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I doubt the debate would get this nuanced, but I believe Google only tracks users on their own site. It appears Microsoft is tracking click across at least one
by noahc 16y ago
I doubt the debate would get this nuanced, but I believe Google only tracks users on their own site. It appears Microsoft is tracking click across at least one search engine.
I think this distinction has legal as well as technical implications.
- davidu 16y agoThis is factually incorrect. The google toolbar records clickstream data across all sites* * all with some specific exceptions for perhaps SSL and locally-resolved zones, or something like that.
- noahc 16y agoThanks for pointing that out. Much Appreciated!
- greyman 16y agoYes. And Bing toolbar does just the same. And when those clickstreams are used as one signal of link relevancy, you get the exact behaviour they are describing on the google blog.
- motti 16y agoFair enough, but the ethical thing is for Google to exclude bing.com from the clickstream analysis, and I hope they have. The big search engines are large enough to show up clearly in any of their competitors statistics (and there are always human teams monitoring the automated process) and should specifically exclude data from their competitors. For Google to use Bing clickstream or vice versa also perpetuates a vicious circle where bad results from one search engines will spread among the others. Bing either hasn't acted ethically, or hasn't though through the consequences of absorbing clickstreams of competitors' sites.