4 ms·

A quick thought experiment on this subject: say I search for a term on Bing, find a link I want and then put that link on my blog - when Google indexes that blo

A quick thought experiment on this subject: say I search for a term on Bing, find a link I want and then put that link on my blog - when Google indexes that blog have they copied Bing? Sure its different, but is it meaningfully different? I made the link between the two terms, I also consented for that data to be used in both cases (assuming the data comes from the Bing toolbar and an agreeable robots.txt). I just don't see how the data that Microsoft is using is off limits.

zmmmmm 16y ago
Just putting the link on your blog doesn't establish the connection between the keywords and the link. If you put both the keywords and the link on your blog then it allows Google to independently establish that connection using the merits of their own algorithms. The "incrimminating" part here is that Microsoft appears to be intentionally parsing the keywords out of the search. Which means they are intentionally looking at a click and saying a) this is a google search and here are the terms used and then b) this is a result that Google returned, and they are then using that to fill their own index. If they generically parsed the URL for terms then you might argue they are not giving Google special treatment, they are just doing this for every page the user goes to. However that's a bit hard to buy - if they really did that they would end up with all kinds of garbage associations from opaque URLs. So they must have a signal saying "this was a google search, treat it better than the others". Or they are somewhere in between the two. It's not clear to me where they fall on this scale - it's generally murky. At worst, I'd say they are copying, at best, I'd say it's sneaky but clever and fair game. The minute they single out Google and say "hey, this must be a good result" I think they crossed a line.
- greendestiny 16y ago
  Yeah you'd have to title the link with the search term. Personally I think the analogy someone else made to web directories is perfect, and that discussions is more interesting. It seems entirely appropriate if you have a legitimate right to use that link to parse it for structure.

zmmmmm 16y ago

Just putting the link on your blog doesn't establish the connection between the keywords and the link. If you put both the keywords and the link on your blog then it allows Google to independently establish that connection using the merits of their own algorithms. The "incrimminating" part here is that Microsoft appears to be intentionally parsing the keywords out of the search. Which means they are intentionally looking at a click and saying a) this is a google search and here are the terms used and then b) this is a result that Google returned, and they are then using that to fill their own index. If they generically parsed the URL for terms then you might argue they are not giving Google special treatment, they are just doing this for every page the user goes to. However that's a bit hard to buy - if they really did that they would end up with all kinds of garbage associations from opaque URLs. So they must have a signal saying "this was a google search, treat it better than the others". Or they are somewhere in between the two. It's not clear to me where they fall on this scale - it's generally murky. At worst, I'd say they are copying, at best, I'd say it's sneaky but clever and fair game. The minute they single out Google and say "hey, this must be a good result" I think they crossed a line.

greendestiny 16y ago
Yeah you'd have to title the link with the search term. Personally I think the analogy someone else made to web directories is perfect, and that discussions is more interesting. It seems entirely appropriate if you have a legitimate right to use that link to parse it for structure.