Two new capabilities added to Live Search web results pages. Useful and also cool.

1) Enter a search like:
+ traffic New York City
or
+ commute San Diego

and at the top of the web results page you’ll find a draggable map with real time traffic info. Of course, this feature is only available for selected metro area.

Nice work!

2) While a couple of the major engines have offered links to maps at the top of the results page for some time (examples 1 ||| 2), Microsoft Live will do its best to automatically determine your location and present a local map without having to enter a specific locale. Looks like a bit of packet sniffing going on here.
Note #1: If you have entered a specific location in the “location box” on the preferences page, Live.com appears to default to this location. When we cleared a set location, the IP sniffing worked well.

Note #2: On our computer where Microsoft’s Location Finder is loaded and working, our search for map did not offer an even more specific location. We will continue to check on this.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 8th, 2007 and is filed under Geographic, Real-Time Information, Search News, Technology and Internet, Web Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.