Boiling Down the Rumors: The New Direction of Microsoft Search
Late last week, Microsoft Search came in to present their strategic direction for the next few months. They have several items in the pipeline, and were excited to share their plans. We had heard many rumors in the news and blogs about Kiev, Kumo/Live, and their brand re-launch with JWT, but it was nice to get all of the information in one place. Here’s the rundown:
Re-brand of Live Search (Kumo) - Being called “Kumo” for now, which translates to “cloud” or “spider” in Japanese. The official name will be released with the brand campaign by JWT.
Includes new features as well, including
- PowerSet technology for semantic search
- Farecast integration for searches including flights
- Left rail with sub-categories, related searches, and your search history
- Sub-categories within the main organic results
- Overall clean new look and feel
With Microsoft’s efforts to keep this under wraps for the time being, they were unable to send over sample search results, but we found an example on the web.
For those of us in the search community, they will also be launching a new version of adCenter (currently being called “Kiev”), the tool we use to manage our campaigns. They were also excited to talk about the CashBack program, and the recent…