Tag: Bing

Bing’s Market Share Jumps Again

If the people behind Bing happened to make gaining market share a New Year’s resolution, they got off to a great start. Experian Hitwise released new stats this morning, and the firm found that Bing’s market share increased by a significant amount between December and January.

Bing’s market share rose from 10.60 percent in December to 12.81 percent in January, according to Experian Hitwise. That makes for a month-over-month gain of 20.85 percent, which is quite remarkable.

Bing didn’t just steal users away from its partner Yahoo, either (although Yahoo did experience a loss). Industry leader Google, which tends to either hold steady or increase its dominance, saw its market share drop from 69.67 percent to 67.95 percent on a month-over-month basis.

The popularity of the Bing-Yahoo combo as a whole increased a fair amount (6.48 percent), then, which is good news for a lot of people. Carol Bartz, in particular, could arguably use a win.

The interesting thing will be whether Bing continues to make this sort of progress following the whole "stolen results" brouhaha. It might have hurt the search engine’s image, or, just maybe, it might cause more people to give Bing a try.

Stay tuned, and we’ll be sure to relay the February data as soon as it becomes available.

February 8, 2011
Bing Accuses Google of Click Fraud

Without a doubt, the biggest storyline in search this week has been Google accusing Bing of cheating and stealing its results, Bing semi-denying this, and the back and forth that’s gone on between the two dominant search engines.

Who’s right: Bing or Google? Tell us what you think.

The whole thing came to light when Danny Sullivan posted an article detailing Google’s "sting operation," which Bing would later call "spy novelesque" and even "click fraud". Essentially, Google rigged up some forced search results to test Bing, and found that Bing was indeed displaying the results in question.

Just hours after Sullivan’s article came out, Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Harry Shum took to the stage at the Farsight search event to publicly argue about what Bing had done and the ethics of it. Bing also put up an official blog post showcasing its position on the matter. "We use over 1,000 different signals and features in our ranking algorithm. A small piece of that is clickstream data we get from some of our customers, who opt-in to sharing anonymous data as they navigate the web in order to help us improve the experience for all users," wrote Shum. "To be clear, we learn from all of our customers. What we saw in today’s story was a spy-novelesque stunt to generate extreme outliers in tail query ranking. It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we’ll take it as a back-handed compliment. But it doesn’t accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience."

"The history of the web and the improvement of a broad array of consumer and business experiences is actually the story of collective intelligence, from sharing HTML documents to hypertext links to click data and beyond. Many companies across the Internet use this collective intelligence to make their products better every day," Shum continued. "We all learn from our collective customers, and we all should…We never set out to build another version of an existing search engine."

It didn’t take long for Google to offer up its own official blog post, rehashing the tactics described in Sullivan’s article, with added commentary from Google Fellow Amit Singhal, who said, "As we see it, this experiment confirms our suspicion that Bing is using some combination of: Internet Explorer 8, which can send data to Microsoft via its Suggested Sites feature, the Bing Toolbar, which can send data via Microsoft’s Customer Experience Improvement Program, or possibly some other means to send data to Bing on what people search for on Google and the Google search results they click. Those results from Google are then more likely to show up on Bing. Put another way, some Bing results increasingly look like an incomplete, stale version of Google results—a cheap imitation."

"At Google we strongly believe in innovation and are proud of our search quality," he added. "We’ve invested thousands of person-years into developing our search algorithms because we want our users to get the right answer every time they search, and that’s not easy. We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithms out there—algorithms built on core innovation, and not on recycled search results from a competitor. So to all the users out there looking for the most authentic, relevant search results, we encourage you to come directly to Google. And to those who have asked what we want out of all this, the answer is simple: we’d like for this practice to stop."

A bit of irony regarding that part about innovations and algorithms was revealed when Amazon recommendation engine creator Greg Linden reported that Google had switched to a recycled version of Amazon’s algorithm for recommendations on YouTube. Granted, this is not really the same thing as what Bing is doing, but it was an interestingly timed report, given Singhal’s words. Update: Linden says in the comments to this article that the timing was coincidental.

Google did not get the last word in the war with Bing (at least not yet…I’m sure we haven’t seen the last word at this point). Bing took to its blog again, this time with some words from VP of the company’s online services division, Yusuf Mehdi. "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," he said. "We do look at anonymous click stream data as one of more than a thousand inputs into our ranking algorithm. We learn from our customers as they traverse the web, a common practice in helping to improve a wide array of online services. We have been clear about this for a couple of years (see Directions on Microsoft report, June 15, 2009)." No link is provided unfortunately.

"Google engaged in a ‘honeypot’ attack to trick Bing," he added. "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." (emphasis added)

He also mentions some design elements Google has employed since Bing’s launch that are rather Bing-esque, which we’ve also pointed out in previous articles. "At the same time, we have been making steady, quiet progress on core search relevance," he said. "In October 2010 we released a series of big, noticeable improvements to Bing’s relevance. So big and noticeable that we are told Google took notice and began to worry. Then a short time later, here come the honeypot attacks. Is the timing purely coincidence? Are industry discussions about search quality to be ignored? Is this simply a response to the fact that some people in the industry are beginning to ask whether Bing is as good or in some cases better than Google on core web relevance?"

