Powerset, the semantic search company some called a Google killer until Microsoft bought it Aug. 1, has now been partially integrated into the software giant's Live Search application.

The features include Freebase Answers, better captions for Wikipedia results (eh) and new related searches that leverage the Factz engine. They are all being tested on Live Search, which means they are being shown to a small percentage of users so that Microsoft and the Powerset team can decide what features will eventually roll into the finished product.

The first project was to expand the number of queries for which Live Search shows Freebase Answers. Also, topical queries, such as musicians, albums and films, will return a topic summary with links, similar to the Freebase Answers in Powerset. A minor improvement, yes, but the integration is clear. See FreeBase pic from Flickr here.

The second project leveraged Powerset's semantic technology—the crown jewel Microsoft valued the startup for—to generate improved captions for Wikipedia articles. This makes total sense; for me, Wikipedia searches regularly show up third, fourth or fifth in Google. Here is a more detailed caption.

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