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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

#51

Post by jsnell »

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…

Best for their customers in what time frame? They might get better results in the short term, but it's much less clear what the long term effects are.

What if it slows down innovation in search quality and moves effort into marketing, shiny baubles? After all, why bother spending resources on researching, implementing and evaluating the algorithms when your competitors will within a couple of months gain the most of the improvements, automatically with no effort.

You complain about search relevance sucking. Why are you so eager to support a practice that has a high chance of causing it to stagnate?

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#52

Post by haberman »

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…

> My take on this is quite the opposite. If MS thinks they're doing nothing wrong, they shouldn't stop. They should do what is best for their customers.

Does this mean anyone should feel free to ignore robots.txt if they think it will be better for their customers?

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#53

Post by spaghetti »

Google should do more testing. For example: repeat the same tests (different nonsense search terms and results just to be sure) where none of the data sent to/from the browser contains any google specific terminology. If the Bing toolbar isn't special-casing google then I think the test results should be the same.

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#54

Post by magicalist »

angusgr wrote: post #35
mayank wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent analysis, thank you, especially in the distinction between "suggested sites" and the Bing toolbar's behavior. I can't argue with your methods. However, I do differ with some of your conclusions: > The behaviour I’ve seen explains Google’s experiments, but does not support the accusation that Bing set out to copy Google. I don't think it's so much about "set out to copy Google" necessarily, as it is that the…

The difference is that Google has proven that the results of certain queries are being directly fed as Bing results. If Microsoft does the same with Google rankings, I'd see your point, but right now the evidence only points in one direction. However, these are also the only experiments that have been run - outlier data, gaming the algorithms. If you only test one possible outlier scenario and don't control against a…

what control are you suggesting? I read a suggestion elsewhere of using only Firefox for some queries and seeing if they show up, which is silly, of couse.

without a possible mechanism of action there's no point of using something as a control; I might as well wait to see if the files on my disabled usb drive show up on bing. they were "gaming the algorithms" because they suspected that the algorithms existed, and it wouldn't have worked if there was nothing to game.

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#55

Post by magicalist »

angusgr wrote: post #39
coderdude wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm certain they never stopped trying to be innovative, but Bing is able to use that click stream data to reap the benefits of Google's innovations. Google is on the right side of this argument even if it makes them seem whiny to some people.

The part that seems interesting to me is that Google scrapes other entities' data (Reader, News, Books, Scholar) in dozens of other ways, and that behaviour is generally regarded as totally justifiable.

robots.txt. a more specific example might make for better discussion.

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#56

Post by kenjackson »

ddemchuk wrote: post #23

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: Sc…

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.

But you can just skip the toolbar altogether. Just go to Bing and do the search and click your site. Likewise, if you go to Google and do the same, you'll increase your ranking on Google. There is nothing new here, except if you install the toolbar and go to Google you can increase it on Bing also.

This is something people have been doing for a while.

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

Google can do this even if Bing stops this current practice. Just go to Bing, do a search, go the last page and click a link.

Fundamentally, with respect to fraud, nothing has really changed.

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#57

Post by jdp23 »

moultano wrote: post #42
davidu wrote: post #5

I think Matt lays out a strong argument for why they have made such a stink. And it sounds like a pretty compelling defense for their actions to go public. But... 1) I think they will regret it bigtime when all the attention they are causing makes the bored government officials poke their head in and realize that at a macro level, neither Bing nor Google does anything to protect user search privacy. 2) I think Google…

> They should focus on trying to be innovative again, that was the Google I respected. I work in search quality at Google. I'm busting my ass every day working on fundamental reimaginings of how results get ranked. I'm going to keep doing that regardless of what bing does, because it makes the world a better place, and it's fun. But, suppose the stuff I'm working on works out, and tomorrow Google shows up with a whol…

I remember back when people hand-crafted directories for the web. They'd put a lot of work into updating their directory and then in just a couple of days an automated spider would look at their site and a search engine would use their link structure to point everybody directly to the best pages without having to go through the directory. The search engine had no idea of what evidence the directory used. Was it fair? Was it ethical? Was it legal?

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#58

Post by moultano »

jdp23 wrote: post #57
moultano wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They should focus on trying to be innovative again, that was the Google I respected. I work in search quality at Google. I'm busting my ass every day working on fundamental reimaginings of how results get ranked. I'm going to keep doing that regardless of what bing does, because it makes the world a better place, and it's fun. But, suppose the stuff I'm working on works out, and tomorrow Google shows up with a whol…

I remember back when people hand-crafted directories for the web. They'd put a lot of work into updating their directory and then in just a couple of days an automated spider would look at their site and a search engine would use their link structure to point everybody directly to the best pages without having to go through the directory. The search engine had no idea of what evidence the directory used. Was it fair?…

robots.txt

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#59

Post by c2 »

Either bring a lawsuit, or be quiet. You aren't going to shame Microsoft into changing their current policy, and even if it does improve results by only 1/1000, as long as they are legally within their right to do it, why wouldn't they?

It's laughable to think this "controversy" is putting a black eye on to Bing in any way shape or form, except among perhaps the most technical and anal retentive among the population.

Re: Matt Cutt's thoughts on Google Bing Debate

#60

Post by coderdude »

angusgr wrote: post #39
coderdude wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm certain they never stopped trying to be innovative, but Bing is able to use that click stream data to reap the benefits of Google's innovations. Google is on the right side of this argument even if it makes them seem whiny to some people.

The part that seems interesting to me is that Google scrapes other entities' data (Reader, News, Books, Scholar) in dozens of other ways, and that behaviour is generally regarded as totally justifiable.

Because Google has a symbiotic relationship with the entities whose data it's grabbing. It uses that data to drive traffic or attention to the originators and owners of that data. Everyone wants Google to use their data to drive them traffic and those who do not use robots.txt. Bing is being parasitic to Google in this situation by generating no value for them.
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