Bing: Why Google’s Wrong In Its Accusations

Given that Bing clearly uses the clickstream to influence its results pages, at what point to SEO folks run farms of machines in a network which resolve 'google.com' to a process that returns a fixed set of results for a given query?<p>Imagine this scenario, I create 10,000 VM instances of windows running IE8 with the Bing toolbar. I create a local host to 'stand in' for Google such that it emulates the actual Google site (one could even used scraped Google content) and for my 'target' query it returns my spammy results, and then my VM machine clicks on one of the spammy links.<p>It seems that Google's sting worked because their queries had small return rates, but with some resources it would seem a viable way to inject SEO love right into the bloodstream of Bing's ranking algorithm. As I see it, a whole new front just opened up for spammers.<p>--Chuck

Very clear writeup. I thought this was an excellent point:<p>"PR is not leading this dispute. It’s following behind. This dispute is happening because real engineers at Google felt there was a deep injustice going on — as reflected in the quote from Google’s Amit Singhal in my original article. I’ve known Singhal for years. I’ve never seen him speak like this before. It’s not because Google PR told him to. It’s because he’s fundamentally bothered by what he’s seen — as are members of his team.<p>This dispute is also happening because real engineers at Bing feel there’s a deep injustice going on — as reflected in the quote from Harry Shum above. Bing’s worked incredibly hard to build a search engine that’s worthy of respect. Now here’s Google suggesting that Bing has simply cheated its way to relevancy."<p>The conversation with moultano on a thread a couple days ago was a good example of this. <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2177354" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2177354</a>

From this article:<p>"We’re not going to stop using that signal, unless it messes up relevancy. It doesn’t make sense to exclude that large amount of traffic from our usage set," Weitz said.<p>From the TechCrunch article a few days back [1]:<p>"Google had employees log onto ms customer feedback system and send results to Microsoft."<p>(to which Matt Cutts replied: normal people call that "IE8")<p>Unlike many others, I do not think this is a cut-and-dry issue, but the squirrelly responses from the MS folks on this have really made me think they are just up to no good, true to the form of so much of their corporate history. Arguing with vague technical terms and ad-hominem attacks are not a good way to convince a highly technical crowd of your virtues.<p>[1] <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/01/bing-google-fight/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/01/bing-google-fight/</a>

I would wager most of the people commenting don't work in search and how to use datamining to improve search. I think it is useful to see the perspective of someone that actually thinks long and hard about building these types of systems before commenting on whether it is fair or innovative or just plain stealing. <a href="http://hunch.net/?p=1660" rel="nofollow">http://hunch.net/?p=1660</a>

So Microsoft's defense is that they are not copying Google in particular -- they are copying <i>every</i> search engine?

So it somehow eluded them that most of the searches done anywhere are done on Google? I don't buy it. If you have a "search signal" it's going to be effectively a "Google signal," and they aren't being honest if they contend otherwise.

I worked on the Bing AI team (pre-launch), they didn't copy Google. If anything, both search engines copy wikipedia. I believe that this was the click-stream research done by an intern researcher from UBC.

I think there is a DEEP flaw in this argument:<p>"Here’s another one. This time, it’s a misspelling of “bombilate,” a rare word I cited above. I searched for “bombilete,” instead.."<p>In essence, they say that Google only pointed to the typo, but Bing redirected to it. Thus, "it’s very unlikely it figured this out from Google". For me, making that argument is insulting to the readers intelligence.

Round and round the speculation wheel goes! Where it stops, no one knows!

Using what people click on from search results from competing search engines sounds like copying the competition to me.<p>It sounds like they automated the process of piggy backing off the work of other search engines, not just Google.<p>They should exclude all competing search engines from this process.

From the article (about spell correction):<p>&#62; Well, above is the same situation where Bing gets a misspelled word right — a link to a definition of the correctly spelled word at the top of the list. But it’s very unlikely it figured this out from Google, given that for the misspelling, Google doesn’t auto-correct the word nor provide the same answer.<p>Perhaps because people first click on the spell correction and then on the result - so maybe they don't yet copy also the spell correction, only the results. I think this is even stronger that they copy the results, not weaker.

Doesn't this passage suggest that Google ignores robots.txt in its own cross-comparisons of search relevancy:<p><i>Google said in October that it found statistical evidence that Bing suddenly became more Google-like. More listings in the first page of results of both search engines seemed to match, as did more of the number one results.</i><p>How would you get statistically significant results for such things, over time, without constant automated probe queries against Bing?<p>I think such probes are both legal and wise... but Google should drop the pretense that robots.txt is a sacred barrier across which no analysis can be done, no matter how indirect or for what purpose.<p>Also, I'd wager at some time in its history – if not constantly even today – Google has shown panels of users results from Google and its competitors in various combinations – side-by-side, with and without branding, intermixed randomly – and used their reactions to detect areas where the competitors are doing well, and Google could improve.<p>Further, either human eyes or algorithms then tried to determine adjustments to close any gaps in user satisfaction. The net effect of any such process is – surprise, surprise! – leveraging strengths of <i>other</i> engines to patch weaknesses in Google. This is normal, expected behavior by any serious search competitor.

I found this very strange... Did Bing increase clickstream data usage in their algorithm when Google saw Bing results get more Google-like in October of 2010 or not?<p><i>Shrum:</i><p><pre><code> Not so, Bing told me. In October, Bing says it rolled out a new ranking algorithm plus a new experimental system called “Aether” that allows them to test changes in their ranking methodology. That’s what caused the bump that Google saw, not some sudden use of the surfstream, Bing said. </code></pre> <i>Web (during October 2010):</i><p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Bing+new+ranking+algorithm&#38;&#38;tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:10/1/2010,cd_max:10/31/2010" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=Bing+new+ranking+algorithm&#3...</a>

Good article (a surprisingly heartfelt article -- odd for a tech blog). Key paragraphs: <i>Bing says it does NOT do this. It says there is no Google specific search signal that it being used, no list of all the popular pages as selected just by Google users. Instead, it has a 'search signal' based on searching activity observed across a range of sites.<p>For example, if you did a search on Amazon, Bing might detect that. A search on eBay might get spotted. A search on Yahoo, that also might get extracted. Any number of searches might be identified. Bing would associate the next page you went to after doing those searches as being a possible 'answer' to those searches.</i>

It is known to all that both use user data in whatever way possible.But what bing seem to be doing it is use it on users searching on google (through IE etc. or maybe even windows) and find the more relevant ones.Did you guys notice Harry Shum mentioning about "cost cutting" in the video where Matt, he and the blekko CEO discuss on this issue.<p>So, it looks like bing is indirectly using google's data by incurring lesser cost and this is how they seem do it.Spy on google searchers and build the right database. instead of spending on innovation and new ways on the algorithm. Let google do that part while we piggy back on their good ones.<p>This is what has really irritated google.

Remember when the polarizing search battle was between Google and Yahoo? ...yeah neither do I.<p>These battles do nothing more than establish the two dominate players.