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Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

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Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#21

Post by angusgr »

jarin wrote: post #18
angusgr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that telling, exactly? The top 4 results (including one which has the domain name of the query) are the same but in a different order. The rest of the results appear totally different. Even if one random query you ran returned an identical first 10 results, exactly what would that prove? Statistically significant how?

How likely is it that completely different ranking algorithms would turn up the solarviews.com and ruthannzaroff.com results on the first page?

I'd start with the fact that they both have the keywords of the search string in the page title and in the URL string.

Look, I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that two different algorithms can yield the same results without one having used the other as an "indicator". To trot out a tired phrase, correlation does not imply causation (and I'd argue you don't even have correlation at this point.)

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#22

Post by kenjackson »

pessimist wrote: post #16
kenjackson wrote: post #3

Let’s take that thought to its conclusion. If clicks on Google really account for only 1/1000th (or some other trivial fraction) of Microsoft’s relevancy, why not just stop using those clicks and reduce the negative coverage and perception of this? And if Microsoft is unwilling to stop incorporating Google’s clicks in Bing’s rankings, doesn’t that argue that Google’s clicks account for much more than 1/1000th of Bing…

I wonder if you would be ok if Bing did the same thing to amazon. That is, imagine they used toolbar/IE logs to infer that people went to amazon, searched for LCD TVs and then purchased model X. Then they could boost pages about X in search, or implement a "bestselling" feature. After all, they are "just" using clickstream data here. Similarly, they could track Netflix, and so on. IMHO, there's a loophole in Bing's a…

Absolutely on all of those sites. And Wikipedia. Why would I not want them to? The only reason I could think of that I would not want them to is if I thought it would create worse search links as a result.

Although being able to personallize the search queries would be incredible. So when I search for "Movie XYZ" -- it can also look at my clickstream and see that I spend a lot of time in Netflix and Netflix has that movie, and they can point me to that movie directly in my search results ("You can stream Movie XYZ now!") -- kind of like a built in Clicker -- I'd love it.

But the problem is search relevance sucks. I'm in my freakin web browser all day, yet it contributes nothing to my search relevance. WTF!?

But again, key to me is opt-in. If anything, the one takeaway I would take if I were MS is to make it more apparent. But besides that. Everything you said, and more, please. And from Google too -- Bing shouldn't be the only one to benefit.

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#23

Post by ddemchuk »

My two favorite takeaways from this blog post are:

1) You can increase your site's rankings by installing the Bing Toolbar amongst a group of people and have said group search google for your target keyword and click through on your result.

2) Google is able and willing to manually screw around with search results in a seemingly easy manner.

As to the issue of Bing slurping up google's data for their own purposes: Scraping the web is a double edged sword. They aren't doing anything illegal. If anything, this whole ordeal has made both Search Engines look like a bunch of teenagers fighting over a who stole who's boyfriend.

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#24

Post by ryanhuff »

kenjackson wrote: post #3

Let’s take that thought to its conclusion. If clicks on Google really account for only 1/1000th (or some other trivial fraction) of Microsoft’s relevancy, why not just stop using those clicks and reduce the negative coverage and perception of this? And if Microsoft is unwilling to stop incorporating Google’s clicks in Bing’s rankings, doesn’t that argue that Google’s clicks account for much more than 1/1000th of Bing…

Agreed. And his example of how his mom could not understand what the IE disclosure really meant in terms of information sharing is silly. Your typical mom would also does not understand the true extent of data collection from using Google's own products. Does that make it wrong?

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#25

Post by user24 »

moultano wrote: post #12
user24 wrote: post #6

Oh man. That research paper he quoted strongly indicates that MS is specifically targeting Google. I was totally wrong. Bing are copying Google. I'm sorry (I am the "What on earth are Google thinking" author). I still think the honeypot experiments didn't support the conclusion. But this paper coupled with Bing's lacklustre pseudo-denial strongly indicates that my view of events was not accurate and that Bing were in…

Those examples to me are like finding a maggot in a piece of meat. Maybe that's the only one, and if you just remove it the rest is ok, but it's going to make you pretty suspicious especially if it already smells. The reality is that it's almost impossible for google to measure how much their results influence bing. After all, they are both trying to rank the same internet. The best they can do is prove the obvious c…

> they are both trying to rank the same internet.

Yeah, this was a point I wanted to make in one of my blog posts. If Google wanted to claim some kind of ownership over SERPs, that would be ridiculous because you could easily argue that there is only one correct set of "ten links ordered from most relevant to least" for each query. Eventually all search engines will converge on the same ten results for every query.

