Details of the operations are explained in-depth at Search Engine Land, but essentially Google has been monitoring Bing search results and found that their Redmond, Washington-based rival was returning an unusually high number of similar sites as Google for incorrectly spelled search terms.

In the example that was presented at Search Engine Land, a user types in ‘torsoraphy,’ which is a mis-spelled word. Google’s search results shows that ‘tarsorrhaphy’ was the intended word and displays results for the correctly spelled word, displaying a Wikipedia entry for the correct spelling as the top search result.

On the other hand, Bing just displays results for the correctly spelled word without showing the spelling correction, and the same Wikipedia entry, sending red flags to Google’s search engineers.

Across a wide range of searches, Bing was showing a much greater overlap with Google’s top 10 results than in preceding months. In addition, there was an increase in the percentage of times both Google and Bing listed exactly the same page in the number one spot.

By no means did Bing have exactly the same search results as Google. There were plenty of queries where the listings had major differences. However, the increases were indicative that Bing had made some change to its search algorithm which was causing its results to be more Google-like.

Google thought Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser was part of the equation. Somehow, IE users might have been sending back data of what they were doing on Google to Bing. In particular, Google told me it suspected either the Suggested Sites feature in IE or the Bing toolbar might be doing this.

To see if its claims were valid, Google had set up a Sting operation, which essentially involved setting up a one-time code, which would be removed. The code would force search results that had little or no relevance to certain key words–mainly irrelevant gibberish–when searched. If those same results were to appear in Bing later, Microsoft would have its hand caught in the cookie jar:

To verify its suspicions, Google set up a sting operation. For the first time in its history, Google crafted one-time code that would allow it to manually rank a page for a certain term (code that will soon be removed, as described further below). It then created about 100 of what it calls “synthetic” searches, queries that few people, if anyone, would ever enter into Google.

These searches returned no matches on Google or Bing — or a tiny number of poor quality matches, in a few cases — before the experiment went live. With the code enabled, Google placed a honeypot page to show up at the top of each synthetic search.

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

The results began appearing on Bing in late December, suggesting that Microsoft had been mimicking Google in the search space.

Though Bing may be using user activity at Google to help improve its search results and algorithms, there are enough differences between the results of the two search engines that suggests that Microsoft may be incorporating other factors into results:

Google’s test suggests that when Bing has many of the traditional signals, as is likely for popular search topics, it relies mostly on those. But in cases where Bing has fewer trustworthy signals, such as “long tail” searches that bring up fewer matches, then Bing might lean more on how Google ranks pages for those searches.

For now, though, Microsoft reps are flatly denying copying Google. Google’s sting operation in the search space is an interesting read and you should head to Search Engine Land to learn more.

Via: Gizmodo

Google’s Bing Sting Operation Has Microsoft Stung is a post by Chuong Nguyen from Notebooks.com.

site:notebooks.com google search

That is simple enough, but for some reason I can never seem to remember if you put the site:notebooks.com first or last. Now Google is trying to make this even simpler. Now all you have to do is put the word at” and the site name after your search string like the following:

google search at notebooks.com

You will notice that when doing the search the two different ways it does not produce the same results. See the below the first image is using the old way putting site:notebooks.com before the string.

The image below is using the new method of putting at notebooks.com after the search.

If you compare the two you will see that the new method really doesn’t work that well. It includes too many other sites because it doesn’t seem to recognize notebooks.com as a web site but just another search string. In my tests it works fine with very well-known sites like Microsoft.com or hp.com. But unless the site is one of the extremely large web sites, it doesn’t seem to recognize the website name. I even tried entering the http://www part of the address and that didn’t even work. So until this works better, you will still have to remember the site:notebooks.com method.

Here are two more examples that show this new search method is of limited value.

As you can see I searched for my favorite football team the Green Bay Packers at NFL, as in http://www.nfl.com. Only a few of the top results are at that site.

Here is a search for Apple iPad at Amazon, as in http://www.amazon.com.

Again, there are only a couple of hits that are actually at the Amazon web site.

This shows it is still best to use the site:www.yourdomain.com string before your search string to find things at that site consistently.

Google’s New Site Specific Search String Not Really Working is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

For as long as Google has been around, they have presented a simple mostly white search site. The philosophy seemed to be “less is more” with Google. But when Microsoft introduced Bing, they also had a very simple search page but presented some very beautiful images as backgrounds. Now Google is doing the same as you can see from the screen capture below.

Is Bing having an effect on Google? Seems like it. Google doesn’t have the popup hotspots that give info about the image like Bing. If they add the feature then you will know for sure that Google is paying attention to the competition. Now that Bing has nearly 10 percent of the search market in the US, it seems like a good idea for Google to keep tabs on them.

Bing doesn’t have one thing Google’s search background does. With Google you can customize the background. In Bing you can just scroll through the most recent default images.

It is hard to see in the above image, but in the lower left corner is a link that says, “Change Background Image”. Click it and a box pops up with many more to choose from.

As you can see form the above screen shot you are not tied to just their chosen images. You can also pick from images on your computer, your Picasa Web Albums, if you have one, and the special Editor’s picks. After you select your new image, if you do not like it, just select “Remove Background Image” from the same area that the “Change Background Image” link was found.

Having a background image showing is apparently temporary. When I tried to find out how to totally remove it for this article I found a link that said the following:

… Google’s homepage has a series of photos on it to celebrate our new Change background image link. Please be assured these images will only be displayed today, and the homepage will return to its regular white background tomorrow.

So starting tomorrow, if you like the new background image feature, you can turn it on. But it seems that it will be off by default. If you can’t wait till tomorrow, and want to change to a single color which may be less distracting, follow these instructions:

1. Click the Add background image link in the Google homepage’s lower-left corner

2. Sign in to your Google Account (if you aren’t already signed in)

3. Select Editor’s picks

4. Scroll to the bottom of the list and choose your favorite color

5. Click Select

Doing this will change the print on the Google home page to white so that it shows up on the new background color. So pick a color that will display white text well.

I personally welcome the change. I really like the images offered and may upload one of my own. Until I do, here is the one I picked from the Editor’s Picks list.

Which one do you like the best? Will you turn it on or stay with the default white background when it returns tomorrow?

Google Introduces Customizable Background Images on Home Page is a post by Kevin Purcell from Notebooks.com.

Rob Bushway put together a pre-release demo of Bing last week, but now you can try it yourself.

Of course I’m glad to see Notebooks.com come up first for the search term “notebooks,” but it seems a little excessive to put this site in first, second and third.

Google is my default search engine and while Bing has some user-friendly features, I’m primarily interested in the quality of simple text searches on a day to day basis. Only time will tell if Bing has what it takes to take on Google.

Microsoft’s Bing is Live is a post by Xavier Lanier from Notebooks.com.

Microsoft has a promotional video of Bing at this link.

Microsoft Announces Bing Search Engine is a post by Truc from Notebooks.com.