Google seems to be getting slow at indexing, and a little top heavy. Many of my searches seem to contain lots of noise and outdated information these days. Microsoft definitely has an opening. Amazon has dropped Google and turned to Microsoft for their search engine results. It begs the question; why? Maybe Microsoft has something going here. It’s time to take a look at Microsoft Live Search.
Address and Branding
Google’s address is www.google.com. Google is not a common word, but it’s a short one. The word lends itself well as a verb. I’d say it’s easy to remember and easy to to type.
Microsoft has a nice address too: www.live.com. Five characters, easy to type. The problem is that ‘Live‘ refers to a whole slew of Microsoft products:
- Office Live
- Windows Live Messenger
- Xbox Live
- Visual Studio Live
- Microsoft Live Drive
Probably every new internet service provided by Microsoft is going to have the ‘Live‘ tag added to it. The phrase ‘Live’ or ‘Windows Live’ could refer to any one of these products. So when you mention the search engine in conversation you are going to have to use the nomenclature ‘Windows Live Search’ or ‘Live Search’. It doesn’t come close to being verbable.
Although it may not seem like a big thing, the name is a good indicator of the intent behind the two sites. Google is primarily focused on search, while Live.com wants to be a portal with search being an end to that goal.
Front Page
Google’s front page was celebrated for it’s simplicity. It’s become a little more crufty since it’s inception, but it is still clean and usable. It loads quickly, and my eye is drawn to the search bar.
Windows Live Search is a totally customizable AJAX page, with an unlabled search bar positioned at the top. Still it’s pretty clean, although the page feels lonely, empty with all the content located on the top half of the page. Also I am bombarded with MSN homepage style garbage:
- Tom, Katie Together Again
- CBS Rolls Out Innertube
- “Star Wars” on DVD Again
- Matthew Perry on the Strip
- The Skinny on Nicole
Hey! The Temperature in Washington is 74 degrees. Is that Celsius or Fahrenheit? Oh yeah. I don’t care. Well, the point is it’s all customizable. Well, it would be if it worked. The point is it’s beta.
Confession: Up to this point I’ve been using Firefox. The Windows Live Search page loads, and accepts some customizations, but every once in a while just reverts to the default site. Let’s try IE. Better. I wonder if this means that Amazon customers are going receive a degraded search experience?
I’m not the first one to bring this up, but it is slow. The front page loads slowly. Scott Isaacs, a MS developer tries to explain why in his blog:
“As you examine Live.com, and for the technically savvy, explore the underlying browser technology, it is easy to question whether we as Microsoft and the industry as a whole are pushing the browser too far. “
“Examining performance specifically - when I look at Live.com today, I see incredible innovation. We are pushing the limits of extensibility (gadgets), reuse (shared frameworks across all our properties), and are taking chances to drive new user-experience standards (look at how we present search results).”
Innovation. Microsoft loves that word. From wikipedia, “innovation is typically understood as the introduction of something new and useful“. Am I the only one to notice the similarities between Live.com and www.netvibes.com? The Live.com interface is nothing new , and in contrast Netvibes is generally fast and useful. You can’t be pushing the limits of what has already been done. Unless you are specifically refering to the limits of the MS platform.
Search Results Interface
Probably you’re not going use the live.com page to perform your search anyway. More likely you will drop in through the embedded IE7 toolbar. The important thing is the search results, and second to that, how they are formatted.
We are all probably familiar with the google search results page. It was genuinely innovative for it’s use of inobtrusive text ads, located on the right side. It is always clear what is an ad, and what is not. There’s not much too say about the rest. Information is provided cleanly, concisely and quickly.
Windows live search results are also presented in a concise manner. The results are displayed in a text box within your browser window, which makes scrolling a little difficult, and scroll performance was a little jerky with Firefox. Even using IE the scroll seems to have a mind of it’s own sometimes. Cut and paste is also iffy. Imitating Google, inobtrusive ads are placed at the right hand side. Microsoft innovates here by taking advantage of the AJAX interface. The ads don’t disappear when you scroll down, and they change from time to time. You can also control the verbosity of your search results in a limited fashion. I think that MS missed an opportunity to really innovate here, by providing different ways to sort your search results.
