Hi Flow,
Our products are mostly high quality brand name stuff. When I installed Live Search addon and search for just manufacturer name, it showed me list of products ordered by popularity or something that is one dimensional. When I do the same search from Searchanise, I get recommended searches along with manufacturer page, suggested keywords and list of products.
If I search for a general term like "camera", Live Search returns set of products that do not change if I add something before or after. When I do the same search with Searchanise, I get more versatile results.
Imagine, you are making a search in your Mysql database with
like '%xxx%' and
order by statements versus Google search. The main difference, the first one is limited with search dimensions and can not give you extra results unless it is fully developed with other functions. Search engine tries to recognize your search and associate that with relevant results. That is the difference between "Live Search" and "Searchanise".
One comes with $25 price tag and the other is number of products / month, in my case I'm paying $18 / month. Searchanise is unique in its niche so they are not apple to apple comparison. IMO, Searchanise is a terrible english name, always have hard time writing it

Searchanise is more in the category with
http://www.sli-systems.com/ and other professional site search providers category.
Hope this helps.