For many technology news analysts, it's likely that 2008 will go down in history as the year that Microsoft tried to purchase Yahoo! - but failed. In a bid to shore up its strength in the search market against giants Google, the veteran software company - once synonymous with innovation in the tech world - have now announced that they'll be experimenting with search patterns and looking to gain a deeper understanding of the way the average user searches, in order to bolster its Live Search offering.Satya Nadella, Microsoft's senior vice president of search, told a gathering at this week's Search Engine Strategies Conference in San Jose, California, that the company was hoping to make a break from its "one-size-fits-all" search results and cater to a more personal, in-depth user experience. He said:
"I believe this notion of understanding user intent - being able to analyse [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."
This notion of behavioural targeting is likely to attract protests and cause concerns over user privacy. Google, for instance, is well-known for its innovations into the fields of personalised search. If a user searches via Google while being signed into their Google account, their search history will be recorded and favourable results will be delivered higher up the SERPs. Google's Web History tool also allows users to manage their web activities, so that results can be individually tailored.
So far, Microsoft has always adhered to the "same search results for all" policy, but its recent acquisition of natural search engine Powerset is certain to put the software giant in a better position to combat Google's dominance. Although Powerset currently only indexes and searches Wikipedia articles, the search engine's emphasis on natural language search - which aims to find answers to questions, rather than return results for specific keywords - could provide Microsoft with some valuable insight into current search trends.
Commenting on Powerset's technology, Nadella stated: "We think that tech, natural-language processing, is going to be a very critical way for us to improve relevance further, at scale."
According to Hitwise, Live Search currently accounts for 4.18 per cent of searches made in the US, and less than two per cent in the UK. Google, on the other hand, counts for over 87 per cent of searches made in Britain and 70 per cent of those carried out in the States. Microsoft certainly has a long way to go to catch up with the Mountain View giants, but with a cutting-edge engine like Powerset behind the wheel, developments are sure to be exciting.
