{"id":633,"date":"2008-05-21T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2008-05-21T08:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/?p=633"},"modified":"2008-05-21T09:00:24","modified_gmt":"2008-05-21T08:00:24","slug":"microsoft-forget-the-live-search-cashback-just-improve-the-engine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/633-microsoft-forget-the-live-search-cashback-just-improve-the-engine.html","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft: forget the Live Search Cashback, just improve the engine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft is paying users to use its search engine with a new search cashback scheme<\/a>. Looks like an affiliate scheme where the commission is paid back to the customer. US only.<\/p>\n

I think Microsoft should focus on improving its search engine. This morning, I needed to call a local electrician and figured that search would be quicker than using a phone book. I entered the name of the retailer and the town. For some reason, this stymied Live Search: the result I was looking for was not on the first 10 pages. Identical search on Google: the first four results matched, and the address and telephone number were at the top of the page with a little map.<\/p>\n

In a poll last year<\/a> 51% thought Google delivered the best results for an example search, while 35% preferred Live Search and 31% Yahoo. That’s an inconclusive result, and this is not an exact science; but personally I find Google almost always delivers better results, sometimes (as in the case this morning) dramatically so.<\/p>\n

If Microsoft managed to reverse this I would switch to Live Search in a heartbeat.<\/p>\n

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

Microsoft is paying users to use its search engine with a new search cashback scheme. Looks like an affiliate scheme where the commission is paid back to the customer. US only. I think Microsoft should focus on improving its search engine. This morning, I needed to call a local electrician and figured that search would … Continue reading Microsoft: forget the Live Search Cashback, just improve the engine<\/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":[36,44,55,74,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google","category-internet","category-microsoft","category-search","category-yahoo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633","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=633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}