It’s no surprise to anyone who uses the Web that shopping is one of the leading online activities.  Many people use the Internet to research their next purchase or buy products online.   We’re here to help you find the product information you care about and make informed decisions. We’ve recently launched a richer experience when searching for products—from broad categories such as digital cameras to specific products such as Nikon d40.

Product Category Searches
For category searches we now show you popular products within that category.  The average rating and sales price are shown below the product image with an option to browse more products on MSN Shopping.  You can also research products you are interested in by reading the collection of user reviews and viewing a summary of the overall opinion that users have about that product.  We’ve indexed millions of products and user reviews through a combination of crawling Web sites and obtaining feeds from partner sites.

Computers and electronics are the most popular categories for product research online and this is where we put a lot of focus for this release.  But—because we know people look for other products (like Gucci bags) and not just Lcd tvs or Mp3 players—we will continue to increase our selection and depth for more categories in the future.

Searches to try: Digital cameras, Camcorders, Nikon digital cameras, Wireless headphones, Bulova watches, Gucci bags, Motorola cell phones

Specific Product Searches
Searches for specific products—such as Nikon d40—now show a quick summary of the product, including a graphical summary of user opinions (called “User reviews at a glance”).  Keep an eye out for a more detailed post on this brand new feature soon.

The team is continuously working on ensuring that product name variations trigger the relevant product results.  For example, as of this posting “Canon Rebel XT” doesn’t trigger a product, but Canon Rebel XTi does.

Searches to try: Nikon d40, Canon Rebel xti, Microsoft Zune, Palm Treo 650, Sony Ericsson k750i, Canon eos 5d, AT&T 8525, Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T100

Clicking on a product with ratings takes you to a detailed product summary page.  This page enables you to visually explore user opinions on various aspects of the product (quality, ease of use, etc) and filter them by both positive and negative opinions.

We look forward to your feedback to help us improve product results within Live Search.  We hope you enjoy using the new features we’ve recently rolled out!