3 ms·

This is the record: Searching for "torsorophy" on Google brings up the Wikipedia page for Tarsorrhaphy because of Google's advanced spelling and error correcti

This is the record: Searching for "torsorophy" on Google brings up the Wikipedia page for Tarsorrhaphy because of Google's advanced spelling and error correction algorithms. Searching for "torsorophy" on Bing will (or used to) bring up the Wikipedia page for Tarsorrhaphy because of Google's advanced spelling and error correction algorithms, because Bing watches how people use Google. Two different kinds of innovation at play, one much more legitimate and impressive than the other. But it's not like Microsoft is in unfamiliar territory here.

kenjackson 16y ago
So does "fast forier twansform" -- did Google honeypot that term too? Or the other 20 terms I just tried with arbitrary mispellings?
- true_religion 16y ago
  When Bing adjusts the results it shows due to user click-ranking, it does so without any notification. That's because its a ranking issue. When Bing adjusts the results as due to a spellcheck done by their engine, it notifies the user so they can correct it. On your example, Bing search does exactly this: > We're including results for fast fourier transform. Do you want results only for fast forier twansform?
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    I completely agree, but to quote the person I was replying to: "Searching for "torsorophy" on Google brings up the Wikipedia page for Tarsorrhaphy because of Google's advanced spelling and error correction algorithms." Both companies have good algorithms for spelling and error correction, but neither appears to be a superset of the other. (For example, Bing corrects "Kransas" to "Kansas", but Google does not). I was addressing the fact that Bing has at its disposal some advanced techniques too. It's not just Google that does. And I illustrated this by pointing out that there are a lot of queries that do the spell correction on Bing that obviously weren't honeypotted -- as seemed to be implied by the original comment.
    - true_religion 16y ago
      The difference there is probably a result of varying internationization. "Kransas" is Swedish for wreath, which is likely why Googles' spellcheck doesn't automatically correct it. Bing however won't even show me proper results for Kransas even if I tell it "+Kransas". One example of where they both 'fail' on an mispelling is "munday" which isn't autocorrected to Monday because munday is a proper noun existing in the english corpus---e.g. the City of Munday, the Munday family, etc.

kenjackson 16y ago

So does "fast forier twansform" -- did Google honeypot that term too? Or the other 20 terms I just tried with arbitrary mispellings?

true_religion 16y ago
When Bing adjusts the results it shows due to user click-ranking, it does so without any notification. That's because its a ranking issue. When Bing adjusts the results as due to a spellcheck done by their engine, it notifies the user so they can correct it. On your example, Bing search does exactly this: > We're including results for fast fourier transform. Do you want results only for fast forier twansform?
- kenjackson 16y ago
  I completely agree, but to quote the person I was replying to: "Searching for "torsorophy" on Google brings up the Wikipedia page for Tarsorrhaphy because of Google's advanced spelling and error correction algorithms." Both companies have good algorithms for spelling and error correction, but neither appears to be a superset of the other. (For example, Bing corrects "Kransas" to "Kansas", but Google does not). I was addressing the fact that Bing has at its disposal some advanced techniques too. It's not just Google that does. And I illustrated this by pointing out that there are a lot of queries that do the spell correction on Bing that obviously weren't honeypotted -- as seemed to be implied by the original comment.
  - true_religion 16y ago
    The difference there is probably a result of varying internationization. "Kransas" is Swedish for wreath, which is likely why Googles' spellcheck doesn't automatically correct it. Bing however won't even show me proper results for Kransas even if I tell it "+Kransas". One example of where they both 'fail' on an mispelling is "munday" which isn't autocorrected to Monday because munday is a proper noun existing in the english corpus---e.g. the City of Munday, the Munday family, etc.