Microsoft just announced the official U.S. launch of their new home page. The home page was seen in test mode a few months back, but now it is officially live.

The home page contains a background image which contains “hotspots” used to show off some of the search queries available at Live Search. The home page background images are suppose to change over time and thus generate different query “hotspots” for the end users to play with.

Here is a picture of the new home page, as I see it now:

If you look when the page loads, you will see hotspots fade in and out. If you hover your mouse over the page, you will notice that those hotspots will activate and show you a query. Here is one example of a hotspot on the Live Search home page:

This specific result took me to a Live Video Search query for animals in Bostwana. But other hotspots show off web search, map search, and so on.

This looks like another way for Microsoft to generate more search queries, e.g., come play the Live Search home page scavenger hunt, if you will.

Related Topics: Microsoft: Bing

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz