After noticing the search results Bing curious, then running a sting operation to deepen, Google found that Microsoft is copying Google’s search results as a search engine.
The ratio of Search Engine Land Danny Sullivan Tuesday, who has spoken to both companies on this issue and presented evidence of Google. According to the report, a mechanism could be the Suggested Sites feature of Internet Explorer and the toolbar for browsers Bing, both of which can collect data on what links people click on the conduct of research.
The story began with the team of Google to correct typographical errors in terms of research, which monitors its performance and its competitors closely. Typos corrected that could result in Google search results based on the correction, but the team noted Bing would also lead to these research findings to say that he had corrected the typo.
Then came the sting, the creation of a “honeypot” operation to catch the action. Google has created a “one-time code that would allow him to file a manual page for a certain period”, then wired these results for particular search terms such as very obscure “hiybbprqag” and “ndoswiftjobinproduction,” said Sullivan. With coding by hand, typing the search terms would produce Web pages recognizable in the Google results that would not show in search results differently.
Then, Google was the type used in the search terms in the house using Internet Explorer with the two sites suggested and the toolbar Bing is on, clicking on the initial results as they were. Before the experiment, or Bing or Google returned the results coded by hand, but two weeks later, Bing showed the results of Google, which had been coded by hand.
Microsoft did not say today whether it intends to continue the practice, but obviously it does not consider it “cheating”, as Google does.
In a commentary on ZDNet Asia sister site ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft stated unequivocally: “We do not copy the results of Google.” However, this refusal appears to be more a matter of interpretation.
A blog post by Harry Shum, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Bing, offered few details on what Microsoft has done. He acknowledged that users clicked links surveillance, but essentially it describes as leaving humans to help collect data by crowdsourcing.
We use more than 1000 different signals and characteristics of our ranking algorithm. A small piece of that is clickstream data that we receive from some of our customers who opt-in to share anonymous data when they surf the Web to help us to improve the experience for all users .
To be clear, we learn from all of our clients. What we saw in the story of today was once a spy-novel to generate extreme values in the tail of the query [query rare] ranking. It was a creative tactics by a competitor, and we’ll take it as a compliment equivocal. But this is not an accurate way we use data opt-in customers as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience.
The history of the Internet and improving a wide range of consumer and business experience is really the history of collective intelligence, sharing of documents to HTML links to click and the data- beyond. Many companies across the Internet using the collective intelligence to make their products better every day.
Google said it is not happy.
“I have no problem with a competitor to develop an innovative algorithm. But copying is not innovation, in my book, “Sullivan cites Google and Research Fellow expert Amit Singhal as saying.” It’s cheating to me because we work incredibly hard and have done for years, but they are just there the foundation of our hard work … Another analogy is that it’s like running a marathon and achieving someone else on the back, jumping just before the finish line. “
And in a statement to ZDNet Asia sister site CNET News, Singhal said that Google does not agree with the position of Microsoft, speaking also flatly denied that Microsoft copying:
Our tests found that Bing is a copy of Google Web search results.
At Google, we believe in innovation and we are proud of our quality of research. We look forward to compete with search algorithms truly new there, from Bing and other – algorithms built on innovation base and not on search results recycled copied from a competitor.
Google did not respond to questions about whether it intends CNET all actions beyond awareness of the honeypot.
Google has its concerns to Sullivan shortly before an event Bing search today. Coincidence or not, Google has moved agenda that event significantly. Indeed, the research question-copy become the center of a debate between Microsoft and Google representatives at the conference.
Stefan Weitz, director of Microsoft’s search engine Bing, shared this response with Sullivan: ‘Opt-in programs like the toolbar [Google] help us with the clickstream data [information that shows that Microsoft links people click on], one of the input signals that we and many other search engines use to help rank sites. This “experience of Google seems to be a hack to confuse and manipulate some of these signals.”
Hack, experience, or honey pot, it is very revealing. Google has created about 100 such hand-coded results, Sullivan said, so it’s hard to imagine the act skew search results significantly. The next question the relevance will be whether Microsoft concluded that it is time to update its own search algorithm to a search for Bing “hiybbprqag” will not lead to information Wiltern Theatre tickets to the most.