Live Search Adds Revenue Sharing

Web sites in the United States will be able to earn revenue by using the Live Search API to implement Live Search on their sites—for example, to deliver site-specific searches—and letting Microsoft sell advertisements to appear next to those results. Microsoft has also eliminated monthly query limits against the Live Search API, will make more types of search results available, and is giving developers more ways to call the API. Encouraging third-party sites to implement Live Search is one way in which Microsoft hopes to increase the number of advertisers and users, eventually resulting in higher advertising revenue for the company.

Silk Road

Microsoft first introduced an API to its search engine in late 2005, when Live Search was still known as MSN Search. The API allows third parties to use Microsoft’s search engine on their sites, and results can include not only search hits from the entire Web but also locally tailored results (e.g., business listings alongside a map highlighting their locations), images, news stories, and other types of results. However, Microsoft allowed sites to conduct only 25,000 queries per day against the API for free; beyond that, companies had to sign a commercial agreement with Microsoft.