Microsoft has finally decided that they don’t want to be number two (or three or four for that matter) anymore when it comes to search and has supposedly matched Google’s search relevancy as well as surpassed Yahoo’s search relevancy. As with many news that comes out of Microsoft, you need to take it with a grain of salt and hearing that they have beaten Yahoo at their own game (which mind you they have been doing for 13 years) over night seems like a bit of a stretch to me.
Though I have no doubt Microsoft’s Live Search could one day live up to expectation, I don’t really believe that time is now. From their press release, it seems that they have completely overhauled the live search algorithm to understand as well as the capability to Learn and differentiate different natural language patterns as entered by the users (whilst searching). In other words, Live search is now smart enough to actually find what you are looking for, which ironically they should’ve done in the first place, seeing how relevant search results are what makes a search engine favorable.
I must, however, mention that Live Search for Image is far more superior (in terms of relevancy and layout) than both Yahoo and Google. I could never find what I am looking for on Google (been search for Toyota Mr2 a lot recently) even though they have a lot of results, this is not the case for Live Search. 8 times out of 10, I get great results, although the results Live search returns are significantly less than Google’s, it is definitely more relevant.
To read more about the overhaul of Microsoft’s Live Search check out the article written by WebProNews. Also, read a their short article about whether Live Search is more relevant than Google or not, interesting read.