A short while ago Google had accused Bing, rightfully so, about stealing click data from and piggybacking Google’s Search results. Google’s basis was that they had, as a test, given laptops to Google employees to use at home for testing purposes. These laptops contained Google search results with specific weird “test” keyword phrases which users were to click on. They also were to test these results on the Google toolbar on the Internet Explorer browser with “suggested sites” turned on.

Needless to say, the results posted on Bing within a matter of days are pretty damning (screenshots courtesy of Matt Cutts):

Google-Bing Screenshot Set 1

Google-Bing Screenshot Set 2

Google-Bing Screenshot Set 3

Google-Bing Screenshot Set 4

Google-Bing Screenshot Set 5

Google-Bing Screenshot Set 6

In a debate between Google’s Matt Cutts, Bing’s Harry Shrum, and Rich Skrenta of Blekko (moderated by Vivek Wadhwa), Matt pointed out the above data, which Harry all but sidestepped the question. Some excuses included:

• We use Google’s results with 1,000 other algorithms.
• We are continuing to research and learn from data provided by other sources.
• Overall, search is becoming very complex.
• And more

The full interview can be seen here:

While we at iRISEmedia highly respect Microsoft and its products, and believe that they want to make a great search engine, it’s nonetheless surprising that some Bing employees, like Yusuf Medhi, would outright deny piggybacking from Google’s results. In his words:

“We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop.”

Nevertheless, the results above do look pretty damning on Bing.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 11th, 2011 at 6:57 pm and is filed under News, Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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