5 ms·

A common counter-argument seems to be 'But this effect only happens when there are no other sources of relevance data'. Well... 'over the next few months we

by noibl 16y ago

A common counter-argument seems to be 'But this effect only happens when there are no other sources of relevance data'. Well... 'over the next few months we 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.' -- http://goo.gl/Bi0JH [googleblog] Now it's possible that Bing really did have no data for these 'popular queries' but I don't think that's an argument anyone would like to make. The alternative interpretation is that top-ranked pages in Google get added prominently to Bing after some interaction involving the toolbar, even when there are lots of other possible matches. You can still say that this would represent just a single data-point among many but unless you think Google is lying, you can't say that it only happens with rare searches. BTW: I'm not arguing that there is direct evidence that the mentioned effect on popular queries is related to the toolbar. But the effect is there.

kenjackson 16y ago
The problem is that Google is doing the wrong test to prove their point. The should search for Justin Bieber and add in the Bieber search results some really horrible link. MS should have a lot of relevant info for Justin Bieber, so the Google data should be rated lowly. If this non-sensical result makes the first page then you can begin to assume that their weighing it heavily. But when your query is "erftqnvpwedf" -- that just means that the only relevant info is coming from the toolbar. Bing would show that result even if the toolbar only accounted for 1/(2^50) of the total relevance. I suspect Google did this test and has nothing to report.
- noibl 16y ago
  They're talking about their top-ranking result being used. Are you suggesting that Google place garbage as the top-ranking Bieber result for visitors who use the toolbar?
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    No. Just for visitors that are coming from a specific IP address (their engineers). The only people that would see the bad results are their engineers. But the URL and data that the toolbar gets looks just like any other one. This is pretty straightforward and I'd be surprised if Google didn't have the infrastructure in pface to do this today (like literally today).
    - noibl 16y ago
      OK, I understand what you mean now. :)
      - kenjackson 16y ago
        And to be clear (if anyone from Google is reading) you don't just want to do 'Justin Bieber' since I suspect a lot of people with the toolbar actually do that search. Also do things like 'radix-2 fft', something where there is a lot of additional signals (I suspect), yet something that other toolbar members probably aren't searching for. So the toolbar data MS gets is strongly skewed to your results.
    - jhamburger 16y ago
      But then their bad results would be outweighed by the hundreds or thousands of other Bing toolbar users doing Bieber searches getting legitimate results fed back to Bing.
      - kenjackson 16y ago
        I address this later (although probably after you started writing this comment). :-)
- barrkel 16y ago
  The test you suggest doesn't address the actual problem that Google is complaining about - long-tail, rare searches, especially ones that contain misspellings. This is the very thing that Google is saying that Bing is stealing with their clickstream data, and it's also the one that you're agreeing would occur - "that the only relevant info is coming from the toolbar" for highly unlikely queries. So it seems to me, looking at your argument, that you actually agree with Google's point.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    My comment is in response to a comment about "popular queries". And really to the meta issue about how much it is weighed in general. Google is trying to argue a huge PR point by saying, "Bing copies" with the ramification being that when you search on Bing you're really searching on Google. If Google said this, "For extremely rare searches where Bing has few, if any, good signals, clickthroughs from Google will be weighed in such a way that these results may make the first page". I'd buy that 100%. The Bing team may even buy it. Google seems to want to start with that thesis, but then try to shove the whole camel in too.
gojomo 16y ago
There are multiple mechanisms by which Google's rankings will diffuse out to other services. For example, lots of SEO and normal research studies the top Google results, or keywords revealed from referrer info and other logs, and then mimics those results elsewhere on the web, including outlinking to top results found via Google. So anything prominent in Google's results will be echoed elsewhere in crawlable form, and probably associated with the same terms by which it was found at Google. Then those once-unique results will 'later appear' in other resources. You can't be the dominating giant of the industry – the "single point labeled G connected to 10 billion destination pages" (as Blekko's Skrenta calls Google) – and not have this leakage happen. It goes with the territory.
- noibl 16y ago
  Rankings analysis always starts with keywords of interest, even though Google can be used to identify keywords by relation. Referrer logs seeding outside sources with gibberish keywords that literally nobody is interested in? That's a stretch.
  - gojomo 16y ago
    I'm not saying this is specifically how the gibberish Google probes landed in Bing; I'm saying this is a way that, even for popular queries, Google's ranking judgements and unique results are going to slowly diffuse out over time, and be echoed elsewhere, even without URL-trail mining (which shortcuts/supercharges the process).
    - noibl 16y ago
      Fair enough. I agree that naive indexers will make lots of crude and meaningless associations. I don't think Bing falls into that category though.
blahedo 16y ago
But think about that claim: a result that shows up in Google's results for a popular query also shows up in Bing's results for a popular query. Maybe because it's a good result? Possibly Bing arrived at it the same way Google did? Or has Google been slipping paper streets into their queries for longer than they're telling us? In short: how did they know that it was "URLs from Google search results" that they were seeing in the Bing results?
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  "Even search results that we would consider mistakes of our algorithms started showing up on Bing." If it was a popular query, and both google and bing made the same "mistake", doesn't that seem a tad suspicious to you?

