Posts filed under 'Microsoft / Live.com'
Several newspapers reported on Friday, as Microsoft and Yahoo! re-enter talks to strike a deal and fend off a common competitor in Web search leader Google. The two companies have held informal talks over the years, but the latest approach comes as Microsoft seeks a deal to counter Google’s rapid growth.
The New York Post reported, that Microsoft made an offer to buy Yahoo a few months ago, but Yahoo! spurned the advances. The paper, putting a price tag of $50 billion on a Yahoo! takeover, said that discussions continue between the two companies.
Both, Microsoft and Yahoo declined to comment on the reports.
May 4th, 2007
Seems, like Microsoft loses another important executive. Dane Glasgow, general manager for Live Search, is leaving the company to work for various nonprofits and spend more time with his family. Glasgow will leave the company by the end of this week.
April 26th, 2007
Some months ago Google, Live.com and Yahoo! have teamed up to support sitemaps as an industry standard, that makes it easy for webmasters to get their content to all search engines quickly. Today, they have announced a new addition to their service, called Auto-Discover. You can specify the location of the Sitemap using a robots.txt file. To do this, simply add the following line:
Sitemap: <sitemap_location>
The <sitemap_location> should be the complete URL to the Sitemap, such as: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
This directive is independent of the user-agent line, so it doesn’t matter where you place it in your file. If you have a Sitemap index file, you can include the location of just that file. You don’t need to list each individual Sitemap listed in the index file.
In addition to this, Ask.com is now also supporting Sitemaps.
April 11th, 2007
The Live Team has announced some cool new enhancements for the Live Search Maps service:
Firefox support for 3D mapping
Zooming around the virtual landscape is not just for Internet Explorer Users any more; users of Firefox 1.5 or later can click on the 3D button at http://maps.live.com and will be prompted to download and install the plug-in.
Ratings and Reviews of Business Listings and Details page enhancements
You can now read reviews of businesses entered by other users, as well as adding your own ratings and reviews for any business in Live Maps. Some businesses may have additional reviews from Judysbook.com and citysearch.com.
Address-Only Geocoding
This is a useful feature if you are looking up a lot of addresses in the same city, or your map view is already around the city you are searching. In the past you always had to enter a full street address with city, state or postcode information like this - 1200 madison ave, new york, NY. Now, if your map view is already in NY, you can just enter the street address as 1200 Madison Ave, and Live maps will default to finding it in NY. Â
There are some more new features, you can find detailed info on the Live Maps Blog.
April 4th, 2007
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Some of you, might have noticed, that the “link:” command at Live.com has returned a blank page, over the last couple of days. Today, a manager from Live Search, informed us, that the “link:” command will remain offline for some time:
“For those of you who use some of the advanced query syntax in our search engine such as link:, linkdomain: and inurl:, you may have noticed that this functionality has been recently turned off. We have been seeing broad use of these features by legitimate users but unfortunately also what appears to be mass automated usage for data mining. So for now, we have made the tough call to block all queries with these operators.
We are doing our best to get this back online as soon as possible in a manner that allows folks that use this functionality for real queries. We have a few good ideas up our sleeve on how to enable this, but want to make sure we are making the right changes that will give you the functionality you want and all of our customers the experience they deserve. Our apologies and thank you for being patient. Keep an eye on our blog for updates.”
So, it is not clear, when the link command will be back, but there are some speculation that Live Search will come up with a Webmaster Tool similar to Google’s Webmaster Central or Yahoo’s Site Explorer.
March 29th, 2007
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According to Reuters, the corporate vice president for Microsoft’s Live Search initiative, Christopher Payne, plans to leave Microsoft, to launch his own, non-search related company. Payne was one of the leaders in the move to bring search in-house at Microsoft.
The Microsoft management has not made any comments yet.
March 8th, 2007
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The Live.com Team released two new gadgets for the Windows Vista Sidebar. The first one uses a web service to fetch your search results and render them directly in the widget for the fastest search results.
The other one, a Live Search Maps gadget, is a quick and simple way to see real-time traffic conditions in your area. Shortcuts to driving directions, local search or full-screen traffic view on maps.live.com are also easily available from the gadget. Metro area traffic is currently supported for the following cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Providence, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa and Washington DC. You can find the download links at the Live.com Blog.
March 7th, 2007
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Microsoft today announced that it has agreed to acquire Medstory Inc., a privately held company, that develops intelligent Web search technology specifically for health information.
The acquisition represents a strategic move for Microsoft in the consumer health search arena and signals a long-term commitment toward the development of a broader consumer health strategy.
Unlike results from most search engines, Medstory’s results are based on intuitive search technology, which provides prequalified information to consumers and health professionals conducting health-related research. This unique approach provides users with intelligent guides to help refine and better target their searches. Users receive organized content that is more relevant to their search criteria and that enables better health-related decisions. You can read the press release here.
February 27th, 2007
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