Phil Bradley's weblog

Live Search's new interface and why it won't work

Live Search has finally, after much playing around, launched it's new interface. It should look something like this:

Live Search interface via kwout

Now, what does that remind you of? Just a teensy bit like the clean crisp Google interface that the world knows, perhaps? Actually enforcing the concept of this should be what a search engine interface box looks like. This isn't Live trying to come up with their own brand of interface, and Lord knows plenty of other search engines can and indeed have, this is direct from their 'If you can't beat them, join them' department. It's also making another fundamental flaw, which is that the design constricts the searcher. Instead of helping and assisting, the searcher is forced into the straightjacket of searching the way that Microsoft want them to think.

Now, the next classic schoolchild error comes with the 'More' tab above search. This is exactly the same mess that Google got into a long time ago, by having to prioritize what search elements were most important, and relegating everything else to lesser status. 'More' doesn't tell me anything at all. More what? Search boxes? Search options? Advanced search? (Which is a fun thing itself, because Live doesn't have that as an option, which is, once again, forcing the user to THINK LIKE MICROSOFT!) Anyway, when you click on the 'More' option what do you get? You get a pulldown box that's simply a link which says 'See All'. Now, a couple of points here - if there's only one option, why put this in way of seeing all? Why not just do it? Why make me waste a mouse click? Second point - see all *what*? If I don't know what it is that I'm supposed to be seeing, how can I make any kind of intelligent, informed choice? Is it a list of 2 more things, 20, or 200? Until I actually click on the link I don't know.

As it turns out, I'm taken to another page entirely (therefore changing the basic concept of the search page - at least with Google they keep to the same pull down concept), and I get a choice of links to search options like maps, books, spaces and so on. But, and again we're expected to do as we're told, we have to click on a link to go to the search option. So, in order to do what I want to in the first place I have 2 mouse clicks to work with. It's not a lot, but that's not the issue. The issue is that Microsoft is forcing me down a route that it wants me to go.

So anyway, let's move on and look at the results. I'm comparing them with Google, and they look rather like this:

Live V Google via kwout

Don't worry about trying to make out the words; that's not the point. It's the look of the two sets of pages. They are remarkably similar - so much so that I suspect if I took off the logos and showed them to people they'd be hard pressed to tell the difference. The difference of course is that Google's display is far superior. It's cleaner and admittedly in this example specifically, less advertisement heavy. I can get right to the search results. Other searches will pull up options for related searches, shopping results and so on, which will it still clutters up the top of the page, is vaguely useful. I tried a mobile phones search in both and the results were hysterical. With Google, I got what I expected (as previously mentioned - related and shopping options), while with Microsoft I get 'Top local listings for phones near Mobile, United States' (their emphasis), despite the fact that the engine knows I'm based in the UK.

The Live page is much longer, despite only giving me 8 results with 2 subsidiary results from  2 sites,  while with Google I just had the one subsidiary.  I can't really see any pluses to using the Live option in terms of display. All that I see, and what I suspect that most others will see, is a poor imitation of Google. Now, I'm sure the development team at Microsoft are going to be saying that they ignored Google, and just did what they thought worked best (and having been on the Search Champs team it's exactly what they said then), but clearly this isn't the case. There's nothing new, interesting, exciting or visionary about what they're doing with search. I've seen startups with more thought and vision than Microsoft. They are simply plodding along trying to be an alternative to Google by trying to be exactly like Google. People who want the Google experience are going to go to Google, and people who don't want that are not going to look at the pale imitation - they're going to go for something different.

And that is why Microsoft are not going to get anywhere with this pale imitation. They lack the courage and vision to really look at search differently. If I get a delegate on a course asking me why Live Search should be their preferred search engine I simply couldn't give them a good reason.

Yahoo's Flickr natives rebel

Some of Yahoo's Flickr users are less than happy about the potential problems Microsoft may cause them. And they're rebelling in the way they know best, by uploading images to a newly created group: Flickr: MICROSOFT: KEEP YOUR EVlL GRUBBY HANDS OFF OF OUR FLICKR. It currently has just over 1,200 members, with 174 photographs, so it's a fairly quiet protest. To be honest, I'd have been a lot more worried if Google had taken it over, given that anything they get their hands on (Blogger, JotSpot etc) disappears into a development hell hole for so long we forget all about it.

Searchification 2007

I've been invited by Microsoft to their  Searchification 2007 event. This is going to include a Live Search product update, Live Search demonstrations and a session on Webmaster Tools (which if previous experience is anything to go by will be about 'how to make money as a webmaster').

Now, it's really nice to have the invite, and I don't want to appear churlish, but they're over in California and I'm over here in London and the invitation doesn't extend past their front gate. So am I going to be going? I imagine that you can probably work out the answer yourself. However, that's not the point. The point is that Microsoft is a bit big. And it's a bit technical in emphasis. Yet the ONLY way they can think of running an event like this is to get people to sit down in front of them and talk to them face to face. No webcasting, not even hosting something in Second Life - nothing. So we're going to end up with pure American feedback on the product.

