Technology: Google to Microsoft: Search ‘Gotcha'

Danny Sullivan, head of the blog Search Engine Land, wrote Tuesday about a sting operation by Google that the company says proves that Bing watches Google's search results to improve its own.

Google says it suspects Microsoft is doing this by using Internet Explorer 8 and the Bing toolbar, both of which send user data to Microsoft, to watch how people use Google.

Google went into detective mode.

It invented about 100 gibberish search queries, like hiybbprqag, and matched them with results that had nothing to do with the query, like a theater seating chart. Mr. Singhal likened these queries to the search engine equivalent of marked bills in a bank.

Then it asked 20 of its engineers to install Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 with the Bing toolbar, search for the rigged words and click on the made-up results. Sure enough, Bing soon started pointing people to the nonsensical search results for seven to nine of the 100 queries.

Mr. Shum [VP of Bing at M$] wrote that Bing uses more than 1,000 signals to determine search results — including clickstream data we get from some of our customers, who opt in to sharing anonymous data as they navigate the Web in order to help us improve the experience for all users. Translation: Bing watches what people click when they visit Google and other sites.

For more, see Google to Microsoft: Search ‘Gotcha' by Claire Cain Miller, February 1, 2011 at NYTimes.com.