Search quality certainly has been in question lately, particularly with regards to content farms, but Bing doesn’t appear to be doing anything much differently in that regard so far. Blekko is the only one that has really clamped down on those at this point, though Matt Cutts did finally acknowledge that the recent Google algorithm change is not the search engine’s answer to content farms, and that they still have some projects they are working on in that department. He said they want to do it all algorithmically, as opposed to in a human-edited fashion like Blekko. Meanwhile, it looks like we might have a whole new kind of content farm emerging that doesn’t even use humans to create the content.

Another side note in all of the Google/Bing drama is that Microsoft has now released a Chrome extension for support for the H.264 video codec, which Google recently announced would no longer be supported by Chrome. As WebProNews mentioned in a previous article on the subject, Microsoft has offered similar plug-ins for other browsers, so to say that this is in any way related to the search dispute is a bit of a stretch, but the timing is interesting.

While Bing and Google continue to duke it out, there is no clear winner in who is right and who is wrong. User opinions are widely varied. Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert had a pretty amusing take on the whole thing (hat tip to Sullivan):

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Bing Gets Served

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

All joking aside, what do you think of the whole situation?

Has Bing done anything wrong in its practices? Was Google wrong to set up its "sting operation"? Share your thoughts.

February 5, 2011
Google vs. Bing Battle Continues, Users Should Benefit In the End

The Google vs. Bing search wars continues to rage on, and there’s no reason to assume it will go away anytime soon. More and more takes on the subject are coming out, and the storyline is getting more dramatic with each addition.

For example, Kara Swisher at AllThingsD thinks Google’s position here stems from co-founder Larry Page’s migration to CEO (though not official until April). "Reading the tough quotes and later blog post by Amit Singhal–quite possibly the sweetest dude at Google–accusing Bing of cheating, it felt like he was channeling Page’s very clear and nerdily indignant voice again," she wrote. "In a nutshell: We have data to prove Microsoft’s stealing. Look at our detailed proof from our complex sting. We are outraged by this violation of geek code. Don’t you lay people get it?!?"

"I would wager that we’re about to see a lot more of this pugnacious, in-your-face tone from Google under Page’s leadership, which could have far-reaching implications for the company," she speculated.

Another angle to the story is that this has been Google’s way of diverting attention away from the flack its taken recently over the quality of its search results.

"Both sides have strong views and believe they are right," writes Vivek Wadhwa, who moderated the panel where Matt Cutts and Harry Shum argued about the situation (see video below). "In opening the debate, I said that, as a professor, I can’t condone any kind of plagiarism or cheating—and that is what Microsoft’s usage of Google data seems to amount to. But in the tech world, such information exchange is the norm. Everyone cheats and this may be a good thing for innovation. So there is no black and white here. Both sides are right and they are wrong."

"The one thing that is clear is that Google pulled off a huge PR coup. It changed the topic," adds Wadhwa. "Media coverage isn’t about spam and how Google profits from this any more; we are debating how valuable Google’s search results are."

I should point out that in our own coverage of the events, I noted that Bing was engaging in the same lack of content farm policing as Google. To me, it’s not so much a matter of Google having the better results and Bing piggybacking. The interesting thing to me is that Google’s own search quality has been questioned so much lately, and if Bing isn’t doing any better, that’s a problem for search at large. The real winner in this search war could be Blekko, who has taken action on content farms. It’s a pretty big stretch to say Blekko is poised to garner a huge share of the search market here, but this thing couldn’t have hurt from a PR standpoint.

Matt Cutts has posted yet more words on the Google vs. Bing debate, reiterating points he made in the video above, but in a more detailed way. Read the post for all the specifics. He concludes with, "Since people at Microsoft might not like this post, I want to reiterate that I know the people (especially the engineers) at Bing work incredibly hard to compete with Google, and I have huge respect for that. It’s because of how hard those engineers work that I think Microsoft should stop using clicks on Google in Bing’s rankings. If Bing does better on a search query than Google does, that’s fantastic. But an asterisk that says ‘we don’t know how much of this win came from Google’ does a disservice to everyone. I think Bing’s engineers deserve to know that when they beat Google on a query, it’s due entirely to their hard work. Unless Microsoft changes its practices, there will always be a question mark."

If nothing else, the whole thing is going to make the search-related conferences fun this year, as Google and Bing will no doubt continue to take jabs at each other. While some have shrugged the debate off as childish, if it leads to the two main search competitors trying to one-up each other in terms of search quality, users should benefit either way. That is if they haven’t all started using Blekko.

February 4, 2011
Google Reportedly Recycles Amazon Algorithm for YouTube

Google blasted Bing in an official Google blog post for tapping into its search results. We covered that here.

In that post, Google’s Amit Singhal said, "At Google we strongly believe in innovation and are proud of our search quality. We’ve invested thousands of person-years into developing our search algorithms because we want our users to get the right answer every time they search, and that’s not easy. We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithms out there—algorithms built on core innovation, and not on recycled search results from a competitor."

Apparently recycling is ok when it comes to recommendations, however. An interesting post from Amazon recommendation engine creator Greg Linden has come out claiming that Google-owned YouTube is using an old Amazon recommendation algorithm for video recommendation. Linden reports:

In a paper at the recent RecSys 2010 conference, "The YouTube Video Recommendation System" (ACM), eleven Googlers describe the system behind YouTube’s recommendations and personalization in detail.

The most interesting disclosure in the paper is that YouTube has switched from their old recommendation algorithm based on random walks to a new one based on item-to-item collaborative filtering. Item-to-item collaborative filtering is the algorithm Amazon developed back in 1998. Over a decade later, it appears YouTube found a variation of Amazon’s algorithm to be the best for their video recommendations.

