Adotas

Where media buyers start online





News

Google Tattles on Bing Copying Its Search Results

Written on
Feb 1, 2011 
Author
Gavin Dunaway  |
Share
Google Tattles on Bing Copying Its Search Results

angry_small.jpgADOTAS – Nothing quite gets my Tuesday going than a major search engine controversy. An epic report from Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan illuminates why Google is calling foul on Microsoft’s Bing search engine for copying its search results. Google first got suspicious last year when Bing returned similar results on queries with typos, especially on uncommon words (think unusual medical terms).

After a few more red flags, those wily Google engineers ran a complex sting operation that’s best explained by this graph:

What do you know — within a matter of days Bing served up the same top results for weird terms such as “hiybbprqag” and “indoswiftjobinproduction.” Thus, Google accused Microsoft of using its Suggested Sites feature within Internet Explorer as well as the Bing Toolbar for browsers to collect information about Google searches and input it into Bing’s algorithm.

Google’s outrage is palatable — “Cheaters! Cheaters!” the search team screams. And Bing is… Not sorry? Not even denying it? Not even sheepish?

Stefan Weitz, the director of Bing, wrote in an email to Sullivan: “Opt-in programs like the [Bing] toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites. This ‘Google experiment’ seems like a hack to confuse and manipulate some of these signals.”

Sullivan points out there doesn’t seem to be anything illegal in Microsoft mining Google search data to inform Bing sources. The engines’ top results and searches are still very different. Google search results are simply another data input for Bing’s algorithm — kinda clever really. Microsoft doesn’t seem to be copying, just taking advantage of another data stream.

However, is this unethical behavior in the realm of search engines? And if so, does anyone care? Because if Bing is “copying” Google’s results, the nascent search engine’s results are going to be just as full of SEO-gamed garbage. If it wasn’t to distinguish itself in the search realm, Bing really should be focusing on integrating social data from good buddy Facebook.





Reader Comments.

“Because if Bing is ‘copying’ Google’s results, the nascent search engine’s results are going to be just as full of SEO-gamed garbage.” File that in the ‘funny cuz it’s true’ folder. Why WOULDN’T Microsoft use data collected from various IE plugins and toolbars? If you’re trying to perfect a multi-factor algorithm, that’s what you do: you add and test factors and data feeds to see what adds value.

Posted by Myles Younger | 4:17 pm on February 1, 2011.

I find it hard to accept. This may be true of nonsense words no one uses, but Bing seems to be doing its own thing for the stuff humans search for. My reason for this is that Bing’s results are, much to my disappointment, terrible, and so lacking in logic or consistency I can’t use Bing even when I want to. If Bing wants to copy Google results, I vote YES! It would make Bing useable…

Posted by Brandt Dainow | 4:52 pm on February 1, 2011.

Way to go Microsoft!

Posted by George Hummel | 8:18 pm on February 1, 2011.

Leave a Comment

Add a comment

Tags: , and
Article Sponsor

More News


  • Once Facebook goes public, what's the most important thing it'll need to do in order to live up the expectations of its real value?

    View Results

    Loading ... Loading ...

Latest News

News Archive

Spotlight

Sponsormob Leads the Way Into RTB for MobileADOTAS – For more than half a decade, Berlin-based tech firm Sponsormob has remained relevant in an industry characterized by [...] more...

Adotas Partnership