The debut of Windows Live Search delivered a couple of new features, more of its advertising service, and possibly better relevance for its organic and paid search results.
Microsoft has taken great “panes” in developing the beta of Windows Live Search. A large window pane powered by the company’s Atlas framework displays the search results for Web, News, Images, and Local queries.
There is an option for Feeds, which returns search results for a query where RSS feeds are available in each result. Users can select the “add feed to live.com” option under a Feeds result to make it part of Windows Live.
A dropdown arrow next to Feeds displays an option to Find Macros. Chris Sherman at Search Engine Watch posted more about Macros based on his talk with Microsoft’s Director of Global Sales & Marketing PR, Adam Sohn:
One of the more intriguing new features is called “Macros,” a feature that lets you customize and save searches to be run again. Macros are flexible, easy to create and share. As an example, you could create a Macro that searched for terms across a set of web sites that you specify, in effect, creating your own personalized vertical search tool.
Clicking the Macros link leads to a page at Microsoft Gadgets that contains the search macros. Nathan Weinberg noted how some of the macros that are on the site now were created and gave examples:
Another macro, livesearch.findmusic, searches:
((prefer:music | prefer:album | prefer:song | prefer:lyrics | prefer:mp3 | prefer:cd ) (contains:mp3 | contains:wma))
Or brady.gawkermedia (I believe this was created by Brady Forrest), searches all Gawker blogs:
(site:lifehacker.com OR site:gawker.com OR site:wonkette.com OR site:valleywag.com OR site:defamer.com OR site:gizmodo.com OR site:consumerist.com OR site:sploid.com OR site:fleshbot.com OR site:jalopnik.com OR site:screenhead.com OR site:kotaku.com OR site:deadspin.com OR site:gridskipper.com)
Users of MSN Search and Windows Live Search tap the same underlying technology currently. Eventually Microsoft will phase out MSN Search in favor of the new product and an updated engine that should improve the relevance of what users see in organic search, and how advertisers’ paid search appears based on the keywords they buy for adCenter campaigns.
—
Tag: | document.write(“Email Murdok here.”)
Drag this 
Add to document.write(“Del.icio.us”) | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
