Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has made its first big search change in a while: on its Live search service, it is adding vertical search tabs such as shopping, entertainment and health verticals and improving video search. Most of it is what other services offer already. It says it has also made improvement to the underlying search algorithms a well, for increased relevancy. It also said the index is now four times larger than before.

Interestingly, the video search is now powered by Microsoft’s in-house technology and not a third-party as before, reports News.com. Hovering over the still images brings up a short video preview. As part of a new entertainment vertical search, Microsoft has created rankings for celebrities, called xRank, which assigns a score to celebrities based on things like click-through rates and volume of queries on that name. Full list of changes are here.

To see how naive MSFT is in terms of how these improvements will help it catch up with Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), read this interview with Satya Nadella, corporate VP of search and advertising at Microsoft. Confusing, to say the least.