Microsoft is A "Live"

Microsoft announced it's market search product, live.com, and released many of its newer search services from Beta. You can visit the new site, called Windows Live, at www.live.com
The search site offers a clean and sparse home page, ala Google, with the quick ability to search its proprietary search engine, image search, news search, local search and a Question and Answer section (QnA - still in Beta) all from the main search page.

There is the ability to personalize the page with news, weather sports and entertainment listings.

Search results are clean and easy to follow.

Searches that include geographic qualifiers, such as "Chicago pizzeria" include Locall Listings at the top. It is easy to add, remove or update your local business information which is done through localeze.com.

Search results also include sponsored results from Microsoft AdCenter, Microsoft's new pay per click program.

A unique feature to the results is a "Related Searches" listing which allows you to quickly link to related search results, without typing in a new query. For broader searches, this is an excellent mechanism to help end users narrow their search to more targeted results.

Despite Microsoft's low profile in overall search (approximately 12% of all searches), Windows Live Search is an excellent search resource, with highly relevant organic search results and an economical and easy to managed sponsored search package. With the promise to expand its market share and a solid product to boot, advertisers should be certain they are getting in on the ground floor.