by noibl 16y ago

kenjackson 16y ago

The problem is that Google is doing the wrong test to prove their point. The should search for Justin Bieber and add in the Bieber search results some really horrible link. MS should have a lot of relevant info for Justin Bieber, so the Google data should be rated lowly. If this non-sensical result makes the first page then you can begin to assume that their weighing it heavily. But when your query is "erftqnvpwedf" -- that just means that the only relevant info is coming from the toolbar. Bing would show that result even if the toolbar only accounted for 1/(2^50) of the total relevance. I suspect Google did this test and has nothing to report.

noibl 16y ago
They're talking about their top-ranking result being used. Are you suggesting that Google place garbage as the top-ranking Bieber result for visitors who use the toolbar?
- kenjackson 16y ago
  No. Just for visitors that are coming from a specific IP address (their engineers). The only people that would see the bad results are their engineers. But the URL and data that the toolbar gets looks just like any other one. This is pretty straightforward and I'd be surprised if Google didn't have the infrastructure in pface to do this today (like literally today).
  - noibl 16y ago
    OK, I understand what you mean now. :)
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      And to be clear (if anyone from Google is reading) you don't just want to do 'Justin Bieber' since I suspect a lot of people with the toolbar actually do that search. Also do things like 'radix-2 fft', something where there is a lot of additional signals (I suspect), yet something that other toolbar members probably aren't searching for. So the toolbar data MS gets is strongly skewed to your results.
  - jhamburger 16y ago
    But then their bad results would be outweighed by the hundreds or thousands of other Bing toolbar users doing Bieber searches getting legitimate results fed back to Bing.
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      I address this later (although probably after you started writing this comment). :-)
barrkel 16y ago
The test you suggest doesn't address the actual problem that Google is complaining about - long-tail, rare searches, especially ones that contain misspellings. This is the very thing that Google is saying that Bing is stealing with their clickstream data, and it's also the one that you're agreeing would occur - "that the only relevant info is coming from the toolbar" for highly unlikely queries. So it seems to me, looking at your argument, that you actually agree with Google's point.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  My comment is in response to a comment about "popular queries". And really to the meta issue about how much it is weighed in general. Google is trying to argue a huge PR point by saying, "Bing copies" with the ramification being that when you search on Bing you're really searching on Google. If Google said this, "For extremely rare searches where Bing has few, if any, good signals, clickthroughs from Google will be weighed in such a way that these results may make the first page". I'd buy that 100%. The Bing team may even buy it. Google seems to want to start with that thesis, but then try to shove the whole camel in too.

gojomo 16y ago

There are multiple mechanisms by which Google's rankings will diffuse out to other services. For example, lots of SEO and normal research studies the top Google results, or keywords revealed from referrer info and other logs, and then mimics those results elsewhere on the web, including outlinking to top results found via Google. So anything prominent in Google's results will be echoed elsewhere in crawlable form, and probably associated with the same terms by which it was found at Google. Then those once-unique results will 'later appear' in other resources. You can't be the dominating giant of the industry – the "single point labeled G connected to 10 billion destination pages" (as Blekko's Skrenta calls Google) – and not have this leakage happen. It goes with the territory.

noibl 16y ago
Rankings analysis always starts with keywords of interest, even though Google can be used to identify keywords by relation. Referrer logs seeding outside sources with gibberish keywords that literally nobody is interested in? That's a stretch.
- gojomo 16y ago
  I'm not saying this is specifically how the gibberish Google probes landed in Bing; I'm saying this is a way that, even for popular queries, Google's ranking judgements and unique results are going to slowly diffuse out over time, and be echoed elsewhere, even without URL-trail mining (which shortcuts/supercharges the process).
  - noibl 16y ago
    Fair enough. I agree that naive indexers will make lots of crude and meaningless associations. I don't think Bing falls into that category though.

blahedo 16y ago

But think about that claim: a result that shows up in Google's results for a popular query also shows up in Bing's results for a popular query. Maybe because it's a good result? Possibly Bing arrived at it the same way Google did? Or has Google been slipping paper streets into their queries for longer than they're telling us? In short: how did they know that it was "URLs from Google search results" that they were seeing in the Bing results?

burgerbrain 16y ago
"Even search results that we would consider mistakes of our algorithms started showing up on Bing." If it was a popular query, and both google and bing made the same "mistake", doesn't that seem a tad suspicious to you?