Google is toying around a lot with recommendations in its regular Google search results. They just started incorporating Hotpot results into the main search results. It’s unclear, however, just how many people are actually using Hotpot. As I referenced earlier, Google also recently acquired fflick, which offers opinions from users’ Twitter friends on movies (and was reportedly set to expand to more verticals). The fflick team went to YouTube, and according to a recent report from Bloomberg Business week, the upcoming "Google+1" social layer "is designed to cull data about relationships among users from current services such as Gmail and YouTube."

"Google will then let users share material through those connections, while using the information to make other products more social," the report said. "Search results may be skewed toward pages that your friends found useful."

Whether or not the Amazon-style recommendations will enter Google’s search equation is a mystery, but we thought the timing of Linden’s post was interesting, considering Google’s words about algorithmic innovation. To be clear, Linden tells WebProNews that the timing of the report was coincidental.

February 3, 2011
Google Says Bing is Stealing Their Results

We all know that Bing is now powering Yahoo’s search results, but a very interesting finding from Danny Sullivan indicates that Google may be powering Bing’s search results, at least to some extent. No, this is not in any partnership kind of way like Bing’s relationship with Yahoo.

Google has apparently busted Bing copying their search results. Entirely? No, but Google ran a "sting operation" as Sullivan calls it, that seems to show Bing stealing at least top results from Google, by monitoring how Internet Explorer and Bing toolbar users use Google.

Google created some test search results pages returning results for queries that nobody would ever search for, and results that wouldn’t make sense for such queries. For example, a query for "hiybbprqag" would return a top result from TeamOneTickets. A query for "mbzrxpgjys" would return RIM’s homepage. A query for " indoswiftjobinproduction" would return a result for Sandra Lee Recipes at FoodNetwork.com.

"The only reason these pages appeared on Google was because Google forced them to be there," explains Sullivan. "There was nothing that made them naturally relevant for these searches. If they started to appear at Bing after Google, that would mean that Bing took Google’s bait and copied its results."

And that appears to be what happened, as Sullivan points to Bing’s results mirroring each of these examples. It’s worth noting that Google found that only a handful of the pages tested proved the point but the ones that did seem to prove a pretty big one.

The whole thing is pretty interesting, considering the amount of criticism Google’s own search results have received in recent months – some regarding content farms, and some not. Bing does still rank eHow as the top authority for a "level 4 brain cancer" query (like Google).

What’s even more interesting, is that Bing hasn’t come out and denied any of this, and depending on how you interpret their response, it could even be seen as a near confirmation. Here’s what Bing Director Stefan Weitz told WebPronews (essentially the same thing he told Sullivan):

"We use multiple signals and approaches in ranking search results. The overarching goal is to do a better job determining the intent of the search so we can provide the most relevant answer to a given query. Opt-in programs like the toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites."

So yeah, I guess what people are clicking on in Google results is a pretty good indication of how people interact with search, given that Google holds such a dominant share of the search market. However, as a competitor, this wouldn’t seem to be the most helpful strategy for providing better results.

To be fair, we don’t know all of Google’s own ranking signals (because they won’t reveal them), so who’s to say Google isn’t looking at search activity in Bing? Well, Google says they’re not, flat out, if Google’s word is good enough for you.

Bing isn’t copying Google’s search results entirely…just the ones they think users want the most for such queries, which is apparently the results Google is providing. Sullivan offers a great deal more analysis of the situation, and looks at more in depth into how Microsoft may be obtaining the Google ranking signals.

Sidenote: Internet Explorer owns 56% of the web browser market, according to a new report from Net Applications.

It was clear from the beginning of Bing’s existence that it was a direct competitor to Google, but as much of the conversation has turned to Facebook and Apple has Google’s arch rivals, Google has continued to maintain that Bing is indeed its main competitor. Bing getting the Yahoo deal that was almost Google’s no doubt left a bitter taste in Google’s mouth, and Bing recently joined the FairSearch coaltion to try and block the company’s proposed acquisition of ITA software.

At the time, Adam Kovacevich, Google Sr. Manager, Global Communications and Public Affairs told WebProNews, "I’m not sure there are any surprises here. Microsoft is our largest competitor and lobbies regulators against every acquisition we make."

Bing may be copying Google search results, but Google has certainly done its share of Bing copying (see design changes that have occurred since Bing’s launch, including the addition of the left panel, homepage photos, and image search scrolling features).

February 3, 2011
Google Calls Bing’s Search Results Incomplete and Stale

Bing was called out for copying Google search results in a revealing piece by Danny Sullivan, which chronicled a "sting operation" by Google to bust Bing doing so.

Not long after the article came out, Google’s Matt Cutts and Bing’s Harry Shum discussed the matter in front of an audience at a search event. While the two didn’t start throwing punches and kept things fairly civilized, the tension was not hard to spot. The two did take some shots at each other. Bing gave reporters the following canned response on the matter:

"We use multiple signals and approaches in ranking search results. The overarching goal is to do a better job determining the intent of the search so we can provide the most relevant answer to a given query. Opt-in programs like the toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites."

Shum then posted a more elaborate version of that on Bing’s blog. Clearly, Google was not satisfied with Bing’s response however, and was not going to let that be the final word on the subject, as Google took to its own official blog, just in case not everyone saw Sullivan’s article.

