Searching in Live Search is less than useful.

Question

Is there a way to get better results from MSDN Live Search?

For example, I typed in "VB.Net Keywords" (without the quotes) into the search box and got quite a large number of hits, but none of them on the first page (50 items) was what I was wanting, namely, a link to a list of VB.Net keywords.

The same search in Google yields the correct link in msdn as the very first item!! 

Now you can hem and haw and say that the word "VB.Net" is not on that page anywhere (it may not be and I didn't check), but Google had no trouble with it.

As it is, Live Search seems less than useful to me.

Chris

Answer 1

It seems to have got much worse recently maybe?

In the last few days, I've tried using it several times to search for specs/.NET information.  Every time I'm getting loads of hits in blogs and hints and tips and random garbage from the web, but not actually the relevant information in msdn itself.  If I wanted web hits I'd use a proper search engine.  I'm using the search box on msdn because I want the msdn information!

Hope it starts working again.  At the moment it's easier to search msdn using google then msdn...

Answer 2

This basically just happened (10 days ago) and it's a little quiet right now, but if you've heard of Krugle, you know how nice their platform it. Well, check out http://msdn.krugle.com/

Answer 3

Hi Chris, t e, and Justin - thanks for reporting the problem.  I investigated this and have an idea what's causing the problem: we restrict Live Search results to English-language pages when you're making an English-language search, to avoid showing N different versions of localized documentation.

Looks like synonym replacement (where search knows that VB means essentialy the same thing as Visual Basic) is turned off by Live Search when we restrict to english. 

For example, searching for VB Keywords alone returns the expected result as first result

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?mkt=en-us&q=VB+Keywords

 

But when I add language:en to the query, the relevance goes bad:

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?mkt=en-us&q=VB+Keywords+language%3aen

There may be an additional problem in that VB.net is not working as a synonym for "Visual Basic". I'm following up with our contacts in Live Search and will figure out a workaround on our end (we sit above the Live Search API) or a fix from Live.

In the meantime, try spelling out shorthand like VB into Visual Basic and dropping the ".net"-- you'll get the results you are looking for:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Search/en-us/?Query=visual%20basic%20keywords

In general, we're aware of the problem of MSDN Library results not showing up as high as expected in search results relative to blogs, forums, etc.  We're working with the Live Search team on a solution. 

Thanks again for reporting the problem-- it's specific feedback like this which helps us track down problems and make MSDN Search better!

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Justin Grant [MSDN and TechNet]

Answer 4

I don't think that is the problem.  Microsoft Search has always been a very poor search engine.  Now its littered with BLOG and FORUM posts.  Any idiot with a keyboard can create a blog or forum entry.  I *hate* having to try to weed through the extraneous garbage, trying to find information that I *know* is there.  I can enter the exact wording the the title of an article or web page and get everything NOT related to what I'm searching for. 

Answer 5

This was always a problem even before they added blogs and newsgroup/forum posts.

This was why (for my own usage) I added to my then (purely) FAQ site a list for "MS Articles" and another list for "Non-MS Articles" which contained just URLs and a short title for articles that I wanted to be able to find. (This was for SharePoint).

(The present split is into Articles (from wherever which what is a blog clearly marked) and Web-Casts (ditto)).

The point I'm making is that these days what is needed is *manual* action to cut down on the babble out there (which also applies to Microsoft articles because they include blurb (publicity) pieces on their customers ) and then a Search program (whichever) can be useful. In my case the links to those more informative posts can be found either on the site via a SharePoint search or via Google/MS Search etc.

It's almost as if we now have a need for an early Yahoo but for each different Microsoft set of products.

Answer 6

Hi Everyone - I've confirmed with Live Search that our use of language:en (whcih is applied automatically by our search results UI to limit results to English pages) prevents Live's synonym substitution (VB -> Visual Basic) from working.  Live Search turns off synonym substitution on any query using "advanced" operators like "langauge:en" -- presumably because users who know the advanced syntax are more likely to know *exactly* what they're searching for. This works OK for the live.com search UI, less well for our UI built on the Live Search API, where we add that language operator on every query without users even knowing it! 

Currently I'm working with Live Search to figure out how we can work around the limitation.

Thanks so much for the specific bug report... it really helps us catch problems like this.
 

Ira Davis said:

I don't think that is the problem.  Microsoft Search has always been a very poor search engine.  Now its littered with BLOG and FORUM posts.  Any idiot with a keyboard can create a blog or forum entry.   

Hi Ira - thanks for the feedback-- as I mentioned above, we're working on figuring out the best way to, by default, lower the priority of blog/forum results in MSDN search.  Longer-term, we're also working on an easier way to exclude blogs/forums completely if that's what you want.

BTW, if you're interested in limiting searches to just MSDN Library, click on the "Library Documentation and Articles" link below the search box on any search results, or underneath any Library result. This will generate new search results refined to only Library, excluding all other sources. If you want to *start* with a Library-only search, you can use this URL: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Search/en-US/?Refinement=117

Ira Davis said:

 I can enter the exact wording the the title of an article or web page and get everything NOT related to what I'm searching for. 

Can you give a specific example of this problem?  Like the VB case above, more often than not there's a specific bug we can track down and fix (or at least work around).  If you could reply with a few search-result URLs where you see this problem, I can investigate.  Thanks!

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Justin Grant [MSDN and TechNet]