Google and Bing Drop the Gloves

If you haven’t been following the SEO Twitter stream today, Danny Sullivan posted an article on Search Engine Land proving that Bing is copying data from Google’s search results. Danny explains how Google caught Bing cheating by setting up a search engine sting. They created a method of manipulating their own algorithm to manually insert results for unique queries that no one would ever search for. They then sent their own engineers home and told them to search for these terms in Google while using Internet Explorer with the Bing toolbar installed and the option for Suggested Sites turned on. They then found that some of their manually inserted results for those terms were showing up on Bing for the exact same irrelevant terms.

Bing’s response, also published today on Search Engine Land, is that what Google did was a novelesque stunt which happened to coincide with their own Search press conference being held today. However, they do admit that they use customer search data. They don’t deny that they’ve been using the data – in fact, they’re praising what they’re doing as being innovative. They argue that they are learning from their customers, that all of the search engines do it.

That is where things are holding right now. I have a few issues with this. People are calling out Google for using data obtained from users as well, as they do with the Google Toolbar, Chrome, Gmail, Docs, and the like. Microsoft, Google, Facebook, how much of our data do they actually gather and use? How closely does Google look when I store stuff in Docs or on Gmail?

I sign up for a lot of stuff that always says you have to read all of the terms of use. I usually just click on the box that says I accept and continue on to the next step of the sign up, installation, or whatever it is. I don’t think I can count on my two hands the number of people that I know who actually read all of that small, legal mumbo-jumbo. So what that Bing can come and say, hey, we’ve written in our terms of service that we can use your data? No one actually reads that stuff! While it may legally allow you to do whatever you want, it’s not right. In fact, I very well could have clicked on the little box and then clicked next and agreed to donate a kidney, sell my car, or quit using a computer and never talk again. I can honestly say I’ve never read one of those texts, and probably never will, unless I was forced to or for the express purposes of this post. So it doesn’t make sense to justify what you’re doing by saying it’s all there in the terms of service.

And Google, what’s up with the manual tweak of the algorithm? I thought you guys said you would never do that. If you can tweak the algorithm, why not fix lots of results that should be fixed. Instead of issuing an ad with a disclaimer about offensive results when you search for the word Jew, which only takes you to this page if you notice the ad enough to click on it (lots of people ignore ads completely), why not manually insert relevant results for such a query? With the tweaking of the algorithm, now that you can manually fix results, why not do this for a legitimate purpose, besides for catching Bing taking data from you. Why not use this tool for something that actually matters and isn’t just a fight between the two biggest kids in the playground?