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The searchengine wars certainly just took an interesting turn. According to Search Engine Land, Google just completed a sting operation of sorts, proving that Bing is copying search results. The Bing Toolbar is used to watch what users search for on Google, the sites that the users end up clicking on after the search is complete, and then use that data to improve their own search results. According to Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow in charge of ranking algorithms, Bing is simply cheating.

“I’ve spent my career in pursuit of a good search engine. I’ve got no problem with a competitor developing an innovative algorithm. But copying is not innovation, in my book.”

 

The spell correction that Google uses in its engine was used to first spot the possible monitoring by Bing. Results given by Google after correcting a misspelling were being given by Bing without correcting the spelling. After analyzing data and realizing that something fishy may be afoot, Google devised a plan to uncover what was really going on. This operation would mark the first time Google has tampered with its own search results, and it shows how important this was to them.  Google made a honeypot search result that would pop up if a user typed in a totally illogical word. For example, if you typed in a string like “afdgeissoxss”, Google would return a page discussing the historical relevance of unicorns. After a while, Bing search results would show the unicorn page as a result for the illogical string.

Although caught red-handed, Microsoft is not backing down; in fact, they admit that this kind of activity was going on in some fashion.

Neowin has the details HERE!