"As we see it, this experiment confirms our suspicion that Bing is using some combination of: Internet Explorer 8, which can send data to Microsoft via its Suggested Sites feature, the Bing Toolbar, which can send data via Microsoft’s Customer Experience Improvement Program, or possibly some other means to send data to Bing on what people search for on Google and the Google search results they click," wrote Google Fellow Amit Singhal. "Those results from Google are then more likely to show up on Bing. Put another way, some Bing results increasingly look like an incomplete, stale version of Google results—a cheap imitation."

"At Google we strongly believe in innovation and are proud of our search quality," he added. "We’ve invested thousands of person-years into developing our search algorithms because we want our users to get the right answer every time they search, and that’s not easy. We look forward to competing with genuinely new search algorithms out there—algorithms built on core innovation, and not on recycled search results from a competitor. So to all the users out there looking for the most authentic, relevant search results, we encourage you to come directly to Google. And to those who have asked what we want out of all this, the answer is simple: we’d like for this practice to stop." (emphasis added)

I’m guessing this won’t be the last thing said about the issue from either company. Things are growing more and more bitter between these search rivals. Google has repeatedly downplayed Apple and Facebook competition, claiming that Bing is their main competitor.

February 2, 2011
Google, Bing, and Blekko Talk Content Farms and Search Quality

Matt Cutts from Google, Harry Shum from Bing, and Rich Skrenta from Blekko spoke on a panel today at the Farsight Summit. Much of the conversation was around the Bing/Google results copying ordeal, but part of the conversation was about search quality in general, and the impact content farms are having on it.

Blekko announced this morning that it has banned eHow and other content farms from its results. See the full list here. Watch our recent interview with Skrenta about webspam here.

Cutts was quick to extend some praise to Blekko, saying they "made a great domain," and that he appreciates that they’ve done some interesting things lately, mentioning the spam clock, for example. He quickly followed that up by saying, "The fact is that we do use algorithms and that’s our first instinct, but when we see manual spam, we are willing to remove it manually."

He added that within Google, they could say certain domain names are webspam, but they’re trying to do things algorithmically. "We have a lot more projects that we’re working on," he added, appearing to suggest that Google’s not done with its content farm cleanup process – at least that’s how I interpreted it (something I suggested in a recent article).

Cutts said that when Google finds spam with its manual team, it also ejects it from Adsense, and that people tend to put the blame on AdSense, but even if that disappeared, we’d still have spam.

When asked what incentive Google would have to remove content from AdSense-driven pages that drive billions of dollars for the company, he just said that Google has always taken the philosophy that they care more about the long-time loyalty of users.

Then Demand Media was specifically brought up (as it has been by inquiring minds in other instances), but there was still plenty of vagueness. Cutts’ response was to mention a comment on Hacker News about how Demand Media had five articles on how to tie your shoes, then simply turn it around to "we don’t care if a site is running Google ads…we take action…we want to find an algorithmic solution."

Meanwhile, plenty of this type of content is still saturating Google SERPs. There are way more than five articles from eHow on fixing scratches in your car’s paint, as illustrated in another article:

Note: He did not say anything to the effect of "we don’t consider eHow a content farm."

Clearly Blekko is less shy about what it considers a content farm (again, see the list linked to above). Skrenta says "there’s more spam than good sites," and that it’s "easier to make a list of the sites that you actually want to go to. He notes that the top fifty medical sites have actual doctors and medical librarians creating and curating content (as opposed to what you might find from a site like eHow).

The Bing position appears to be to let Google lead the way in how to deal with search quality, which is kind of a fun position given the whole results-copying ordeal. Shum said Matt and Google need to "take this thing very seriously" because they and the industry are looking to the leader to make the web more fair and cleaner. He did say that they were also looking at Blekko and what others are saying about the topic as well.

February 1, 2011
Bing Responds to Claims It Cheats Off Of Google

As previously reported, Danny Sullivan revealed a "sting operation" set up by Google, which appears to show that Bing has been copying some of their search results. Bing has now responded with more than the canned statement it previously gave to reporters.

"We use over 1,000 different signals and features in our ranking algorithm. A small piece of that is clickstream data we get from some of our customers, who opt-in to sharing anonymous data as they navigate the web in order to help us improve the experience for all users," wrote Harry Shum, corporate VP at Bing in a blog post. "To be clear, we learn from all of our customers. What we saw in today’s story was a spy-novelesque stunt to generate extreme outliers in tail query ranking. It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we’ll take it as a back-handed compliment. But it doesn’t accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience."

"The history of the web and the improvement of a broad array of consumer and business experiences is actually the story of collective intelligence, from sharing HTML documents to hypertext links to click data and beyond. Many companies across the Internet use this collective intelligence to make their products better every day," Shum continued. "We all learn from our collective customers, and we all should."

"From its inception, we have had what we believe is a distinct approach to search, and the features and innovation in Bing – from our new user experience and visual organization approach to our focus on inferring user intent and helping customers complete complex tasks, Bing has added a new voice and new experiences to search," he added. "We never set out to build another version of an existing search engine."

That post came before Shum joined Matt Cutts and Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta on a panel at the Farsight Summit. It was discussion around this topic, which dominated the conversation. Most of the time was spent with Shum and Cutts going back and forth on the subject, though much in the way of new information came to light.

Essentially Cutts maintained the Google position of "Bing’s cheating", and Shum maintained the position described above.

