Last week we announced Project Silk Road, our vision for delivering a broad suite of products and services for publishers and web developers, including a customizable Live Search API, rich content, multiple media and source types, and the ability to monetize through ad-serving.

Today we're expanding our toolkit with two important updates to Webmaster Center: the ability to detect malware on your site and the sites you link to, plus a greatly simplified authentication process that makes accessing our tools much easier. Together these updates help improve your site performance for Live Search, and protect you and your customers from inadvertent exposure to malware.

Here are just a things our tools can help you do.

Malware Detection

• Detect whether there is malware present on any of your webpages or on any of the webpages you link to (all these links will be disabled and flagged in the search results as malware).
• Download reports detailing which webpages on your website are affected and how to fix the problem.
• Ping our support team to get your sites re-scanned and re-included in Live results within days, not weeks.

Simplified Authentication

• One authentication code per user account can be used to authenticate multiple websites.
• If you already have an account with the Webmaster Center and previously used unique authentication codes for each registered website, no worries. Webmaster Center will continue to support all of your current authentication codes and methods.
• Bonus - the last successful authentication method becomes the default method. We keep track of it so you don't have to.

You can read more about this at the Live Search Webmaster Center blog.

The tools can be found at http://webmaster.live.com/. Give them a try and stay safe out there!

Angus Norton, Senior Director, Live Search

Last week we covered how you can use instant answers to find deals on travel.

This week we'll show you how to save on last-minute flights for Thanksgiving weekend.

Have a great holiday trip!

Joel Grus, Live Search Farecast Fareologist

Ahh...once again the holidays are approaching. Once again we're thinking of family, gifts, travel, and at least some of us are dreaming about snow-covered slopes. Time for joy, family, fun, and lots of web searches.

The Live Search team has made the last part quicker and easier. Here are a couple of instant answers that will simplify some of your holiday tasks.

Shopping

How about a new digital camera for your dad? Simply type in the name of the camera you have had your eye on (say, a "Canon PowerShot"). You'll see an instant answer with the images and prices of several popular models.

You can also type in the exact model (such as a "Canon PowerShot SD1000 Digital ELPH") and then see an image and a summary of the reviews and specs.

Travel

Finding travel deals is one of the most frustrating parts of the holidays. Airfares seem to be more fickle than the stock market. I never know the best time to buy my tickets. Thanks to Farecast joining Live Search, you can find out whether airfares are climbing or dropping. Just type "Flights from (point A) to (point B)." You'll see an instant answer with the current price of a flight between those two points and a prediction of whether prices will rise or fall.

Farecast pulls data from millions of trips from several sources, and then they run the data by an algorithm developed by several PhDs from the University of Washington. In the end, you save money.

Our Instant Answer blogging team will be taking some time off during the December holidays, but check back in January for more news about instant answers.

Theo Vachovsky, Instant Answers Product Manager, Live Search

Many of you in the U.S. have noticed some big changes in Live Search Video this week. Now you have lots of tools for browsing to find your favorite TV shows, music videos, and all of the most-watched content on the Web, just by clicking. Based on what we're hearing, it's a primetime hit! And of course, it still includes the best and only "smart-motion preview" technology that plays a preview right on the page to spare you those frustrating misclicks.

Start browsing the TV Shows pages to find popular shows on your schedule — the power of Live Search now means you're in control.

You can browse through the most relevant genres, the most watched and most recent shows, and alphabetical lists. And you can also refine your results by the duration, resolution, and most importantly, you can search our index of the full-length TV shows. For instance, Hulu.com has great quality TV shows, and YouTube is a great source of user-generated content.

Looking for what's hot in music videos? Start out on the Music pages and use similar power tools for exploring. Here, you can browse by genre, the most popular musical artists, the most watched, and the most recent videos. When you home in on one artist, look for "Related People" to find other artists connected to them, and refine your results by source, aspect ratio, duration, or length. It's a great way to watch your favorite musicians, learn about new ones, and find great new music.

The new Live Search Video homepage can be pretty distracting. Careful that you don't get sucked into the latest episodes of The Office, Family Guy, Arrested Development, or The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Maybe you'll go on a historical kick and watch the first showing of Dragnet. Or maybe you'll want to watch an episode you've already seen, say, from The Colbert Report, Bones, or Heroes.

