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Microsoft trying really very hard to compete with Google over the Internet Search market. Recently Microsoft has started a new plan "Search Perks", Microsoft said that US Internet users would be able to earn a "ticket" each time they conducted a search on its Live Search site, then redeem those for things such as music downloads (525 tickets) or T-shirts (1,100), or exchange them for regular air miles. Microsoft will run this pilot program till April 2009. To participate in this programs users have to download and install a small software. software will count the total number of searches and rewards are limited to 50 searches a day, and the programme is open initially to 250,000 people.This year Microsoft has started Live Search Cashback and Live Search club.

Microsoft said

The spike in searches last summer followed heavy promotion of the Search Club plan, which had since been reduced, and that the cashback arrangement was a long-term plan aimed more at boosting the profitability from search advertising for merchants rather than increasing the number of overall searches. Ebay, an early user of the plan, had seen the returns from its Microsoft search advertising rise by 50 per cent thanks to cashback

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On September 12, 2008 BlackBerry smartphone users will be able to use Microsoft Live Search as their search engine of choice within the BlackBerry Browser as well as access Live Search from Mobile.BlackBerry.com. Live Search will leverage the wireless data optimization capabilities of the BlackBerry solution to deliver results quickly while users are on the go. BlackBerry customers will also be able to use Live Search to perform contextual, location-sensitive searches or look for nearby points of interest from inside BlackBerry Maps.

Mark Guibert, vice president, Corporate Marketing at Research In Motion, Said

As the BlackBerry platform continues to evolve and broaden its appeal to all mobile users, RIM looks to answer our customers’ needs with a broad range of high-value solutions optimized for use with BlackBerry smartphones,Offering Live Search on BlackBerry smartphones extends choice for our customers and allows users to conveniently and quickly search the Internet when they are on mobile devices.

Brian Arbogast, corporate vice president of the Mobile Services organization at Microsoft, Said

This joint endeavor with RIM is a strategic indicator of our increased focus on securing broad-scale distribution for Live Search.Microsoft is committed to extending our services across mobile platforms, and we are very pleased to be joining forces with RIM to help bring Live Search to millions of BlackBerry users worldwide.

Live Search on BlackBerry smartphones will allow BlackBerry smartphone users to search the Web’s information—whether they’re looking for the latest weather forecasts, images, stock quotes, restaurants, news headlines or Web sites.Live Search for BlackBerry Smartphones is expected to be available later this year with support for multiple languages.

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Microsoft Live Search is rolling out Olympics-related features, which will all be live by the end of the day on Friday

• Olympics 2008 news scope, available in Live Search News at http://news.live.com gives readers up-to-date coverage with additional elements such as Olympics 2008 news images.
• Olympian xRank, available at http://xrank.live.com gives fans a way to track the popularity of their favorite athletes. For example, Michael Phelps jumped from number 19 to number one in the matter of 24 hours, yesterday to today.
• Olympics Videos are available at http://video.live.com when customers search “Olympics.
• The Live.com Homepage will rotate Olympics images in the background for the duration of the games.
• Athlete Instant Answer will feature profiles of Olympians as searchers type in the first and last names of the athlete in search queries. For instance, fans can search “Shawn Johnson” or “LeBron James. 
• Medal Count Instant Answer will provide an all up medal count by country, sport, or by country and sport when searchers type in Olympics-related keywords in search queries. For instance, fans can search terms like “swimming” or “China gymnastics.”

All the features will be available in the US, while Athlete Instant Answer and Medal Count Instant Answer will be available in select countries and regions.

Thanks neowin

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I find some real good search results of last month while searching the web. I am sharing all of those search engine data with our reader.

Top search providers, ranked by total searches. Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider.
Top 10 Search Providers for June 2008, Ranked by Searches (U.S.)

Source: Nielsen Online, MegaView Search In June, Google Sites retained its lead in the U.S. core search market capturing 61.5 percent of the searches conducted, down slightly from 61.8 percent in May. Google was followed by Yahoo! Sites (20.9 percent, up from 20.6 percent in May), Microsoft Sites (9.2 percent, up from 8.5 percent in May), Ask Network (4.3 percent), and AOL LLC (4.1 percent).

Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.Americans conducted 11.5 billion searches at the core search engines, representing a 7-percent increase versus May. Google Sites handled more than 7 billion core searches (up 6 percent from May), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.4 billion (up 9 percent), and Microsoft Sites with more than 1 billion (up 15 percent).

Source : comScore Core Search Report NEW YORK, NY – July 15, 2008 – Google accounted for 69.17 percent of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending June 28, 2008, Hitwise announced today. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 19.62, 5.46 and 4.17 percent respectively. The remaining 42 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.70 percent of U.S. searches.

Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending /28/08, 5/31/ 2008, 6/30/2007 from the Hitwise sample of 10 million U.S. Internet users.  * - includes executed searches on Live.com and MSN Search but does not include searches on Club.Live.com.

Source: Hitwise

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Microsoft bundled a new writing assistance tool in their Live Search.ESL (English as a Second Language) Assistant currently noting  more then a prototype and ESL currently focusing on limited number of mistakes

The ESL Assistant uses statistical models to suggest corrections for a number of common learner error patterns that are not currently supported by the proofing tools in Microsoft Office products. The service also tries to help users judge whether a suggestion truly represents an improvement by showing real-life examples returned by a web search

ESL Assistant deploys advanced statistical models in order to address and correct uncharacteristic mistakes. At the same time, the tool is intimately connected to Live Search, and each suggestion is also performed as a search in order to offer the user conclusive examples after the error is corrected. Additionally, Microsoft is intent on offering the tool as an add-in for the Office 2007 System, in an effort to make up for the limitations of the grammar checker.

In its present form, the service is unapologetically experimental (‘pre-alpha,’ despite the beta label). The range of error types that it corrects is still small, it does not capture everything, and it sometimes gets things wrong. Work to improve error detection accuracy and coverage is ongoing; we expect to roll out new modules and updates as the service matures. The present interface certainly does not represent what one would expect to see if this service were some day fully integrated into a shipping product. With the current prototype, we will be gathering data about where the service succeeds and where it does not, to help inform future directions of development

Some features of the ESL Assistant service include:

• Corrections for common ESL error types found in non-native English writing but not supported in by the Office grammar checker. More information about the specific kinds of error patterns that are supported can be found in the ESL Assistant Help (FAQ) page and on the team website. 

• Implementation as a web service, which permits the deployment of huge statistical models to identify possible error locations.

• Automatically generated searches to assist users by retrieving real-world contextual examples from the web.

• A downloadable add-in for Outlook 2007, allowing mail text to besent to the ESL Assistant web site for checking.

• An inline thesaurus feature that proposes alternative words appropriate to the context.

• An initial pass though Microsoft Office grammar and spell checking, that can be turned on by a checkbox, to ensure more comprehensive error coverage.

• Localized pages for users in the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Russian markets (or if you set your default language in IE to one of these).

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Microsoft Search website Live.com has added pictures to it’s background. These added pictures to live search opens a lot of opportunity to Live Search page to use it for special occasions, users can personalize live search page with their favorite image. Microsoft confirmed to SearchEngine Land that its still in testing, so if you don’t fins any picture while opening Live Search page then don’t worry.

Images are taken from liveside blog

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