At the end of last month, Microsoft held an event at its Mountain View offices called "Searchification". This was the official launch of the new Live Search (Live 2.0) which is a new, updated an shinier version of the search engine that drives queries across Microsoft properties including MSN.

Microsoft announced some significant improvements, including increasing the size of the index and search relevance. On  the index side, they claim they have increased the number of pages four-fold to more than twenty billion. However, repeating all the information that you can find elsewhere on the web like here, here and here is not really the purpose of this blog. What prompted me to write this blog was the fact that their claims are actually related to the results we are seeing here at Vertical Leap.

In the past, sometimes, MSN results have been a bit of mystery. It wasn't always possible to see why some pages had gone up and some down. Results tended to be quite mixed up compared to the overall increase in positions we might see in Google for example. We can see the effect in Google when a site gains significant authority, because whatever the search term is, we see improvements and the long tail searches for that site increase - sometimes dramatically.

So it is interesting to see that a couple of weeks on from the start of the rollout of the new look pages, most of my sites are starting to get healthier returns in MSN. New keywords are entering at good positions and it would definitely appear that a larger number of pages are indexed as we can see new entries appearing. Whilst this is good and shows us as an SEO company that our "techniques" work in the new Live search algorithm, we will also be keeping an eye on the results for what happens in the future.

This is because the new search engine uses more clickstream data and makes more inferences about a searchers intent. Thus positions will change (as they do in Google) based on click data, search refinement and therefore the Live system will continue to learn about the behaviour of searchers. I am always really happy to hear about learning systems, but it does present a challenge for search engine optimisation!

Firstly, the extract of the page that is shown in the results page becomes even more important - enticing people to click can actually feed back into better search engine positions. So well written meta descriptions are even more important; including as much relevance to the search as possible and even a call to action to actually choose that link.

Secondly, minimising bounce rates, so that the searcher doesn't immediately click the back button, is very relevant to site owners and web designers. It has never been unimportant, but when it also affects your search position, it makes it a very relevant metric. The important, relevant content must be front and centre so that the searcher can perceive, as soon as possible after arriving at the site that they have reached a site with the results they were looking for. This ties in interestingly with Craig's blog the other day about which search engine is the best when you look at the results using different metrics.

So we will continue to follow the results with great interest.

Update: Live Search Results & MSN Ranking Factors January 2008