Google has accused Microsoft Bing of recycling search results from Google searches using click tracking assisted by a combination of Microsoft Internet Explorer and the Bing Toolbar.
In a sting operation detailed on the official Google blog, Google created fake search results to see whether they migrated from Google to Bing and they did. Microsoft denies that Bing has stolen anything but Google is firm in its belief and followed up its first post with another set of screenshots…
Google concludes: “…all the users out there looking for the most authentic, relevant search results, we encourage you to come directly to Google. And to those who have asked what we want out of all this, the answer is simple: we’d like for this practice to stop.”
Microsoft meanwhile told ZDNet: ““We do not copy Google’s results.” It went on to explain its perspective in a more detailed way in a blog post on the official Bing blog. After explaining that it uses many “signals” to refine its search results it says:
“To be clear, we learn from all of our customers. What we saw in today’s story was a spy-novelesque stunt to generate extreme outliers in tail query ranking. It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we’ll take it as a back-handed compliment. But it doesn’t accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience.”
Microsoft also made a point of commenting that the original article which revealed Google’s suspicions (a story on Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Land) was “interestingly timed”. It appeared just before Bing and Google reps shared a stage at the Farsight Summit. Microsoft clearly believes Google was out to publicly embarrass it. But did it succeed? And should it have bothered? Hit the comments and give us your view.
