By Jacqui Cheng
August 20, 2008 - 12:30PM CT

Microsoft believes that focusing on search intent will help it pull ahead in the race of the search engines, or at least give it a little boost. The company discussed some of its ideas for improving Live Search during a panel at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose this week, and revealed that it has been looking at user behavior to see how it can better tune its search engine to people's individual needs.

Microsoft's senior VP of search Satya Nadella said that a full half of search queries performed on Live Search are part of an average 30-minute searching session. Apparently, Microsoft's users are spending quite a bit of time researching information online, and aren't using the search site to just perform quick lookups. Nadella said that by taking a closer look at people's search patterns over the period of time they're using the site, Microsoft could refine its results to better serve that specific user.

"I believe this notion of understanding user intent—being able to analyze (search queries) and come up with search patterns and use them to shape the search experience—is one of the most important areas for us," Nadella said, according to CNet. Microsoft's plans seem to go hand-in-hand with its acquisition of PowerSet last month.

The natural language search company appealed to Microsoft because the two seemed to share the same vision of gaining further understanding of the intent behind users' search terms. In absorbing Powerset, Microsoft plans to transform its search from the typical user experience of getting back pages of results based on keywords to something that clearly shows a more tailored approach.