{"id":1146,"date":"2009-01-11T14:30:25","date_gmt":"2009-01-11T13:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/1146-another-useless-microsoft-search-experience.html"},"modified":"2009-01-11T14:30:25","modified_gmt":"2009-01-11T13:30:25","slug":"another-useless-microsoft-search-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/1146-another-useless-microsoft-search-experience.html","title":{"rendered":"Another useless Microsoft search experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

I do not make posts like this just to needle Microsoft. I\u2019d like to see it compete better with Google, not because I have anything against Google, but because competition is good. So I\u2019m explaining why I can\u2019t use Microsoft\u2019s search product as currently implemented, in the hope that it will help to improve it.<\/p>\n

I am aware that the Windows 7 beta SDK is now available, and wanted to download it. I tried the search on Microsoft\u2019s site:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Top hit is from November 2007 and is a forum discussion of dxtrans.h. Correct result nowhere to be seen.<\/p>\n

So I tried Live Search:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I get ads for double-glazing and a top hit for the QuickTime 7.3 SDK from Apple. Correct result nowhere to be seen.<\/p>\n

So I tried Google:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Top hit is relevant but wrong. Second hit is a blog post which has the URL I\u2019m looking for, not bad. Fourth hit is the exact URL. By the way, the Windows 7 SDK beta is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is no use Microsoft doing search bundling deals with Dell. If it cannot fix the product, users will run back to Google.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, I believe US searchers get better results from Live Search than I do, because of faulty regionalisation. Live Search seems to have a heavier bias than Google towards what it thinks are (in my case) UK results. That doesn\u2019t explain why it gives an Apple QuickTime site as its top hit for \u201cWindows 7 SDK\u201d.<\/p>\n

Technorati tags: microsoft<\/a>, live search<\/a>, google<\/a>, windows 7 sdk<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I do not make posts like this just to needle Microsoft. I\u2019d like to see it compete better with Google, not because I have anything against Google, but because competition is good. So I\u2019m explaining why I can\u2019t use Microsoft\u2019s search product as currently implemented, in the hope that it will help to improve it. … Continue reading Another useless Microsoft search experience<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,55,74,97,98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google","category-microsoft","category-search","category-windows","category-windows-7"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}