3 ms·

> parsing the query out of the url Or parsing any words found in the URL. Not unreasonable to believe.

by user24 16y ago

moultano 16y ago
If that were the explanation, I would think they would come out and say it. (Maybe they will shortly.) Even so, I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't notice that most of the benefit of the technique comes from recreating google results, at which point we're back at the original ethical question of whether that's ok.
- dunham 16y ago
  most of the benefit of the technique comes from recreating google results I'm not 100% sure this is the case. Consider that an user wants a chicken enchilada recipe. 1. They go to a site that they trust for high quality data. (I like food&wine, saveur, epicurious, rick bayless for mexican, ...) 2. They search for "chicken enchilada" 3. They select the most appealing result (not necessarily the first one), based on author, snippet, rating, photo, etc. Domain knowledge. If you can associate (via the referrer) "chicken enchilada" with that page, you've encapsulated a lot of information - manual selection of site, manual selection of a page within that site. It's potentially useful (especially for long tail - people who have to go directly to sites because search engines fail them). Is there too much noise? Perhaps - you'd really have to look at the raw data to find out. Maybe you only want to look at "q=", "search=", and whatever phpBB, etc use. Maybe the signal that rises out of that noise is valuable. One big downside is that the results would be biased towards the preferences of people who install toolbars. :) The other downside is that SEOs could game the system by feeding MS bad data. (True if they're only looking at google data, too.)
forgotusername 16y ago
Not only does it not seem unreasonable, but for a company like Google, I find it incredibly hard to believe that at some point they wouldn't have tried it themselves, at least as an experiment.
- amalcon 16y ago
  If I were in a less charitable mood, I would suggest that the reason Google is upset is that they didn't think of it first. More likely, though, it's a play to get Microsoft to come out and say more about what they track and how.
earl 16y ago
Actually, unless I'm mistaken, parsing the URL may well yield good search terms, but the query string is much less likely. Look at eg HN -- you'd parse out id = some long number. I may be wrong, but I don't recall many sites that would have good information for a search engine in that string. What seems far more likely is bing is using click tracking on G's results. This was explicitly not denied by their VP on the search engine panel today. If not many sites except search engines have useful keywords in the query string, that pretty much validates Google's complaint. In fact, if you go to Google's blogpost [1], the bing toolbar specifically calls out monitoring "the searches you do, the websites you visit, [...]" [1]. And the MS guy doesn't deny using clicks on G's search results [2]. In fact, the pretty much just says they copy G on long tail searches. [1] http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914 http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-... [2] http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2011/02/01/thoughts-on-search-quality.aspx http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/20...
- user24 16y ago
  > I don't recall many sites that would have good information for a search engine in that string. Well, Google is one such site - as in, if you have bing toolbar installed and are on google.com/search?q=keyword and click on example.com, then Bing can easily extract "google com search q keyword" and associate it with example.com - without anything explicitly or intentionally relating to Google in their code. They may also be looking at referrer info.
- true_religion 16y ago
  > I may be wrong, but I don't recall many sites that would have good information for a search engine in that string. Any site which has a search engine of its own is going to have keywords in the query string such as: http://www.reddit.com/search?q=blah http://www.reddit.com/search?q=blah

> parsing the query out of the url Or parsing any words found in the URL. Not unreasonable to believe.

by user24 16y ago

> parsing the query out of the url Or parsing any words found in the URL. Not unreasonable to believe.

If that were the explanation, I would think they would come out and say it. (Maybe they will shortly.) Even so, I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't notice that most of the benefit of the technique comes from recreating google results, at which point we're back at the original ethical question of whether that's ok.

dunham 16y ago
most of the benefit of the technique comes from recreating google results I'm not 100% sure this is the case. Consider that an user wants a chicken enchilada recipe. 1. They go to a site that they trust for high quality data. (I like food&wine, saveur, epicurious, rick bayless for mexican, ...) 2. They search for "chicken enchilada" 3. They select the most appealing result (not necessarily the first one), based on author, snippet, rating, photo, etc. Domain knowledge. If you can associate (via the referrer) "chicken enchilada" with that page, you've encapsulated a lot of information - manual selection of site, manual selection of a page within that site. It's potentially useful (especially for long tail - people who have to go directly to sites because search engines fail them). Is there too much noise? Perhaps - you'd really have to look at the raw data to find out. Maybe you only want to look at "q=", "search=", and whatever phpBB, etc use. Maybe the signal that rises out of that noise is valuable. One big downside is that the results would be biased towards the preferences of people who install toolbars. :) The other downside is that SEOs could game the system by feeding MS bad data. (True if they're only looking at google data, too.)

forgotusername 16y ago

Not only does it not seem unreasonable, but for a company like Google, I find it incredibly hard to believe that at some point they wouldn't have tried it themselves, at least as an experiment.

amalcon 16y ago
If I were in a less charitable mood, I would suggest that the reason Google is upset is that they didn't think of it first. More likely, though, it's a play to get Microsoft to come out and say more about what they track and how.

earl 16y ago

Actually, unless I'm mistaken, parsing the URL may well yield good search terms, but the query string is much less likely. Look at eg HN -- you'd parse out id = some long number. I may be wrong, but I don't recall many sites that would have good information for a search engine in that string. What seems far more likely is bing is using click tracking on G's results. This was explicitly not denied by their VP on the search engine panel today. If not many sites except search engines have useful keywords in the query string, that pretty much validates Google's complaint. In fact, if you go to Google's blogpost [1], the bing toolbar specifically calls out monitoring "the searches you do, the websites you visit, [...]" [1]. And the MS guy doesn't deny using clicks on G's search results [2]. In fact, the pretty much just says they copy G on long tail searches. [1] http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-search-results-62914 http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-... [2] http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2011/02/01/thoughts-on-search-quality.aspx http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/20...

user24 16y ago
> I don't recall many sites that would have good information for a search engine in that string. Well, Google is one such site - as in, if you have bing toolbar installed and are on google.com/search?q=keyword and click on example.com, then Bing can easily extract "google com search q keyword" and associate it with example.com - without anything explicitly or intentionally relating to Google in their code. They may also be looking at referrer info.
true_religion 16y ago
> I may be wrong, but I don't recall many sites that would have good information for a search engine in that string. Any site which has a search engine of its own is going to have keywords in the query string such as: http://www.reddit.com/search?q=blah http://www.reddit.com/search?q=blah