Bing Probe Possible Click Fraud and Honeypot Attack

Added by Annika L. Krugel on February 8, 2011

Wednesday Google took a hit from Microsoft when they were accused of stealing Google’s search results to use for its Bing search engine and it also accused Google of launching a honeypot attack in which Google was going after Bing’s growth.

The senior vice president for Microsoft’s Online Services Division, Yusuf Mehdi, wrote in a blog post, “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.”

He also went on to state that Microsoft does not copy their results from anyone. Mehdi was also very insistent that the investigation that Google conducted did not have any results that anyone in the industry did not already know.

Search Engine Land published a story on Tuesday that stated Bing was copying their search results from Google. Later Google confirmed that they had launched a test that proved its suspicions. The tests that were conducted took place from December 17^th through December 31^st. Only 9 out of 100 tests showed that Google results were showing up on Bing.

However, Microsoft remains calm by simply stating that Google was just worried about Bing making progress.