Windows Live review — Live kills your SEO keywords tracking!
update: Microsoft has recently revamped its Windows Live search to use much less AJAX and behave more like a traditional web search application. Kudos for Microsoft — they have bypassed much of what I’m am complaining about!
If you follow tech news, you have probably already heard that Microsoft has recently made available the beta version of its new search engine, Windows Live. Microsoft has tried to generate a lot of hype for this, going so far as to say that they will beat Google at their own game. Well, that’s a tall order. Google means more than just accurate results. When I first started using Google over Yahoo! and Altavista, it wasn’t because I thought the results were more accurate. It was because Google had a clean, open, spartan, quick-loading interface that didn’t get in the way. It wasn’t a portal. It was just a search engine. Later, Google also gained recognition as a leading developer of AJAX-based online applications, like Google Maps and GMail. These, too, utilized simple, clean, and responsive interfaces.
So, without considering the accuracy of search results, how does Microsoft’s newest offering compare to the Google way of life?
Windows Live: The Swiss Army Brick
The new Windows Live interface has none of Google’s openness — without effort on your part, at least. In typical Microsoft style it is trying to be everything to everybody. Until you’ve gone to the trouble of paring the interface down to size, Windows Live is like a swiss army knife that is stuffed with so many tools, it defeats its own usefullness. After opening tool after tool, trying to find the right one, it turns out that the device is so unweildy the tool can’t be used properly anyway. I like to think of myself as very tech adept, but I still had problems using the interface. On my very first visit to Windows Live, after attempting to absorb the colossus in front of me, I even had difficultly figuring out where to enter my search term. Of course, I felt dumb later when I noticed an info popup box giving me instructions on where to type. But face the facts, Microsoft, if your interface is so busy that you have to have an info box to teach users how to search with your search engine, you’re missing the point.
AJAX gone bad
Microsoft has definately caught the AJAX bug, but unfortunately they must have been vaccinated against the more important Web 2.0 ideal: creating a simple, efficient, responsive, easy to use, and polished interface. Microsoft could learn a lot from 37signals. Instead, they seem to have added gadgets, doodads, and gizmos just for the sake of showing off. Popup info boxes, scrollbars, scroll arrows, expanding boxes, and moveable panels litter the page. Fortunately, these can all be hidden, with the interface settings either saved in a cookie or through a login. Unfortunately, if you don’t have an account and that cookie is ever deleted, it takes approximately five clicks to re-minimalize your interface.
Search Results, Picasa-style
The really unique aspect of the search results is the elimination of pages. All of the search results are available in the same scrolling area. I haven’t looked at the code behind this, but I’m sure it’s the same principle as dragging through a map at Google Maps, where information is loaded only when it becomes necessary. The elimination of results pages is an interesting concept, and I can see how some people might like it. Moving through the results requires a Picasa-style scrollbar. The scrollbar thumb (the part that you drag) is anchored to the middle of the bar. The further up or down the bar you drag the thumb, the faster the results scroll in the corresponding direction. When you let go, it snaps back to the middle position where the results are stationary. I can appreciate the need for such a scrollbar to move through millions of items, but it is fairly unintuitive even if you’re good with tech. Many people just won’t get it. The only time that I’ve seen something like this, outside of Picasa, is the shuttle/jog dials found on good VCRs.
Death to SEO keyword tracking
This is the #1 problem with the new Windows Live search. This absolutely has to be fixed, or Windows Live will suffer the wrath of tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of web developers, website owners, and advertising specialists.
Keyword tracking analysis is one of the foundations of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Using your server’s log files, it is possible to determine not only if users have reached your website from a search engine (by looking at the referer url), but also what keywords they were searching for at the time. This is possible because the url of search results pages includes the search phrase in the query string, like this (search phrase section in bold):
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&<b>q=birnam+designs</b>
Windows Live results pages, on the other hand, look like this:
http://www.live.com/#<b>q=birnam%20designs</b>&offset=1
The difference is the use of the octothorpe (#, aka hash mark) instead of the question mark. This means that the search phrase is included as a fragment string not a query term. Fragment strings are used by browsers to refer to anchors in the page that can be jumped to after the page is loaded. The problem is this: web browsers do not include fragments in the referer url when requesting a new page, so the search phrase in a Windows Live referer url is not saved to the server logs, and webmasters and log analysis tools are unable to determine how a user has found their website. If this isn’t removed before Windows Live is widely used, this will cripple the effectiveness of SEO keyword analysis for everyone.
The only way around this is to reduce the amount of AJAX used on Windows Live. Microsoft was apparently so intent on saying, “Hey lookie, we can use AJAX, too!” that they never stopped to think that maybe there are times AJAX shouldn’t be used. If Microsoft would simply reload the page after every search, instead of trying to do everything internally, they could use query strings instead of fragment strings and eliminate the entire problem.
If you would like to read another take, check out ArsTechnica’s review of Windows Live.