LiveSide - News blog : Product Search

Minor Spaces update, and more from Windows Live blogs

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:50:44 GMT

The Space Craft, blog of the Windows Live Spaces team, just announced a minor upgrade to Spaces: you can now include the Messenger IM control and SkyDrive files in the Custom HTML module using embed codes. Some back end changes have been made to Spaces as well, “to make the service faster and more reliable”.

Two other Windows Live product teams have posted recently, too: the Live QnA blog posted Tuesday on their “new and improved refresh”, which they are apparently calling their “Renaissance release”. Of course we pointed out the refresh to you already, but the Live QnA blog goes deeper into the list of improvements (paraphrased here):

Improved Live ID signup experience
Redesigned registration page, including a required agreement to the Code of Conduct
Improved site promotion, including the MSN Election Channel, and Live Search results pages (more to come)
New look and feel
Improved site navigation and tag content
Recognition for top contributors (with high best answers to total answers ratio)

You can read more on the Live QnA (might want to change that to Live Search QnA) blog, or visit http://qna.live.com.

Then, on the Live Search blog, the Live Search Product team announced their new release, including:

One stop to research product details and find good prices You see an image and description for each product, reviews from other users, prices to help you find good deals, and spec sheets for many products.

Feature-based refinements See which products are reviewed positively or negatively for the features that interest you. View product features such as screen size, battery life, ease of use, and portability.

Sorting Sort product results by user ratings, expert ratings, and price.

Filtering Filter product results by specific brands, categories, and price ranges.

Richer product details Read expert reviews and a spec sheet describing the product.

Product search has also been added to Live Search Mobile (at http://m.live.com – and don’t forget about http://m.liveside.net! Did you know that you can access LiveSide on your iPhone at http://m.liveside.net/iPhone?), along with some more improvements to mobile search.

Windows Live Product Search: More Images, More Relevant!

Darren Straight — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 04:13:00 GMT

The Windows Live Product Search Team has just released changes to Windows Live Product Search that boost customer-perceived relevance by increasing the number of query results with images to 88.6%. Previously, the number of query results with images was an average of 79.2%, with the rest having an empty white space, so this increase is clearly somewhat of an improvement. But there’s still some way to go until 100%.

But why aren’t there 100% images in the top results? The reason for this is largely because many sites, including very reputable merchants like Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, and AceHardwareSuperStore.com, block image crawling bots or seriously throttle them.

The Windows Live Product Search Team will have to work with these sites to address these issues, but for the time being will just have to stay with the current improvements, which if I may say so vary from good to bad results depending on the product you searched for!

Try it out for yourself at: http://products.live.com/ and let me know what you think!

Windows Live Product Search & Upload gets update

Chris — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 05:05:00 GMT

Whilst unlikely to attract quite the same attention and controversy as the Windows Live Shopping switch to MSN, the marketplace team announced on their blog an update to two of their other products: Windows Live Product Search and its counterpart Product Upload. Changes include performance updates, UI improvements and the always-present bug fixes.

While Brandon says he loves what they are doing, I'm going to point out that they still have no localised support, even for other english-speaking countries. For a service that's been out for a while, its disappointing to see this is still the case.

Free Product Catalog Upload for adCenter Customers

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 14:12:57 GMT

From the adCenter blog:

"We're excited to announce a new (and free!) opportunity for adCenter customers to drive holiday sales through Live Search. We've partnered with our friends on the Live Product Search team to offer the first 200 adCenter customers access to this limited program to showcase their products on Live Product Search."

The Product Upload Portal allows Internet retailers to showcase their products to the users of Live Product Search.

Product Search blog

Windows Live Product Search

Windows Live Product Upload launches into beta

Chris — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 06:23:00 GMT

Over the weekend Windows Live Product Upload (codename Agora) has launched into beta at http://productupload.live.com. Designed to allow internet based retailers to add catalogs of their available products to the Live Product Search database, Product Upload guarantees their inclusion in the Live Search extension.

Access is limited to internet sellers who register with the site and they can do so at this link: Product Upload signup.

For more information on the service, read our services page on Windows Live Product Upload (hint: click the tags link at the bottom).

Uncovering Agora: Windows Live Product Upload

Harrison Hoffman — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 23:28:00 GMT

There has been a lot of speculation as to exactly what this mysterious new Windows Live Marketplace product, codenamed "Agora" is. Well, we have the scoop on how Windows Live aims to make the lives of online sellers a little easier. Windows...(read more)