Yesterday, Google shed light on a sting operation they conducted and said they had proof that Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google’s results, then uses that information to improve Bing’s own search listings.
Today Mehdi, Microsoft’s Senior VP of Online Services responded.
We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop. We have some of the best minds in the world at work on search quality and relevance, and for a competitor to accuse any one of these people of such activity is just insulting.
Mehdi, then took it one step further and accused Google of performing “Click Fraud”
Google engaged in a “honeypot” attack to trick Bing. In simple terms, Google’s “experiment” was rigged to manipulate Bing search results through a type of attack also known as “click fraud.” That’s right, the same type of attack employed by spammers on the web to trick consumers and produce bogus search results. What does all this cloak and dagger click fraud prove? Nothing anyone in the industry doesn’t already know. As we have said before and again in this post, we use click stream optionally provided by consumers in an anonymous fashion as one of 1,000 signals to try and determine whether a site might make sense to be in our index.
Read the full post here
Is Google just trying to redirect focus from the recent discussions surrounding Google’s SERPS being full of spammy results? Maybe, they chose to wait 30 days before going public with thier findings.
What are your thoughts? Is Bing cheating from Google?
About Dinesh MistryI am a full time Security Professional, Ethical Hacker, and overall technology enthusiast. I also enjoy working on Search Engine Optimization as time permits.