I don't think Google ever made such a claim of ownership, but it was taken that way by some.

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#26

Post by o_nate »

I totally agree with this. There's not really any good reason why Microsoft should piggyback off of Google's search results. The fact that they're able to observe Google's results by observing user clicks in a browser rather than by simply harvesting results directly off of Google's website confuses the matter, but ultimately it's irrelevant. This is just a sneaky way for Microsoft to observe a user's interaction with an information service (Google), to see what information the user obtained, and then offer the same information themselves.

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#27

Post by amalcon »

Bravo.

This is, by far, the best treatment of the issue I've seen anywhere, on account of how it's the only level-headed one apart from Nate Silver's. There's a little needless inflation at the beginning with the screenshot comparison. It does have the obvious and expected slant. On the other hand, there's no enormous hyperbole or anything like that. There are no vacuous statements. The word "copying" appears a few times, but that's at least descriptive, and there's no use of other loaded terms like "cheating", "stealing", and "unethical".

Also, for what it's worth, it moved me from 80/20 certain that nothing fishy is going on to 50/50: the spell correction paper shows to a certainty that this has been considered. I'm sure Googlers know as well as I do that not everything in a research paper finds its way into the product, and this one in particular may have been nixed by management types for this very reason. It's still awfully suspicious.

I still think the original experiment completely fails to demonstrate anything unethical, and I still think the original info release was both hyperbolic and needlessly inflammatory. It does demonstrate a need for some more information, which seems to be all this post is asking for. If it had looked more like this post, I think the 'net could have been spared a lot of controversy. Maybe Matt Cutts should be writing these things, though far be it from me to decide that.

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#28

Post by ugh »

pessimist wrote: post #16
kenjackson wrote: post #3

Let’s take that thought to its conclusion. If clicks on Google really account for only 1/1000th (or some other trivial fraction) of Microsoft’s relevancy, why not just stop using those clicks and reduce the negative coverage and perception of this? And if Microsoft is unwilling to stop incorporating Google’s clicks in Bing’s rankings, doesn’t that argue that Google’s clicks account for much more than 1/1000th of Bing…

I wonder if you would be ok if Bing did the same thing to amazon. That is, imagine they used toolbar/IE logs to infer that people went to amazon, searched for LCD TVs and then purchased model X. Then they could boost pages about X in search, or implement a "bestselling" feature. After all, they are "just" using clickstream data here. Similarly, they could track Netflix, and so on. IMHO, there's a loophole in Bing's a…

I would argue that users own their clickstream data and are free to give it away. (The question then becomes whether Microsoft makes sufficiently clear exactly which data users are giving to them.) Clickstream data is basically a list of URLs, I don’t think (parts of) such lists should controlled by website owners.

I’m not sure, though, whether I have overseen something that would make it useful or fair to give website owners control over clickstream data. I’m honestly open for suggestions.

But that’s only part of the problem. Even if everyone were to agree that collecting clickstream data from users with their consent is ok, we still don’t know how those who collect the data are allowed to use it. That’s certainly not an easy question.

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#29

Post by contextfree »

pessimist wrote: post #16
kenjackson wrote: post #3

Let’s take that thought to its conclusion. If clicks on Google really account for only 1/1000th (or some other trivial fraction) of Microsoft’s relevancy, why not just stop using those clicks and reduce the negative coverage and perception of this? And if Microsoft is unwilling to stop incorporating Google’s clicks in Bing’s rankings, doesn’t that argue that Google’s clicks account for much more than 1/1000th of Bing…

I wonder if you would be ok if Bing did the same thing to amazon. That is, imagine they used toolbar/IE logs to infer that people went to amazon, searched for LCD TVs and then purchased model X. Then they could boost pages about X in search, or implement a "bestselling" feature. After all, they are "just" using clickstream data here. Similarly, they could track Netflix, and so on. IMHO, there's a loophole in Bing's a…

I'd be surprised if they're not currently doing this in Amazon.

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#30

Post by wzdd »

angusgr wrote: post #7

Matt's assertion about "Suggested Sites" sending this data seems to be conjecture. I ran some packet captures and didn't find anything of that kind. However, if you install the Bing Toolbar then it does send URL clickstream data. It explicitly asks you beforehand if you want to send info about "the searches you do, websites you visit..." though. Full post: http://projectgus.com/2011/02/bing-google-finding-some-facts.…

Fascinating. I was planning on doing the same thing and now I don't have to -- thank you for taking the time. As you mention, this stuff could all be happening server-side, of course.
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