Live Search Webmaster Center Launched

Microsoft formally opens Live Search Webmaster Tools for business. Along with this, open also is the Live Search Webmaster Center Blog.

The Live Search Webmaster Team, have created this blog to help keep you informed on progress as we develop tools to assist you as webmasters. We will also be sharing from time to time on how to keep your site performing well.

We want this blog to be a place for two way communication between Live Search and the webmaster community because we understand that SEOs and webmasters need this kind of information and the tools we are building to keep their sites performing well.

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Getting Top Ad Position at Live Search

adCenter, Microsoft’s paid search provider has revealed a new formula in getting the top ad ranking of its search results. Top ad is the advertisement (Microsoft calls it mainline) that appears directly on top of the #1 organic search results.

The Microsoft folks say the criteria on calculating the mainline ranking used to be more rigid but now it has been relaxed, as a result of a “more dynamic” marketplace.

Only two things were mentioned, as essential elements that needed to be adjusted to get the mainline ad placement. Click Through Rate and Max Bid. While Max Bid can be adjusted manually, you have to have good ad performance to achieve a desired click through rate. So does this mean it’s just boils down to another bidding war? Probably not.

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Major Update at Live Search

I seldom feature any Live Search update in the blog because the product seems slow in terms of providing new things to talk about. For those uninformed, Live Search is the latest name change/brand exercise of the search engine once popularly known as MSN Search.

Finally there is something to talk about the latest reincarnation of this Microsoft product. Its blog recently announced that a major update is taking place for the first time since January of 2005, when the search engine made its debut.

The major focus with this update are the following (according to their post):

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Improve Your Local Search Visibility

Local search is a search engine that allows for geographically constrained searching. If I am in Hong Kong and would like to search for bars, I intuitively use “hong kong bars” because I think “bars” is pretty much generic and results might not necessarily refer to those found in Hong Kong.

With local search, search engines are able to determine a searcher’s geographic location and therefore identify which sites are relevant and should appear on search results. Search engines have a way to determine a site is suitable for a certain search by someone located somewhere. So if I search for flower shop, within local search I should expect Sam Flowers should be there for a search for “flowers” and Shake ‘Em Buns for “burgers”.

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Microsoft Says its Web Search on “Positive Trajectory”

Microsoft Corp. said on Monday its Web search business remains on a “positive trajectory” with plans to roll out several updates over the next 12 months.

Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s platforms and services group, said the company is building on momentum after its Windows Live Search gained market share over competitors in the quarter ended in June.

“Over the next 12 months, we’ve got a very aggressive engineering plan with multiple releases of search coming forward. So, I think we are on a positive trajectory,” Johnson said in an interview.

Microsoft lags far behind Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. in Web search, the most lucrative slice of a rapidly growing online advertising market. My Google Analytics reports show leaders Google and Yahoo! showing the way while Microsoft’s Live Search, along with Ask and other search players are fighting for scraps.