Windows Live Search- Why does it not find my WordPress hosted blog to be relevant?

12/13/2007 Update- Since my original writing Live Search seems to be much more effective at picking up this site. Probably a coincidence, but still good to see.

I recently did a search on Windows Live Search to find some old content on my blog. Much to my chagrin, my WordPress blog is no longer ranked on Live Search as it is on Google. My first thought was that my blog was no longer being indexed, but further investigation revealed that my site just doesn’t “rate” according to Live Search. I don’t really understand what is behind this change but it disappoints me. I truly believe that my blog should be considered to be relevant (particularly on queries for my name) and should be easily discoverable to people searching for content that I have created. Again, I might not be an authority on a lot of topics but I’m quite sure that I’m the most active Randy Holloway on the web.

Here are some queries that I used to compare Live Search and Google:

Keywords: randy holloway unfiltered- Live Search, Google

Keywords: randy holloway blog- Live Search, Google

Search query: “randy holloway” site:randyh.wordpress.com- Live Search, Google

If this were a general issue about blogs I wouldn’t be as concerned but my MSDN hosted blog ranks very well (even though it is inactive) while my WordPress blog which is much more active barely rates/ranks anymore. Just to demonstrate that this is a general issue with WordPress blogs, I picked a random blog from www.wordpress.com (Life of Ando) and did the following queries:

Keywords: life of ando- Live Search, Google 

If there is a really obvious reason why Live Search doesn’t consider my WordPress blog to be relevant please smack me on the head and tell me so. Until then, I guess I’ll just gripe about my lack of relevance according to Windows Live Search.

Covering Microsoft Search Server for Wrox Blox

After resting a bit following our SharePoint and Office 2007 book I’m happy to say that Wrox is having me back to do a Wrox Blox on Microsoft Search Server. This will be targeted at developers and will focus on some of the key differences between Search Server Express and the full version that impact development and deployment scenarios. It should be out early next year some time before the product ships and will be a quick and easy way for people to ramp up on Microsoft’s newest server product.

New blog theme

Felt like time for a new blog theme. Summertime picture of Gavin featured in the header. Peace.

Black Friday- Where are all the deals?

I know we still have a couple of days, but I haven’t seen too many “Black Friday” deals announced yet. The most recent report that I saw on Best Buy indicates that there will be a $229 laptop, which is a deal of course, but other than that nothing really seems compelling. A 40″ TV for $1199 seems pretty close to the going price and none of the other reported Best Buy deals struck me as “axxesome”.

For those that are watching Black Friday deals Gizmodo has a site. TechBargains has a roundup as well. Happy shopping. 

Congrats Hanselmans!

Congratulations to the Hanselmans on their new addition named Thabo. Total time from arrival to delivery was 43 minutes. Wow!