This week we’re excited to launch a major update to Live Search that’s relevant, faster and easier to use.  Hundreds of us rolled up our sleeves and dug deep.  We pored over your feedback, analyzed the data and talked to thousands of users.  How major is this?  It’s our biggest update since our debut in January 2005.

Here are just some of the areas we focused on:

• Relevance, relevance, relevance.  We’ve quadrupled the size of our index, which means we can return the right results for your searches.  Improvements like enhanced ranking algorithms, auto-spell correction and better stop word handling help us return the best results. 
• Speed.  Pages load much faster than before.
• Streamlined look and feel.  We focused on the end-to-end experience from the homepage throughout the site.  For example, search results are now easier to read thanks to work on typography, contrast, colors and spacing.
• More high-interest content.  You asked us for more in Entertainment, Shopping, Health, Local and Video search and we’re happy to deliver it.

In the coming weeks we’ll blog in detail about the improvements that we’ve made.  You can also check out the press release that just hit the wire and the fact sheet for more information.

The end result is a service we believe is better across the board.  Enjoy!  We’re psyched to hear what you think.**

-The Live Search team

**The release is rolling out worldwide as we speak.  The links above should take you directly into the new experience if you’re not already seeing it on your own!