It’s all kicking off in the world of search engines. News broke this week of the results of a sting operation conducted by Google on the suspicion that competitor Bing was copying their results.

Apparently Google had been suspicious since May 2010 when they noticed Bing was returning identical results for misspellings of uncommon words, and without even correcting the misspelling. On the hunch that there were some shenanigans going on, Google set up a ploy worthy of a spy movie (albeit a very geeky one): create a trap whereby they would consciously falsify their own results for searches involving random strings of letters.

So around December 2010, Google got some of its engineers to run searches for these strings of letters from their homes using Internet Explorer. They would then click on the first (falsified) result. If Bing was really spying on Google’s results, then searches for the same strings of letters would return the same (falsified) results.

Sure enough they did and without going into the detail, the results strongly suggested that Bing copy Google’s rankings, at least for searches that bring up few matches.

So how does Microsoft do it? Well, Internet Explorer’s privacy policy mentions that, by default, it will collect some of your browsing data. This is particularly true when considering the Suggested Sites functionality. Another likely instrument in this industrial espionage would be the Bing Bar, which also includes in its privacy policy that it will collect browsing. Both privacy policies explicitly include search related data.

Since then, Bing has responded to Google’s accusation and admitted to the charges. However, they seemed to insist on the fact that they were collecting the users’, rather than Google’s, data.

One commentator raises the valid question of whether or not users (should) care. Well, the issue I see here is that if, as a search engine, you compensate for your shortcomings by looking to another search engine’s results, you will never get to improve upon that second search engine. I think this suggests users should’ve have just gone there in the first place. Cue funny video:

It would be funny if it turned out that Bing was just a pretty user interface that just Google’d everything in the background and then forwarded the results, but it would also raise the point: if Bing’s contribution to search engines innovation is merely superficial, then I would expect it to be much prettier.

Check out my sources for more info.

To find out how you can be Google’d (or Bing’d) a lot more, check out our Search Engine Optimisation services.

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1. Google pull of out of China
After months of speculation Google have redirected their search engine to Hong Kongese domain www.google.com.hk.

2. Facebook blamed for outbreak of Syphilis in North East of England
This made many newspapers in the UK and hit numerous worldwide websites, “Health experts” at NHS Hartlepool suggest Facebook makes it much easier to meet new people. Here is the Telegraph article.

3. Foursquare gets a map overlay from Bing
The mobile based location check in service has exploded this year. Microsoft’s ever increasingly popular decision engine (search engine to you and I) is in the process of creating a service which integrates tips straight from the 600000 Foursquare user’s. I can only imagine the increase of functionality throughout the year. Personally speaking I can see uploaded pictures and check in’s available in the very near future.

4. Twitter turned 4
Happy belated birthday to the micro blogging social network Twitter. Many social media websites and guides created dedicated posts for the 4th birthday celebrations.
Here are a pick of the best
Mashable
Examiner
Happy birthday in pictures from Daily Booth

5. Facebook like button to break out across the web
The 400 million Facebook users cannot hide away from the like button. Well it has been released over the past couple of days that at the F8 conference, Facebook will be rolling out the like button so bloggers and web site owners will be able to have their articles and posts automatically published in their feed, on their wall etc. I can see this working much deeper than retweet or the Facebook share button.

And a special mention to Lady Gaga, this week she hit 100 million views on Poker Face. You could call her the queen of viral, Lady Gaga hits one hundred million (billion in America) views on her video Poker Face. Whatever you think about her she and her management are marketing geniuses.

Danny Denhard

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Here is my Danny D’s alternative search engines -

1. Yahoo! – Yahoo The runner up to Google in popularity, Yahoo! used to be the best search engine until Google appeared around 2000.
Yahoo has some really nice features including dedicated section for shopping results and then the winner for me results via social networks. Do not forget Yahoo search will soon be powered by Bing.

2. Ask – Ask Jeeves is the fourth most popular search engine in the UK. Jeeves offers good tools and has a cool question and answer service along with games and currently dress your own Jeeves. Ask is commonly overlooked but a solid search engine.

3. Bing – Microsoft’s very own dedicated search engine, currently third choice in the UK. Bing’s attraction is its ever changing background and the way it displays its results and related searches by popularity. With the Yahoo! search tie in it may start taking back market share.

4. Wolfram Alpha – Some people may disagree with Wolfram’s inclusion, it isn’t the easiest to use but when it has the data or search results the “knowledge engine” works extremely well.

5. Twitter – Another non traditional search engine Twitter real time search offers real time tweets from Twitter users. It can be very useful for reviews, opinions and of course for the occasional laugh.

If I missed any please let me know

Danny Denhard

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