We've been having a great time bringing you our daily homepage updates over the past couple of months. You may have noticed that our normal programming for the Live Search homepage content is occasionally interrupted by newsworthy events, like last week's World Series image of the Philadelphia Phillies celebrating their win.
We think that the 2008 presidential election is about as newsworthy an event as you get. Regardless of which party wins, the results will be historic for our country and we wanted to celebrate the occasion with an image of the winner. So we planned one image for each candidate and hoped we'd know who the winner was by early Wednesday morning. Once the image is live, it will run until midnight Wednesday and then we'll resume our normal programming with a fantastic shot from the Maldive Islands.
We hope you've been enjoying the new homepage, and look forward to your comments and suggestions.
- the Live Search Homepage team
There are really just two types of searches:
- Browse and seek We want to browse for our best fit when we type "I want to learn how to speak Spanish."
- Tell me now I just want my question answered when I search for how tall Mount Kilimanjaro is or who the 31st president of the U.S. was.
We've been working hard on the "Tell me now" type of search, or as we Live Search boffins call it, "instant answers." Instant answers show up at the top of your search results, offering the most relevant information we have to answer the direct or implied question in a query. We have quite a few currently on Live Search. Have you tried any of these?
- Encyclopedia Search for an encyclopedic fact, like "How tall is mount Everest," "When was Lincoln born," "What is the GDP of Poland," "What's the population of Georgia," "Who won super bowl 30," or " What won best picture in 1998." You ask, and Live Search will return the exact answer to your question. And for you trivia fans, they are: "8,850 m / 29,035 ft," "February 12, 1809," "$303,228,550,000 (2005)," "4,630,841 (2008 estimate)," "Dallas Cowboys, NFC," and "Shakespeare in Love."
- Traffic Just type "traffic" in the search box at Live Search and see a map of your area with green, yellow, red, and black highlights for the major highways. WOOHOO! Live Search won't make the traffic go away, but at least it can tell you when it's time to stay late and work on those TPS reports so you won't waste time idling in the fast lane.
- Horoscope Just type "horoscope" and your zodiac sign to get your daily dose of direction. I guess I need to "take my situation step by step and before I know it my problem will be solved."
Check this blog in a month to find out about other cool new instant answers on Live Search.
Theo Vachovsky, Product Manager, Live Search
Regardless who wins next month's election, one thing is certain: there's going to be a new administration in the White House. This means a lot of folks fresh off the campaign trail will relocate to Washington, D.C. to take on roles in government.
Whether you're planning a move, a visit, or just want to see what D.C has to offer, check out the latest release of Live Image Search. We worked with Virtual Earth to integrate maps and aerial imagery into the results for image queries related to major cities, as well as major landmarks worldwide. So now if you search for "Washington DC" and click Show Map, you get relevant images from our index of millions of websites overlaid on a map of the nation's capital.
If you click on any of the images in the map, for instance click on the Lincoln Memorial, not only will you get a "Bird's eye" aerial view of this famous landmark, you'll also get external and internal photos of the monument from sites across the Web.
We've also added a metadata view to Image Search, which lets you get image details such as file name, file size, dimension, and host website in your search results.
It's been a long campaign, so if D.C is the last place you want to see, here are some other image searches to try:
Enjoy!
Henry Hall, Senior Product Manager
I get a little more excited than most people about data, but I think even "normal" people will have fun with the new xTreme movers feature in xRank, which lets you track the searches that are gaining popularity the fastest.
Just yesterday, "dow jones," "recession," and other economy-related terms were moving incredibly quickly, while today we're noticing that people are interested in recent events including the debates, Boss Day, and Hurricane Omar. It's a truism that people seek more entertainment when times are tough, which could explain the recent growth in people searching for lolcats and gossip about Madonna.
As LiveSide has already noticed, we've made significant updates to all of the xRank categories (celebrities, musicians, politicians, bloggers) and added new features like "compare," which lets you not only see who's more popular right now but also look at how search popularity has shifted over time. There's more information available on every page, including videos, images, and news. We think you'll find the new design a little more exciting and interesting. And the xRank homepage? It's now set as my default so I can watch what happens every day.
For now, we've only released these new features in the U.S. Typically, we release features in one or two markets first to see how things go and then work with our search teams in other countries to decide which features they think will work best for them.
Let us know what you think!
Jacquelyn Krones, Senior Product Planner, Live Search
We've all watched the
debates and the
interviews, tracked the
latest polls, and probably watched a few of the recent SNL skits (I'll let you
search for those on your own). But did you know that there's an
African American woman running for president, too? And
Ralph Nader has thrown his hat in the ring again.
Yes the presidential election is big news, but are you ready to cast your other votes? We've updated xRank Politician to include all candidates for president, governor, and congress.
Here in Washington state, Dino Rossi is challenging Christine Gregoire for governor. It was very close and controversial in 2004, their last face-off. At this very moment, the pollsters are calling it a tie and xRank shows that people are searching for them about equally. You can use the new Compare feature in the search volume graph to see how these two stack up.
It looked like people were starting to search more for Rossi, but when the markets dropped last week, the search volume for both candidates dropped as well. Since then, Gregoire has had more of a rebound. Looking at the queries that seem to be driving her relative popularity, it's clear that people are interested in the details of her voting record.
It's certainly shaping up to be another interesting election. As always, let us know what you think about the new features.
Jacquelyn Krones, Senior Product Planner - Entertainment & News
The Live Search Powerset team will be presenting next week at Web 3.0 in Santa Clara on October 16-17. Scott Prevost, Powerset general manager, is providing Friday's keynote on The Road to Semantic Search. And I'm hosting a roundtable discussion on Thursday with Alitora, Cerebra, Metaweb, and Thompson Reuters called Semantic Startup 101 - Successes, challenges, and strategic decisions.
For details, see Powerset at Web 3.0 next week.
Hope to see you in Santa Clara!
Mark Johnson, Senior Program Manager, Live Search Powerset team
Today we're excited for our friends at Facebook. Now Facebook users in the U.S. have the option to "Search Facebook" or "Search the Web." In addition, adCenter is delivering search ads alongside those results. For me that means getting great search results while receiving highly relevant ads that are personalized by either my Facebook profile or search query. Find out more about the Facebook team's first implementation of Live Search in their blog.
This is a great first step in our partnership. As we evaluate user feedback and results we'll explore additional ways to integrate Live Search more deeply into the Facebook experience.
We'll have more to share on this partnership in the weeks to come, so stay tuned. In the meantime, tell us what you think on our Facebook page.
Angus Norton, Senior Director, Live Search Product Management
