4 ms·

The difference is that Google has proven that the results of certain queries are being directly fed as Bing results. If Microsoft does the same with Google rank

by angusgr 16y ago

The difference is that Google has proven that the results of certain queries are being directly fed as Bing results. If Microsoft does the same with Google rankings, I'd see your point, but right now the evidence only points in one direction. However, these are also the only experiments that have been run - outlier data, gaming the algorithms. If you only test one possible outlier scenario and don't control against any other, it's fairly ambitious to stand up and say "this is exactly what is happening!" IMHO it would have been better for Microsoft to respond along these lines, instead of going into counterspin mode, though.

mayank 16y ago
Claiming that Bing is copying outlier results is still a fair claim that Bing is copying results, especially considering that outlier queries are hard in general for search engines to get right: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1277939 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1277939
magicalist 16y ago
what control are you suggesting? I read a suggestion elsewhere of using only Firefox for some queries and seeing if they show up, which is silly, of couse. without a possible mechanism of action there's no point of using something as a control; I might as well wait to see if the files on my disabled usb drive show up on bing. they were "gaming the algorithms" because they suspected that the algorithms existed, and it wouldn't have worked if there was nothing to game.
- angusgr 16y ago
  Set up some other dynamic sites (not indexed or linked anywhere) with random nonsense words in their URL strings, and a single link to some unrelated site. Click the link. Repeat, wait two weeks. Same as what google did, just not on google.com. Of course, if Bing has other "relevance" indicators (ala BingPageRank) then this might not work because it will rule the nonsense control site irrelevant linkspam, and not put it in (even Google's experiment only got a 9% success rate.) It would be better if someone like Facebook injected the test nonsense strings in their URLs. Something of this sort would at least show they tried to differentiate between "scrapes all clickstream data" and "uses Google's search results".

by angusgr 16y ago

mayank 16y ago

Claiming that Bing is copying outlier results is still a fair claim that Bing is copying results, especially considering that outlier queries are hard in general for search engines to get right: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1277939 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1277939

magicalist 16y ago

what control are you suggesting? I read a suggestion elsewhere of using only Firefox for some queries and seeing if they show up, which is silly, of couse. without a possible mechanism of action there's no point of using something as a control; I might as well wait to see if the files on my disabled usb drive show up on bing. they were "gaming the algorithms" because they suspected that the algorithms existed, and it wouldn't have worked if there was nothing to game.

angusgr 16y ago
Set up some other dynamic sites (not indexed or linked anywhere) with random nonsense words in their URL strings, and a single link to some unrelated site. Click the link. Repeat, wait two weeks. Same as what google did, just not on google.com. Of course, if Bing has other "relevance" indicators (ala BingPageRank) then this might not work because it will rule the nonsense control site irrelevant linkspam, and not put it in (even Google's experiment only got a 9% success rate.) It would be better if someone like Facebook injected the test nonsense strings in their URLs. Something of this sort would at least show they tried to differentiate between "scrapes all clickstream data" and "uses Google's search results".