Understanding Intentions and Microsoft Search Personalization by Bill Slawski, SEO by the Sea (Mar 6)
Kumo - means spider or cloud in Japanese - and is the code name for a new version of Live Search. Let's hope that Microsoft is going for cloud - the spider theme is tired.
Bill Slawski has studied a patent filing that points to Microsoft's intent in understanding the searcher's intent.
"The basic premise is that when two different people are searching for the same query term, chances are that the answers that they are trying to find or the sites that they might want to see are different, and that a search engine might be able to help each of those searchers find what they are looking for based upon past experience, and past searches and search result selections."
The search engine will need to get to know you to do this - cookies, and history of search queries (words used) and results clicks (what did you look at).
The nugget: "If you tend to search using the same or a substantially similar query term or phrase, and tend to select the same page or pages in response to that search, don’t be surprised if at some point it might be highlighted or bolded or placed at the top of the search results in the future."
[Google does this today in its personalized search.]
Bottom Line: "The question though is, whether past searches are a good indication of intent for searches in the future? Sometimes the statement “It’s cold in here,” isn’t an invitation to a hug, but rather a request to turn up the thermostat. "
Also - First screenshot of Microsoft's Kumo by Ina Fried, CNet News (Mar 2)
Has the text of an internal Microsoft memo - "Announcement: Internal Search Test Experience " - and a screenshot of Kumo that shows: topical groupings (one word), related searches, your history; and it's in the universal style with mix of web, images, videos. Looks like there is some organization of results perhaps along the idea of what Kosmix does - to create a package.
Posted by Gwen at March 7, 2009 03:20 PM