Even though I like the look of the results in Windows Live Search it suffers from terrible usability problems. Google is definitely the clear winner when it comes to user interface.
Privacy Statements
Both Google and Microsoft compile a ton of personal data about you. This information is used to customise the applications they provide to you. Both companies are a member of Safe Harbor, which controls what countries are allowed to store your data. One line in the Microsoft privacy statement bothers me:
” We may access and/or disclose your personal information if we believe such action is necessary to: (a) comply with the law or legal process served on Microsoft; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of Microsoft (including the enforcement of our agreements); or (c) act in urgent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of Microsoft services or members of the public.”
So Microsoft can invade your privacy and/or publish your information as long as it is in it’s own best interests?
Search Results
Now let us get to the meat. The search results. Using a super scientific methodology I will compare the output of the two engines. I will judge the results of each test on integrity and value. Keep in mind, I don’t have access to the actual processes that churn out these results. I am only judging the results.
Search 1 - “Bill Gates”
Intent: Biographical information on the man
The top search results for both browsers is nearly identical. The top result for Bill Gates is the Microsoft dot com official Bill Gates biography. Followed by that is the Bill Gates home page and Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. Missing from the Windows Live Search results, however is the link to the excellent wikipedia article which is probably the most comprehensive Gates bio on the web. This is suspicous, given that wikipedia seems to rate highly on other searches. It seems that sites with a negative portayal of Gates rank a little lower on Windows Live Search, but they are still present.
Windows Live Search
Integrity: Questionable.
Value: Poor.
Google
Integrity: Good.
Value: Good.
Search 2 - “Search”
Intent: locating information on web search products
The number one result in both engines is www.google.com. Oddly enough it seems like a “fix” in Windows Live Search:
Yes, I took a screenshot because I was unable to cut and paste from Live Search. Anyway the brief description strikes me as really suspicious. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t spidered. This is a manual entry. The results in Google and Live search pretty much mention the same search engines. The results in Live Search are order better, almost like they were ordered by market share. In Google, Yahoo appears as the last entry on the second page. Huh? Nobody links to Yahoo?
Windows Live Search
Integrity: Questionable.
Value: Good.
Google
Integrity: Questionable.
Value: Poor.
Search 3 - “Web Server”
Intent: information on software
The results on this search were quite different, and telling. Every Windows Live Search result was relevant, while Google gives you a lot of noise. 1 out of 3 pages had nothing to do with web servers, but were simply high page ranked sites that have the words “web” and “server” somewhere on the site. Using quotes: “web server”, actually degrades the value of the search, in this case.
Windows Live Search
Integrity: Good.
Value: Good.
Google
Integrity: Good.
Value: Poor.
Search 4 - “TwoCell”
Intent: a search for a certain consultant shop
OK, this one is personal. TwoCell is my very own computer consulting company. In the past the way it ranked in Google has always bummed me out. The number one hit for TwoCell has historically been a page that has nothing to do with the search term. For totally unknown reasons the guy named the title of his page “twocell”, I think it was a frames thing. Now I have abysmal pagerank, because nobody really wants to link to a local consultants page. This page has a minimal pagerank, but it totally overpowers my site, even though I mention the search term multiple times in a variety of contexts (include the domain name!). But as of today, I’ve got the top spot in Google which I find quite satisfactory. There are very few other sites that link to my mine, and none of them show up in Google. In Live Search it’s a different story. I don’t even exist. Strangely though, many links to my site do show up in the search results.
Windows Live Search
Integrity: Good.
Value: Poor.
Google
Integrity: Good.
Value: Good.
Conclusion
Microsoft is not going to replace Google any time soon. In order to even compete with Google they need to address the usability issues in their web portal. It would be nice if they made a commitment to the integrity of their search results as well.
Great article. Good side by side comparison. I learned a lot!