Some of you may have noticed Google advertisements showing up in Live Search results today. We have identified and resolved the issue, and you should see these disappear over the next couple days. The issue stems from the way Live Search handles content disallowed by the Robots.txt file. We regularly check the robots.txt file of a site to ensure that we don't index and cache pages excluded by the webmaster. However, if we do find a link elsewhere on the web pointing to a page excluded by the robots.txt file, we may include the link and the anchor text in our index if we think it might be valuable to our users. Yesterday we accidently began including the links from the ads of Google AdSense customers...
Since the inception of the Live Search team a few years ago, we've been maniacally focused on one thing: relevance. We use the term relevance to mean that Live Search finds the answer to your question better than any other source - whether your question is best answered by a website, or a real-time traffic map . And with our recent Fall update our relevancy has improved dramatically - to the point where we think we've got the best product in some areas, and a highly competitive product in others. ( Try it out, I dare you : images , maps , mobile , web , 1-800-225-5411). One of the biggest challenges with relevancy is how to distinguish legitimate information from various forms of search spam...
If you're going to be attending either SES Chicago or Webmaster World Las Vegas , then stop by and check out one of the Live Search/ adCenter sessions, booths or exciting social events. I will be at the freezing cold (but intellectually stimulating) SES Chicago, while Jeremiah (PM Webmaster Tools) and Martina (Dev Manager Webmaster Tools) will be basking in the warm glow of the Las Vegas slot machines (aka, the one arm bandits). Search Engine Strategies Brad Goldberg, Orion Panel: Universal, Blended and Vertical Search Brian Boland, Are Paid Links Evil? Ziya Genceren, Online Maps: Plotting the Direction of Local Search James Colborn, Personalization, User Data & Search Christopher Plambeck...
