Microsoft overhauls search

SEATTLE (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. is rolling out a redesignedsearch site in the coming days and hopes it will lure more Websurfers than the two most recent incarnations, Live Search and MSNSearch.

The new site, Bing, adds touches intended to make everyday Websearching a little less haphazard. Bing also tries to make iteasier for people to buy things, book travel and find crediblehealth information.

History has not been kind to even the best search innovators.Many companies, including Amazon.com Inc. and IAC/InterActiveCorp.,and startups like Hakia, ChaCha and Cuil have tried to improve onthe basic "10 blue links" format of search results, but Google Inc.has remained unstoppable.

Microsoft's last effort, Live Search, failed to catch onpartly because the software maker didn't do much to promote it.Marketing is no guarantee of success -- IAC heavily advertisedmakeovers of Ask.com -- but this time, Microsoft appears to betaking no chances. Ad Age reported Microsoft plans to spend as muchas $100 million on advertising Bing.

Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft has been stuck in third placebehind Google and Yahoo Inc. for years. Its share of U.S. searchqueries was 8.2 percent in April, according to the research groupcomScore Inc. Google was used for 64.2 percent of queries, andYahoo's share totaled 20.4 percent.

The numbers are important. Google's healthy profits are tiedto its search dominance, becau******panies will pay more to reach awider audience when they place ads alongside search results.Microsoft, by contrast, posted a quarterly loss in its onlineadvertising business.

To mount a credible challenge to Google, Microsoft triedtaking over Yahoo last year. But after Yahoo rebuffed its $47.5billion offer, Microsoft turned its attention to improving its ownLive Search.

Ballmer reiterated Thursday that Microsoft is still interestedin a search partnership with Yahoo, and not an outrightacquisition, but he didn't disclose any new details.

Some of Bing's features showed up on a Microsoft blog inMarch, when the new site was known as "Kumo." The most obviousdifference is a bar of links running down the left-hand side ofBing search results pages. Some searches -- especially ones forcelebrities or travel destinations -- yield links to help narrowresults into categories. For pro athletes, it might offer links forstatistics and highlights. For Thailand, categories include weatherand real estate.

Bing also lists related search terms on the left, not at thebottom of the page like Google does. It keeps track of recentsearches and gives people a way to e-mail links from that searchhistory or post them on Facebook.

For some types of queries, Microsoft is positioning Bing as adestination rather than a quick gateway to other sites. For airfaresearches, Bing produces results from Farecast, a travel-comparisonstartup Microsoft acquired last year.

Shopping with Bing can yield an Amazon.com-like experience,with ways to narrow results by price, brand and the availability offree shipping, without leaving the search page.

Bing also tries to guide searchers to trustworthy medicalinformation. Type in "chicken pox" or "tendinitis," and the firstresult is a Mayo Clinic article. (Google's top result for chickenpox comes from kidshealth.org; for tendinitis, it shows a Wikipedialink.)

Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk said Bing won't bite intoGoogle's search share because the Google habit is too hard tobreak. But people who have been using Yahoo as a secondary"information portal" may switch to Bing, she said.