"My view is that we just discovered a new form of spam or click fraud and the Google engineers helped us to figure it out," Shum said at the event, adding that he wishes people could share things like that with them before taking it to the press and getting a "wow effect".

He also said that it would be great if he and Matt could compare signals that they could use.

Right.

He also said Google needs to be more transparent. Matt said he thinks Google is about as transparent as it can be without giving away signals that would let people spam the search engine.

Shum did play the "Google has a toolbar too" card, but Cutts said users see "big red capital letters" letting them know about the data sharing as soon as they install it.

What it all boils down to is that Microsoft is looking at user clicks whether they are using Bing, Google, Blekko, or whatever, but Google is not, according to Cutts. "We don’t use clicks from Bing’s users in Google’s rankings," he said.

February 1, 2011
eBay Attracts Employees From Bing, Facebook

eBay lost an important employee last week (the VP of product development at PayPal jumped to Google) but things are now looking up on the personnel front. The company’s managed to poach one staff member each from Bing and Facebook, and both men have rather impressive resumes.

Let’s discuss them in alphabetical order. Dennis DeCoste hails from Facebook, where he held the title "research scientist." Before that, he served as principal scientist at Bing and director of research at Yahoo Research. Then, to go even further back, DeCoste once worked as principal scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Now DeCoste will help eBay by acting as its director of research, according to Tricia Duryee.

The second new guy is Scott Prevost, and Duryee reported that he will assume the title "VP of product management on search." Prevost used to serve as principal development manager at Bing, and got that role by acting as general manager and director of product at Powerset before Microsoft acquired it.

Prevost also held down jobs at the Fuji-Xerox Palo Alto Laboratory and the MIT Media Lab earlier in his career.

All in all, then, eBay seems to have secured some real assets. It should be interesting to see what DeCoste and Prevost accomplish in their new positions.

February 1, 2011
Bing-Alibaba Relationship Stumbles In China

It looks like Microsoft isn’t going to defy Google and Baidu and achieve a great victory in China anytime soon. Three and a half months after it began, a partnership involving Bing and a search engine owned by Alibaba has already ended.

To be fair, little is known about the situation, and it could have been someone at Microsoft who pulled the plug. The comments of one Microsoft representative hint that a corporate memo didn’t exactly go around, however.

Owen Fletcher reported, "Pilot cooperation between Microsoft Corp.’s Bing search engine and Alibaba Group search website Etao has ended, a spokeswoman for a Microsoft joint venture in China said Monday."

Then Fletcher continued, "The spokeswoman for Shanghai MSN Network Communications Technology Co., a Microsoft joint venture that operates Bing in China, said she was unsure when the cooperation ended and called it ‘uncertain’ whether it would be restored."

That’s less than encouraging news for Microsoft supporters, since a different representative labeled China "the most important strategic market for Microsoft" in late 2009, and Steve Ballmer didn’t back down during the Google hacking brouhaha.

On the bright side, Bing remains in beta in China, so it’s not as if Microsoft has already put lots of time and energy into making the venture succeed.

January 31, 2011
Google Edges Bing For Visual Attention

The top three paid positions on Google attract more visual attention than the top three links on Bing, according to a new report from research firm User Centric.

Study outcomes showed a comparable number of participants viewing top sponsored links (~90 percent) across both search engines. However, these participants spent 22 percent more time looking at Google’s top sponsored links than Bing’s. For right sponsored links, Bing and Google didn’t significantly differ in the amount of attention.

Comparing sponsored links on top to those on the right in general, the study found the "eye hit rate" on the top to be at least three times higher and gaze time to be at least five times longer than on the sponsored links on the right.

Before making the first click, participants spent 27 percent more time looking at organic search results on Google than on Bing.

"While more gaze time is good for sponsored results, the opposite is true for organic results," said Aga Bojko, User Centric’s Chief Scientist.

"Taking longer to make a decision and scanning more results may suggest lower perceived search results relevancy on Google. According to past research, users tend to scan search results until they find the first suitable link to click, so more time spent on Google could mean it took longer to find a link worth clicking."

January 29, 2011
Twitter Adds Bing’s Principal Scientist To Employee List

"Principal scientist" is an important-sounding title, and it’s hard to imagine any person holding it wouldn’t contribute a lot to his or her company. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it looks like Bing’s principal scientist was lured away by Twitter.

Nothing’s been confirmed through official channels just yet, but Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote late yesterday with respect to Alek Kolcz, "[W]e noticed tonight that he’s been added to the list of staff members on the Twitter website." And that sort of thing probably doesn’t happen by accident too often.

So let’s consider what sort of employee Kolcz has been and will be. He’s held the position of principal scientist for almost two years after spending some time as a scientist for Microsoft Live Labs.

As for what sort of work he’s done, Kolcz conducts research in the areas of machine learning, data mining, and information retrieval, according to his LinkedIn profile. His specialties then include spam filtering and content-based personalization, among other things.

Finally, although Kolcz might or might not have had a hand in this, we should remember that Bing and Twitter have worked closely together in the past.

It should be interesting to see what Kolcz manages to accomplish for his new employer.

January 27, 2011
Bing Makes Image Search More Interesting

Bing has introduced a new landing page style for its image search feature. Now when you go to Bing, and click on "images", you will be presented with a page that graphically displays the top 20 current image searches and images that accompany them.

