Interesting piece on CNet today about how Microsoft are focusing on tailored search in order to give them the edge in the search market. Dislodging Google from it’s number one position will be a tall order however Microsoft feel they can provide something unique and useful by having their dearch engine learn from a user’s previous behaviour in order to better understandtheir interests and needs and present more useful results.

According to the article Mircosoft’s Satya Nadella said “I believe this notion of understanding user intent, being able to analyze [search queries] and come up with search patterns and use them to shape the search experience, is one of the most important areas for us”

Basically the theory goes that because half of the search queries at Microsoft’s search site are part of a 30-minute session. These people are searching and reasearching the Web sites returned in the Search Engine result. If these patterns can be analysised then a picture of their needs can be built up in order to increase the relevancy of subsequent result sets. In effect Microsoft’s search engine will be learning from the user’s behaviour in order to be more relevance.

Whilst most users are looking for something in particular and can be easily served with a standard ‘one size fits all’ search this extra tailoring of the results using search patterns will be of benefit for the more indepth longer term ’search projects’.

According to Satya this approach of innovation will help them in the battle against Google and Yahoo “If we come again and again with innovation that matters, we will have the opportunity to grow our volume and our share, we made decent progress but we have a ways to go”.

From: hitsearchlimited.com 

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