsoft, this is not the only hurdle. This is not only a matter of measuring accuracy “objectively”. This is also a matter of perception. How do people perceive the Live search engine?

We do not have any research to back this up, but to us it seems that searchers do not perceive Live Search at all. A large number do not know that it exist.

Live is actually lagging behind vis-a-vis Google and Yahoo!, and has only some 8 to 13 percent of the US search market (depending on how you count). And most of the Live searchers are not using Live at all. They continue to search Live via MSN.com, the old brand.

The fact that Microsoft insist on associating Live Search with the Windows brand doesn’t help either. What does Windows Live Search mean?

Windows is, correctly, understood to be a PC operating system, not an online service. For many it represents the past, not a dynamic Web 2.0 future of ubiquitous computing and Internet based software.

The design of the new Live search only reinforces the impression that Microsoft is a corporate service, made for engineers and men in blue suits. There is nothing wrong with the lay-out of search result pages. It is, as we said, transparent and easy to read. But the color scheme and the logo does not give the impression that this is the site for the new, creative, generations of the 21st century.

For the youth of today, selecting a search engine is not only a matter of getting correct results. it is part of their choice of life style. The essential question is:

“Tell me what search engine you are using, and I will tell you who you are.”

Unfortunately, the Live Search concept tells us nothing about style or a modern identity, which is bad, because we need strong alternatives to Google, and the Live team is doing its very best to provide one.

Live Search Fact Sheet
Live Search Blog on the new Live Search
Microsoft Releases Updated Live Search Engine
Microsoft Launches New Live Search (Read/Write)
Microsoft Announces Upgrades to Live Search, Including “Blended Search� (TechCrunch)
Microsoft Introduces New Live Search Index, Adds Features In Effort To Close ‘Relevancy Gap’ And Improve User Experience (Search Engine Land)
Five take aways on Microsoft’s new Live Search ZD
Live Blogging: Microsoft Searchification Day 2007 (Search Engine Land)