Are these people serious? One can only conclude that they're not, given that they've made no attempt to think in anything except a very traditional paradigm. (I'm not even going to talk about carbon footprints!) Absolutely amazing.

Tafiti

Tafiti
Originally uploaded by Philipbradley.

Microsoft are experimenting again, this time with a thing called tafiti. Apparently Swahili for 'yet another search engine that no-one wants or needs' or some such. Or maybe just 'to search'. Anyway, it's new, and looks shiny, apart from the image of a very old catalogue card that they use as a search box, and which slides off to the side once a search has been run, wasting space, but looking funky.

Before you can use it you have to install something called 'Silverlight'. I don't know why and MS isn't saying, all they do say is 'just don't it!'. However, I'm a trusting soul, and if Mr BG wants me to install Silverlight to look at this thing, well, that's what I'll do. Dunno how many others will though - surprisingly it works on Firefox.

So, you get a catalogue card as your search box, whack in a search and get a bunch of the usual MS results up on screen. You click on the links, scroll down (only it scrolls off the end of the screen and I couldn't see anyway to move to see the rest of what I was being offered). However, you can also save results to little glass shelves (no, I'm not making this up) to the right of the screen. You can save these results between sessions, the idea being that you can create a whole bunch of results and collate them, which is a nice idea, though not exactly brand new.

There's also a 'tree' view, and the screen shot is taken from this page. It's clearly an attempt to be funky and down with the kids, and reminds me of visual search engines like Kartoo. So, nothing new there then either. Irritatingly, this tree like affair spins around, slowly and dizzyingly and made me feel quite ill. There were plenty of other bugs and glitches - slow loading, no loading, freezing and suchlike, but I guess that's to be expected as it's experimental, and so unfair to be critical, but if you play with this, expect it.

To be honest, I wasn't impressed, but you've guessed that already haven't you? It didn't seem to add much, and as an experimental search engine MS really do need to think a bit more outside their tiny box, because I wasn't interested or inspired. In fact, a very insipid search engine all round.

Three new features in Live Search Images

Three new features in Live Search Images. Nice simple piece of search functionality introduced by Live for image searching people. You can do a search for your preferred person and add in filter:face filter:portrait or filter:bw and it does seem to work rather nicely. I ran several searches and in the main it did what was expected of it. However, it was also amusing to search for dog filter:face and cat and mouse and so on.

Nice feature yes, but not really innovative - they're just playing catchup with people such as Ask.

Windows Live

Most of the search engines have their own testbeds where they try out stuff to see what works and what doesn't. Windows Live has Imagine Live (follow the link) and you can see what they're up to. Basically it's a bit like AskX with the blended approach that they all seem to be heading for, but which they're just missing the mark on (with the exception of AskX which to be honest has become my standard benchmark for blended results).

You run your search, get answers on the left in the form of URLs, a 'Find information fast' for movie times, local listings, weather and sports scores. Unfortunately these don't relate to the search that you've just run, so I have to wonder at the point. Then there's a related searches option, image results, Local results (which show me a map of central London for reasons that escape me) and also news results.

Thanks to Gwen over at Internet News for this one.

MSN get the message

MSN have got the message loud and clear that it's a bad idea to pre-populate the search box with a search we might want to do - I complained about it the other day as did a lot of others. In their blog they say

Many of you found a pre-loaded search bar intrusive and did not like us trying to predict what you were interested in searching for. Having to actively delete content from the bar was also negatively received.

I think that it's great that they're actively experimenting and trying things out - all the search engines do, and the only way in which they can really experiment is to do it on a live 'out there' audience but I'm still slightly astonished that this idea got beyond first base. Still, all sorted now.

Ms Dewey insults tv presenter live on air

Very funny short video clip here. The search engine expert (don't know who she is) is demonstrating Ms Dewey to a television show host. They type in his name and she comes out with one of her sarcastic little comments prior to showing the results. Host Gets Owned By Search Engine - emuse.ebaumsworld.com.

MSN Live Book Search

Microsoft has gone head to head with Google on the 'search inside the book' concept over at Live Search Books It's very straightforward and is very similar to the Google offering. The interface is simple and clear, and the results give you various books to view. In the example above the main screen element is displaying the book, and on the left hand side of the screen we have the bibliographic details, with a 'search inside the book option'. Below that the previously searched keywords are displayed in context, so it's easy to jump directly to them.

Consequently I think the best search approach is going to be fairly broad to begin with, choose a title from the results and then really start to narrow down at that point. The main screen can either display part of the page or a click will get you the whole page, which I found slightly small to read comfortably. All of the scanning really looked neat and clear. The entire book can be downloaded as a .pdf file.

Is this going to damage the Google efforts? No, not a bit of it. I can see both services running very much in tandem with each other, and if you don't find what you want with one, you'll simply toddle across to use the other. It would be good if someone could create a little software gizmo type thing to search both in one go though - any takers do let me know!
 

Microsoft Firefox 2007 Professional edition

Link: Microsoft(R) Firefox | We've Made it Better. Your chance to get hold of Microsoft Firefox 2007 professional edition. This is a clever little parody, and worth showing to your friends, because some of them are going to fall for it. There's an interesting take on RSS as well.