"The landing page assembles the top images in full fidelity so you can get a quick snap-shot of some of the most popular image searches on Bing," says the Bing Image Search team. "Once you click through to the ‘images’ page you will notice that we’ve populated the tabs with the most common search queries associated with a given image. With one simple click, you can narrow down the images to find just what you’re looking for or be inspired to discover more."

Images have always been one of Bing’s strong suits, from the style of scrolling the search engine offers on image search results, which was later copied by Google, to the Bing home page, which displays a photo of the day, which was kind of also copied by Google.

It will be interesting to see if Google adopts a similar strategy with its image search landing page after this. Currently, Google just has the plain page with the Google logo/search box, which resembles the search engine’s classic home page. Bing’s new approach is certainly more interesting.

"The landing page assembles the top images in full fidelity so you can get a quick snap-shot of some of the most popular image searches on Bing," Bing explains. "Once you click through to the ‘images’ page you will notice that we’ve populated the tabs with the most common search queries associated with a given image. With one simple click, you can narrow down the images to find just what you’re looking for or be inspired to discover more."

Other recently added features to the Bing search engine include TV listings and sports ticketing information, as well as enhanced auto search results.

January 24, 2011
Steve Ballmer Comments on Obama’s Appointment of GE CEO Immelt to Jobs Council

President Obama appointed General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt as chairman of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

Having worked with Immelt in the past, Ballmer apparently wanted the world to know where he stands. He released the following statement on the Official Microsoft blog:

"Jeff Immelt and I started our careers together at Proctor & Gamble, and I have enormous respect for the success he’s had at GE. He is an ideal business leader to chair the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and help drive a focus on what we can all do to increase American competitiveness and create new jobs."

Microsoft is all about some competitiveness lately, as evidenced by the company recently joining Fairsearch, the coalition ruffling Google’s feathers over its pending acquisition of ITA Software.

Yesterday during Google’s earnings call, Schmidt managed to sneak in a jab at Microsoft (at least that’s how we interpreted it) by saying that Googe’s competitors are assisting in spreading misinformation about competition.

Schmidt has referred to Bing as its main competitor in recent months, and Google told us a while back, "Microsoft is our largest competitor and lobbies regulators against every acquisition we make."

January 21, 2011
Bing Reaches Out To BlackBerry Users

BlackBerry users who feel ignored every time a report on the mobile industry stops after comparing Android devices and the iPhone have reason to be grateful to Bing. Today, Bing for Mobile updates were announced that will bring the app to more BlackBerry users, add new features, and improve the overall experience to boot.

Let’s start with the subject of compatibility. Thanks to the updates, the app will now work on devices running BlackBerry OS6, meaning early adopters won’t be denied the chance to use Bing. And traditionally, that’s been an important group of people for tech organizations to reach and satisfy.

As for the new features, the more self-explanatory ones are a safe search option, image search, "What’s Nearby," and instant answers related to airplane flights.

Then, just as a Bing user might see on his or her desktop, there are also "Homepage Hotspots." A post on the Bing Search Blog explained, "If you have a little time to spend and want to explore the day’s image, point around it until you find a hotspot. Hidden in the image, hotspots are intended intrigue and inform you. If you look, you’ll find four of them every day. Each gives you a chance to find out more about the subject of the image."

Finally, general performance improvements should make everybody happy.

It’ll be interesting to see if these updates help Bing increase its mobile search share.

January 20, 2011
Facebook: Bing Scam Site Was Never Advertiser, Let Alone 3rd Largest

Updated – See below.

AdAge published an article that sent ripples throughout the blogosphere with some questionable information. While not the basis of the article (that was mainly about how Facebook has become a dominant force in advertising), the article suggested that "the third-biggest advertiser [on Facebook] was a completely unknown brand called Make-My-Baby.com, citing "ComScore’s third-quarter analysis."

As more information has surfaced throughout the day, we’ve learned that comScore claimed (in an email to Danny Sullivan) that "Make-my-baby was not one of the top advertisers on Facebook." It remains unclear whether comScore was just initially wrong and AdAge passed on the wrong info, or whether the inaccuracy started with AdAge.

Brandon McCormick, a spokesperson for Facebook itself, tells WebProNews, "Not only is make-my-baby.com not one of our largest advertisers, they are not an advertiser at all. In fact, their practices are against our ad policies and would be rejected as a result. This is true whether they tried to run ads with us or an affiliate did."

So let’s back up for a minute. The practices referred to, which are the practices that made this a compelling story from the get go, were that make-my-baby.com was forcing users to install a toolbar that switched their default search to Bing, as the site was apparently run by a company trying to capitalize on a Microsoft affiliate program.

Google’s Matt Cutts, who discovered the practice and wrote about it on Google Buzz last night, noted that he was quickly able to find additional sites that were doing the same thing. All of this led to us questioning how much of this was actually taking place, and whether it could be playing a role in Bing’s impressive growth. I think this is still a valid question, but there is a pretty big difference between such a site being one of the top advertisers on the world’s largest social network (with 1.75 billion impressions, as reported by AdAge), and not advertising on Facebook at all. That greatly changes things in terms of reach.

While it was never my intent to suggest that Bing owed its impressive growth entirely to sites like this, it seemed possible that it could at least be padded to some extent, and could still be even if to a much, much lesser extent.

