Microsoft Live Search and Web Analytics

The recent launch of MSN Live Search sent shock-waves through the web analytics community. This wasn't because it's a significant step forward in Search - especially for Microsoft - as because the initial implementation failed to pass a referring site when a visitor clicked through. This is a fundamental piece of information for analysis - one that allows web analytic tools to understand that the visitor is coming from MSN Search and treat the data accordingly. For web analysts everywhere, it's one of those sudden, totally unexpected headaches that make lives miserable. I'm hoping that this will prove to be a tempest in a teapot and that Microsoft will quickly resolve the issue. So I'm not going to add my voice to that discussion. Instead, I'd just like to say I'm impressed with the direction Microsoft is going with the actual Search Engine. Way back at the beginning of the year I wrote a blog about how Search Engines lacked transparency in ratings (