The real reason behind the Google Bing controversy
Bing is caught copying Google search results. Or maybe it isn’t?
One of the really interesting developments in the search engine space last year, was the rise of Bing (NSDQ:MSFT) as a worthy competitor toGoogle (NSDQ:GOOG). This is important, as search engine innovation is dependent on there being some kind of well funded and capable alternative to Google.
Bing as the only real threat to Google
Yahoo! has abandoned their search engine technology, putting an end to a developmental trajectory started with search engines like AlltheWeb, Inktomi and AltaVista. Ask is deserting their Teoma based search engine. This means that there is only one major player apart from Google in this field: Microsoft with its Bing search engine.
It may come as a surprise that is the last century juggernaut Microsoft that is able to provide real competition to the rising star of the 21st century, but who are we to complain? This week’s fight between Bing and Google proves that Google now sees Bing as a real threat.
Google gets bad press on search quality
One of the reasons Google reacts so strongly, is probably also because Google has gotten a lot of flack recently for delivering lower quality search results. Whether this is really the case or not is debatable, but it is clear that they are involved in a never-ending war with search engine result spammers.
So is Bing, but this is a PR war, and in such conflicts appearances are as important as facts. If the impression that Google is lagging behind search engine quality wise becomes ubiquitous, searchers may soon start moving over to Bing. After all, this is how Google beat AltaVista, the previous search engine darling.
Because of this it makes sense to attack Bing and say that the only reason their search engine results seem to be good, is because they are stealing them from Google.
Google finds Bing cheating
The Google Blog tells the story of how Google came to suspect Bing of cheating:
“It all started with tarsorrhaphy. Really. As it happens, tarsorrhaphy is a rare surgical procedure on eyelids. And in the summer of 2010, we were looking at the search results for an unusual misspelled query [torsorophy]. Google returned the correct spelling—tarsorrhaphy—along with results for the corrected query. At that time, Bing had no results for the misspelling. Later in the summer, Bing started returning our first result to their users without offering the spell correction… This was very strange. How could they return our first result to their users without the correct spelling? Had they known the correct spelling, they could have returned several more relevant results for the corrected query.”
Over the next few months Google noticed that URLs from Google search results would later appear in Bing with increasing frequency for all kinds of queries: popular queries, rare or unusual queries and misspelled queries.
Google adds. “Even search results that we would consider mistakes of our algorithms started showing up on Bing.”
The honeypot
Google then set up a trap. They created 100 fake or “synthetic” queries: nonsense search terms that noone would dream of searching for.
Google explains:
“To be clear, the synthetic query had no relationship with the inserted result we chose—the query didn’t appear on the webpage, and there were no links to the webpage with that query phrase… We gave 20 of our engineers laptops with a fresh install of Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer 8 with Bing Toolbar installed. As part of the install process, we opted in to the ‘Suggested Sites’ feature of IE8, and we accepted the default options for the Bing Toolbar.”
And yes, some of the relevant (or rather irrelevant) search results appeared in Bing.
According to Google this experiment confirms their suspicion that Bing is using some combination of Internet Explorer 8 (which can send data to Microsoft via its Suggested Sites feature) and
the Bing Toolbar (which can send data via Microsoft’s Customer Experience Improvement Program) to steal Google results.
These tools send data to Bing on what people search for on Google and the Google search results they click on. These results from Google are then more likely to show up on Bing.
Google again: “Put another way, some Bing results increasingly look like an incomplete, stale version of Google results—a cheap imitation.”
Ouch!
But is this really copying?
There is one problem with all of this, however. If Google is correct, what they have discovered is not really Bing copying Google data directly, but them using toolbar and related data to identify web pages of relevance to their users.
If the Google staff is using Microsoft tools to search for meaningless search terms that no one else is searching for, it should come as no surprise that Bing lists these searches as the only one relevant for this particular fake query. After all it is Google, presenting as a Bing user, who has told them so.
The Bing counter-attack
This is the point made by Yusuf Mehdi of the Bing team:
“We do look at anonymous click stream data as one of more than a thousand inputs into our ranking algorithm. We learn from our customers as they traverse the web, a common practice in helping to improve a wide array of online services. We have been clear about this for a couple of years…”
Bing argues that Google has engaged in a honeypot attack to trick Bing:
“In simple terms, Google’s ‘experiment’ was rigged to manipulate Bing search results through a type of attack also known as ‘click fraud.’ That’s right, the same type of attack employed by spammers on the web to trick consumers and produce bogus search results. What does all this cloak and dagger click fraud prove? Nothing anyone in the industry doesn’t already know.
“As we have said before and again in this post, we use click stream optionally provided by consumers in an anonymous fashion as one of 1,000 signals to try and determine whether a site might make sense to be in our index.”
This click stream is not limited to Google searches. Bing will track all your web activity if you have such Bing tools and features installed or turned on. Where people go after they have done a search using a search engine, an online store or a similar site is also tracked, and can be used as input in the search engine algorithm of Bing. If a page get a lot of visits of this kind, that can give it a boost in Bing rankings.
Since the only ones having clicked on links relevant to the fake search terms of Google is Google itself, it should not come as a surprise that these pages rank high. Note that in most searches there is a significant difference between Bing and Google results.
In other words: It seems Google is making a lot of fuzz about nothing, trying to make Bing look like a fool in the process.
Google argues that it is not using data from their own Google Toolbar in this way, but we are pretty sure they have been thinking about it.
Is Google cheating?
Does this mean that the folks at Google are deliberately trying to humiliate Bing without just cause?
Probably not. The Googlers have probably thought that this is really proof of Bing cheating. And the reason they have reacted in this way, is most likely the fact that they seem to be losing the search quality reputation war. Accusing Bing of copying Google to achieve quality parity was just too tempting.
To copy or not to copy
Moreover, Google sticks to its guns, as it all boils down to how you interpret the word “copy”.
As far as we can see, Bing has not copied search results from Google. They have used their toolbar users surfing habit to map Google usage however, and those data are used as input in their algorithm.
Is that copying? Google says so. Bing says no. Given that Google’s business model is based on using link and user data provided by others, it sound slightly off key to complain to Bing about doing the same.
These sites has more about the controversy:
Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results.
The Danny Sullivan article that started it all.
Bing: Why Google’s Wrong In Its Accusations
Danny Sullivan over at SE Land, rereflecting on the story he started.
Turning The Tables On The Google Toolbar & Disclosure Claims.
Danny Sullivan on Google’s use of toolbar data.
Microsoft’s Bing uses Google search results—and denies it
Google Blog.
Bing: Why Google’s Wrong In Its Accusations
SE Land.
Is Google’s Copying Complaint Fair or Hypocritical?
Inside Google
Hiybbprqagate: Google, Bing, and the Burning Building
Search Engine Watch.
Google, Bing and Facebook: The Tale Of Clickstreams
SE Watch: But what happens if Facebook were to integrate Bing in to their site?
Google Doesn’t Use Toolbar Data To Index New URLs
SE Roundtable: There has always been rumors that Google used the data they get from the Google Toolbar to discover new content, outside of the normal crawling or sitemaps method. But those rumors have been debunked several times in our history.
Bing/Google: The Battle at Bigthink.com recapped
Liveside.
Google Holds Its Breath and Bing Stamps Its Feet and the World Yawns
Marketing Pilgrim
My thoughts on this week’s debate
Matt Cutts of Google.