Either way, the whole thing appears to have worked out for the best, as a Microsoft spokesperson told us, "Distribution deals and affiliate programs are an important part of how all search engines introduce their product to customers. That said, we have been made aware of some practices from a specific publisher that are not compliant with the guidelines, best practices and principles put in place by Bing. As a result, the relationship with this publisher will be terminated."

So, for now, the mystery remains how AdAge came up with the idea that make-my-baby.com was the third largest advertiser on Facebook, if ComScore, the alleged source has denied the information. The original AdAge article has yet to be updated as of the time of this writing. We’ll update further as more info comes to light.

Update: Sullivan was sent a copy of the comScore report by AdAge. Apparently the confusion stemmed from make-my-baby.com being listed as the third largest adertiser in social networking, based on comScore’s information – a category, which was comprised of Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites). So while the site may not have been a big advertiser on Facebook, it would appear that it was still a big social media advertiser – and still a problem.

January 18, 2011
Is Bing Growth Being Inflated By Shady Sites?
Article updated. See below. I have also posted a new piece based on new information that has come to light.

Facebook took in an estimated $1.86 billion in advertising revenue last year, according to eMarketer, and AdvertisingAge says that the top two advertisers were AT&T and Match.com. Google was number five.

It is the third-largest advertiser on Facebook, however, that has raised a few eyebrows, including those of Google’s Matt Cutts. The advertiser is something called make-my-baby.com – not a well-known brand that you’d expect to see in the top three.

Update: Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineLand writes: "An Ad Age article suggests that Make-My-Baby is Facebook’s third largest advertiser, based on a comScore report. But comScore tells me this isn’t so." That certainly changes things, but it is still unclear where the confusion stems from, and it doesn’t really change what is happening, even if the ads aren’t being shown on as large a scale as initially thought (reports stemming from that AdAge piece have make-my-baby.com, which has now been taken down, buying 1.75 billion ad impressions in the third quarter alone).

Have you been to any sites lately that urged you to install a browser plug-in changing you default search? Let us know.

Cutts, the head of Google’s webspam team, said the following in a Google Buzz update early this morning (via Marshall Kirkpatrick, who has an interesting write-up of the situation):

Visiting make-my-baby.com instantly prompts you to install a browser plugin. The "terms and conditions" link takes you to http://mmb.bingstart.com/terms/ which has phrases like "If Chrome ("CR") is installed on your PC we may change the default setting of your home page on CR to Bingstart.com."

I also noticed this phrase in the Zugo toolbar section: "To uninstall the Toolbar, please visit the Toolbar FAQ ( http://www.zugo.com/toolbar/faq/ )." Sadly, that url is a broken link. It looks like a few people have had trouble uninstalling the Bing/Zugo toolbar, according to pages like http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/746034 or http://mymountain.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-to-remove-bingzugo-toolbar-hijack.html

If make-my-baby.com is Facebook’s 3rd biggest advertiser, I wonder how many people are installing this software without reading the fine print that says "Installing the toolbar includes managing the browser default search settings and setting your homepage to bing.com" ?

The toolbar comes from a company called Zugo (as Cutts mentioned), which is apparently an affiliate company trying to drive traffic to Bing so it can make some money from Microsoft. After some discussion about the find, Cutts also says, "It’s entirely possible, even likely, that FB and MSFT didn’t realize this was going on. I wouldn’t assume they were aware of what was going on."

Cutts did point this out to Bing publicly via Twitter, but there has been no response from Bing thus far (at least publicly).

@bing was reading http://goo.gl/CQIze and found some interesting stuff: http://goo.gl/1jac9 They bought 1.75M ad impressions on FB in Q3?less than a minute ago via webMatt Cutts
mattcutts

At the time of this writing, both Microsoft and Facebook have been silent on the matter (we’ve reached out to both for comment, and will certainly update if we get a response).

Update: We’ve now received comment from a Microsoft spokesperson, who tells us:
```
"Distribution deals and affiliate programs are an important part of how all search engines introduce their product to customers. That said, we have been made aware of some practices that are in conflict with Bing's principles and are addressing them directly with this affiliate partner." 
```
Update 2: We’ve now received an updated comment from a Microsoft spokesperson, which now says:
```
"Distribution deals and affiliate programs are an important part of how all search engines introduce their product to customers.   That said, we have been made aware of some practices from a specific publisher that are not compliant with the guidelines, best practices and principles put in place by Bing. As a result, the relationship with this publisher will be terminated."
```
Update 3: We finally received comment from Facebook, and this one definitely changes things. Facebook’s Brandon McCormick tells us, "Not only is make-my-baby.com not one of our largest advertisers, they are not an advertiser at all. In fact, their practices are against our ad policies and would be rejected as a result. This is true whether they tried to run ads with us or an affiliate did."

It would appear AdAge got some bad info, that set this whole chain of events into motion. I will be posting another piece on this with more clarification.

One has to wonder how much of Bing’s growth can be attributed to practices like this. It might not be a substantial amount, but on the other hand…third largest advertiser on Facebook? And this is just one example of a site like this. It didn’t take Cutts long to find several more with a quick search. There’s no telling how many site like this are actually out there.

"It’s pretty remarkable that even at the top of this giant success story of Facebook advertising, and perhaps near the top of the story of Bing’s steady rise as a search engine, is a Web 1.0-style pulling the wool over the eyes of gullible internet users," says Kirkpatrick.

Bing’s share of the search market rose from 11.8% to 12.0% from November to December, according to comScore numbers released last week.

