Microsoft Corporation's head of search and advertising is denying that a team of developers in Silicon Valley were working on a cutting-edge search project. "When they get it done, I hope they'll send me a link to it so I'll know about it," joked Satya Nadella, corporate vice president of Microsoft's search and advertising platform group. While Nadella denied any specific effort to build a new search engine, he did say that his group, as a very young search operation compared to some other giants, would need to take risks in order to improve its position. Microsoft search is just over 3 years old and has about 10% of the market, he said, "We'll experiment."
One way that Microsoft may work to improve its search ranking is by using the MSN portal, which has around 500 million unique users globally, according to Nadella. His group is trying to find ways to encourage them to use Microsoft's Live search. The MSN A-List, which shows top searches on Live search, is an example of that effort. In addition, the main Microsoft.com page only recently got a Live search bar, he said. Microsoft will also have to differentiate its search product from the others to get ahead, he said. Offerings such as 3D maps, where Nadella believes Microsoft is in the lead, as well as mobile and image search could help the company gain users. In the long term, Nadella wants to experiment with and "reconceptualize" the search user interface. There's a "ton" of innovation that can be done on the user experience side, he said. Nadella is also interested in having more data about things like abandonment rates.
News source: PC World
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