We all know that Microsoft has been trying unsuccessfully for years to knock Google from its dominant search position. From the early versions of MSN search, to forcing default search to MSN on IE and changing branding to Live, Microsoft have struggled to make a dent in the Google spot. Recently they have been trying to get into the ad-sense market as well, including offering big incentives to some popular sites to entice them to MS (e.g. Digg).
Recently I have been seeing the number of referrals I see from Live Search increasing across all the sites I see stats for, which doesn’t include GNC, but the three personal domains I run, my day job company’s main site and the customer forum I am an admin on. I have seen live search referrals grow from very little in July, into the top 20 referring domains for all sites in August, and in late Sept has grown to be about half the rate of Google and leaving yahoo in the dust.
My assumption is that this is due to the September 26 update to Live search. It claims that the engine drives much better relevance, which could definitely explain why more results would be seen on site logs. One point on the announcement that caught my eye was
Streamlined look and feel. We focused on the end-to-end experience from the homepage throughout the site. For example, search results are now easier to read thanks to work on typography, contrast, colors and spacing.
What they meant to say was, “We made it look exactly like Google!”
Seriously, if you haven’t looked at live search recently, it is now a virtual copy of Google. The front page is virtually identical Live, Google. And even the layout, design, highlighting and options are the same Live, Google.
It will be interesting to see whether the results this drive for Microsoft are temporary, or will give permanent results. While this is not the most virtuous competition tactic they could use, their lawyers must believe it is legal. If successful it would mean that Google’s share price would need to be re-evaluated.