It’s worth noting, as mentioned by a commenter in the Buzz conversation, that Cutts broke this story using Google Buzz, which goes to show – it doesn’t matter if the site is called Twitter, Quora, or Google Buzz – if there is interesting content there, it’s got to have some value.

Webspam in a growing problem. Watch our exclusive interview with Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta, who talks about the trend.

Update: Sullivan was sent a copy of the comScore report by AdAge. Apparently the confusion stemmed from make-my-baby.com being listed as the third largest adertiser in social networking, based on comScore’s information – a category, which was comprised of Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites). So while the site may not have been a big advertiser on Facebook, it would appear that it was still a big social media advertiser – and still a problem.

SEE NEW PIECE ON TOPIC WITH UPDATED INFO.

Do you think sites like make-my-baby.com have contributed to Bing’s growth? Share your thoughts.
January 18, 2011
U.S. Paid Search Rebounded In 2010

U.S. paid search made solid gains in 2010 with 18.5 percent growth year-over-year, according to a new report from SearchIgnite.

The fourth quarter (Q4) showed strong growth, increasing 35.5 percent YoY with December leading the quarter at 44.8 percent YoY growth. The Q4 holiday season indicated improved consumer sentiment, with the average order value (AOV) up 31.3 percent YoY compared to a 13 percent decrease in 2009.

“2010 proved to be a great year for search advertising as the search market recovered from the downturn,” said Roger Barnette, CEO of SearchIgnite.

“Even more promising is the revival of consumer spend throughout the year and the strength of Average Order Values in Q4. We expect 2011 to be a strong year for search and online advertising overall.”

Other findings in the report include:

*Retail saw significant increases in search spend in Q4 (up 36.6% YoY)

*All other underlying metrics in Q4 show positive results with 20.6% YoY increase in clicks, 2.3% YoY increase in impressions and 17.9% YoY increase in click-through rates.

*Google’s share of advertising spend in Q4 increased to 82.6%, up from 80.2% in Q3. Yahoo/Bing accounted for 17.4% of Q4 spend.

January 18, 2011
Golden Globes Info Can Be Found with Bing and MSN Features

Bing announced some special features for the Golden Globes, for those who are unable to watch the ceremony this evening. One feature is called Golden Globe Instant Answer, and is essentially what its name implies.

You can search Bing for "Golden Globes" and get an instant answer at the top of the results, showing relevant content. Here you can see nominees, past winners, etc.

Another feature, Golden Globe Visual Search Gallery, lets you check out nominees in all the different categories visually. "Whether you’re looking for ‘best original score’ or ‘best motion picture’, you can sort by category in a matter of clicks," says the Bing team.

Microsoft also has a Golden Globes guide that you can check out to catch up. "To help prime you for the ceremony, MSN Entertainment has created a guide for the event with comprehensive coverage on the nominees, red carpet coverage from the event, photos and videos of the stars and even the latest celebrity news," the Bing team says.

The content will of course be updated as the ceremony goes on and afterwards, so if you can’t watch it, but are interested in the results, this should be a good place to find what you’re looking for.

Granted, the results will no doubt be all over Twitter, Facebook, Google, and everywhere else on the web.

January 16, 2011
comScore Assigns Gains To Google, Bing In December

New stats from comScore are out, and as seen by the research firm, it seems the December search market was an eventful place. Google and Bing both managed to increase their market shares, while Yahoo saw a somewhat substantial drop occur.

Let’s start at the top. According to comScore, Google’s market share rose to 66.6 percent, putting it a rounded decimal point away from being the search engine used by two-thirds of Americans (if you figure that 66 and two-thirds would round up to 66.7).

What’s more, Google’s market share rose from 66.2 percent between November and December, meaning it made a real gain, and didn’t just sort of oscillate.

As for Yahoo, its share decreased from 16.4 percent to 16.0 percent in the same period, which could be something shareholders will interrogate Carol Bartz about when the company delivers its first-quarter earnings report.

Finally, Bing’s market share rose from 11.8 percent to 12.0 percent on a month-over-month basis, and while that’s good, it obviously wasn’t enough to put the Bing-Yahoo joint venture up on the whole.

All this may be something Google’s shareholders bring up soon enough, too, but with a rather different perspective than Yahoo’s supporters.

January 14, 2011
Bing-Yahoo Transition Moves Forward In Australia, Brazil, Mexico

Australia, Brazil, and Mexico have populations of 22.5 million, 190.7 million, and 112.3 million people, respectively. Which adds up to 325.5 million potential users, all in all. It’s a big deal, then, that the Bing-Yahoo search transition progressed in these three countries today.

Kartik Ramakrishnan, who holds the very relevant title "Vice President, Yahoo Search Transition," wrote on the Yahoo Search Blog, "As planned, we are moving forward with the global transition of certain Yahoo! Search back-end functions to Microsoft’s search platform, and have just completed this process for organic search in Australia, Brazil and Mexico."

Then Ramakrishnan added, "This news is another step forward for the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance as we continue our efforts for a quality transition with our worldwide advertisers and partners."

So it sounds like everything is on schedule and going according to plan. That’s good news for both companies, and for their users and investors. (Remember, Yahoo in particular thinks this deal will save it money, meaning the sooner the transition process is completed, the better.)

One other important point: Ramakrishnan promised to provide additional updates as Bing and Yahoo continue to integrate their search operations around the world, so stay tuned.

January 13, 2011