But instead of reading about how cool browsing for videos is, why don't you try it for yourself? We hope you enjoy this latest release from the Live Search team!

Henry Hall, Senior Product Manager, Live Search

When we launched cashback nearly six months ago, we mentioned that we're going to use these three criteria to measure the program:

1. Number of offers in the system
2. Advertiser ROI
3. Percentage of commercial searches as measured by ComScore

Well, we've been measuring, and today we can report that we've increased the number of product offers available in Live Search cashback by 30%, indicating strong advertiser interest in the program and early results on its ROI. Stephanie Tilenius, GM of eBay North America, has told us, "Microsoft Live Search cashback has improved our ROI on paid search by 50%, and based upon our shared success, eBay is increasing its search marketing spend with Microsoft Live Search by threefold." ShoeMall, a cashback advertiser also mentioned that the cashback program has increased their sales 6x since it began participating, prompting ShoeMall to devote even more marketing dollars to the program. In addition, we've seen a monthly average of 4.5 million unique users participating in cashback — they've conducted more than 68 million commercial queries.

In these tough economic times this early traction speaks to the differentiated and unique value proposition of Microsoft Live Search cashback for both consumers and advertisers. According to a custom comScore study, in Q2 2008, Microsoft Live Search referred almost 12% of total commercial online transactions and 13% of total online spending among key retail categories.

We're encouraged by cashback's first six months, but this is just the beginning — we have more up our sleeves. Keep watching.

Kok Waii Wong, Group Product Manager, Live Search cashback

Today at PubCon we launched a new release of the Live Search API for publishers and web developers. Now, in one place, we're making available what is essentially a content management system for your site or blog, plus the ability to monetize by selling ads.

This release is the next step in what we're calling Project Silk Road, a broad range of tools and services we're offering online publishers and developers to help them generate traffic, increase engagement on their sites, drive insight, and boost productivity and agility.

We call it Project Silk Road because it's the next step in our journey to bring the power of Live Search to the online community. In much the same way that the original Silk Road offered opportunities for cultural and technological exchange and innovation, we believe that Project Silk Road can spark innovation in the online ecosystem.

Project Silk Road allows you to serve your search results in the rank and format that you choose and call them from the web service protocol you prefer. On top of that, you have access to content from Encarta, related search queries, and a set of tools — like an Excel add-in that tracks keyword performance — to help you optimize your site performance and improve the search experience for your customers.

The project is in broad beta now, and we are seeking publishers to use it and give us feedback to help it grow. Although it's in its early days, we're quite bullish about the offering — especially its ability to be customized to suit publisher needs and its flexible and extensive set of friendly data formats.

Some of its cool features:

• A 404 Error Toolkit that allows you to create a better experience and keep users on your site, even when they enter a search that returns no results.
• Related content for search queries, such as images, news, and other web results.
• Flexible terms of use with no daily limit on queries and control over how to rank and format search results.
• Increased number of supported standard web service protocols from SOAP only to now include RSS, JSON, and XML.
• Additional data types exposed through the API, including related search results and Encarta instant answers, added to previously supported data types of web, image, news, spelling, and phonebook queries.

The application and review process for participation includes criteria for site quality and traffic volume. Chosen sites must meet Microsoft Editorial Guidelines for publishers and fit within our top strategic verticals. Sites also must have enough traffic to enable them to dedicate a reasonable number of web impressions to the program.

If you're interested in the program, apply at http://search.live.com/developers.

Cheers, and let us know what you think.

Angus Norton, Senior Director, Live Search

On Monday we announced a search distribution deal with Sun Microsystems. Now, when U.S.-based Internet Explorer users download the Java^TM Runtime Environment (JRE^TM), they're offered the MSN Toolbar. Like our partnerships with HP and Facebook, this agreement is another example of our strategy for gaining traction in the search market.

When Internet Explorer users downloading Sun's JRE opt to download the MSN Toolbar, they'll have one-click access to Live Search features, as well as to news, entertainment, sports, and more from the MSN network. They'll also have direct access to Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger.

With more than 6.5 million Java software developers around the globe, Java is one of the most widely available and popular software platforms. It's already present on 91% of Internet-connected PCs worldwide. The Java Runtime Environment is one of the highest-volume consumer downloads on the Web, with tens of millions of downloads each month from http://java.com/.

We're excited about this partnership.....download it, and tell us what you think!

Angus Norton, Senior Director, Live Search