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February 03, 2011
Bing copies Google search results
Google has accused Bing of copying its search results through an investigative operation called 'Bing Sting'.
Google engineers created fake search results for nonsensical terms. Few weeks later, these results started appearing on Bing.
Interestingly Bing doesn't deny this. It says that their algorithm looks at more than 1000 signals to determine the search results. This includes analyzing the click-stream of its IE toolbar users on what they search and click on Google.
It all started with a search for a misspelling "torsoraphy" where Google showed results for the correct word "tarsorrhaphy". However, the same results appeared on Bing although it could not detect the misspelling.
Google started its own investigation called 'Bing Sting' where they created fake search results for over 100 random nonsensical words. Google gave 20 of its engineers laptops with a fresh copy of windows installed along with Internet Explorer and Bing as the default search engine. Within weeks of searching these 'synthetic queries' on Google via these laptops, the same search results started appearing on Bing as well.
One such term being "hiybbprqag". Microsoft hasn't denied the report but later a spokesperson did say that "We do not copy Google's results!"
Posted by manish at February 3, 2011 01:01 AM