Microsoft’s new Bing search engine just can’t seem to stay out of the red light district, no matter how hard they try.
There’s no denying it is hands down the best porn search engine on the planet (although ChaCha is pretty good too). But Bing also had a snafu with Google ads that showed the search engine for “pornography” queries. Google took the blame for that one (see updates to that post), and at least it only showed up for people actually querying the adult term.
Now, a new controversy has popped up around a Microsoft ad unit that scrapes a page for content and then shows relevant Bing queries. The ads normally work fine. But last week Bing started showing an ad unit that contained sexually explicit terms, including at least one that I had never heard of before (the swizzle stick). Best of all, the ads were displayed on a WonderHowTo web page showing only Home & Garden content.
You can see the queries that were self-generated by Bing for the ad unit in the image. This isn’t just R-rated run of the mill porn stuff. This is stuff that’s still illegal in some states. Particularly that top query.
Microsoft is saying this is a bug, and they’ve taken down all of these ad units on all sites until they understand what happened. The unit is supposed to scrape only the page being viewed. In this case, WonderHowTo has sexually explicit content on other areas of the site, which may be triggering the ad content.
Said Microsoft’s Senior Director Online Audience Business Group Adam Sohn, who wasn’t too happy with the ad: “We are very cognizant of what we want the Bing brand to stand for, and this is not it.”
My response – “well, at least it’s educational.”
LOL.. MA you love your job don’t you!?
I learn something new every day. Like what the swizzle stick is.
I’m glad I have safesearch mode turned on for your posts MA.
Sizzlestick is food or a cartoon. Perfect.
I meant swizzle
exactly.
if only those states would collect a fine for each bj taken, they’d be able to afford many ’stimulus packages’
I just love Bing! Hilarious, its going down as the most entertaining search engine in my books, who knew Home & Garden content could be so…uhmmm….sticky!
im gonna use bing more often just because of this
wonderhowto.com is legit.
their content filtering and curation process is water-tight
microsoft should compensate for blasting such gross ads at their users!
microsoft should cut wonderhowto.com a damages check for such an offensive ad blasted at their users.
i think wonderhowto is very happy this happened.
I actually use Bing on my lunch break for a laugh. After my initial road test that showed that I couldn’t find anything relevant on my searches 96 times out of 100, I gave up on using it as a serious search engine. Now it’s my lunch time relaxation and laugh tool. It’s hilarious to see what it comes up with next when you search for the most innocuous words and phrases.
whatever.
+1
and Michael, I know you are smiling within
“I couldn’t find anything relevant on my searches 96 times out of 100″
That would be your low IQ coming into play.
Iterating fast includes some risks (clearly) and knowing users will help identify new test cases for future releases.
So what is a swizzle stick? Other than the drink stirring kind.
Bing it.
i did http://www.bing...q=swizzle+stick
and bing returns TechChuck but not TechCrunch.
repeat after me: bing is not a verb.
Yebol.com can filter out adult search results.
Ironically, the word “Yebol” means something X-rated in Russian.
LOL! Really? So, what does it mean?
What does the Boiling Point of Water have anything to do with this? Or are those periods hiding something?
Bing
verb: bing – bang – bang
TC on the first page of Google SERP for Swizzle Stick, Good SEO work Mike. i was 99.9% sure of that and below link proves it.
http://www.goog...78&ie=UTF-8
1) Bing has a poor implementation / integration with Powerset (the search engine, acquired by MS, that powers Bing to search Wikipedia).
Quite often results in Bing would have broken links going to Powerset while they should go to Wikipedia.
Here is an example:
http://www.bing...amp;form=hphot2
Click on Please *help improve* this article by
You get:
http://www.powe...ker?action=edit
AGE NOT FOUND (404)
Sorry, but we can’t find the page that you’re looking for.
Try a new search
2) Google (at least for the first 10 years of its existence) from the search results page would send you to the actual content page.
Bing, however, wraps content from Wikipedia into Bing’s skin and keeps you inside Bing. Well, if I wanted to search for answers in Wikipedia, I would go to Wikipedia and search there, so what’s the point of Bing?
Thanks very much for your feedback. At Bing, we are constantly working to integrate user feedback and improve user experience. With respect to the integration of Powerset technology within Bing – The Powerset team has been hard at work integrating our semantically indexed Wikipedia pages and adding lots of cool new functionality that we hope provides a great user experience while navigation through the Wikipedia content on Bing. Find out more about our reference features here: http://www.bing...eference-2.aspx
As we continue to work towards bringing you great knowledge & tightening up the integration, we are fixing small kinks and apologize for the inconvenience it might have caused you in the meantime. Additionally, we have some really exciting features in the works designed to help you read, scan, and explore Wikipedia content, as well as connect to related content beyond Wikipedia, and pinpoint the exact details of what you are looking for. Stay tuned to the Powerset blog on the Bing community site for more information, http://www.bing.../blogs/powerset.
owned.
i think this is conspiracy against bing… google lovers are hating bing since it is great and they are doing everything to stop BING….
Microsoft lacks of really NEW ideas to beat Google and things like the “visual search” are simply useless
so, there are high probabilities that my prediction of a fusion of Bing and Yahoo! in 2010 and of a BingHoo! sold to Google in 2012 for $1 (after lots of billion$ lost) could really come true:
ht
tp://newgo
os.blogspot.co
m/2009/05/why-bing-will-be-sold-for-1-in-2012.ht
ml
and, soon, Google will “eat” also the Microsoft OS market:
ht
tp://newgo
os.blogspot.co
m/2008/09/goos-screenshot-on-sony-vaio.ht
ml
and the Xbox/PS3/Wii games market:
ht
tp://newgo
os.blogspot.co
m/2009/08/new.ht
ml
if Microsoft will not change its strategy, within five years, it will be no longer an IT company, but only a Wikipedia article… :[
.
That would be an awful world. I look forward to the day when people stop thinking of google as the scrappy underdog and instead as the Monolith it is. MS and Google competing head to head is great for everyone, and keeps them honest. Look no further than google’s privacy policy to see what happens when you have no market options.
Case in point: It is very easy to map an annonymized user id of some sort to the real person. Point 2: your sexual preferences, medical history, political bias, etc…, is also easy to discern from session data. Point 3: that google toolbar you have up there in the top right of your browser is tracking every single website you go to, with an annonymous user id (see point 1), except https websites. There are tens of thousands of google employees that can see that data, and how ever many more that will see it in the future. Do you really want to have this kind of information in the hands of a company without fear of competition?
like the ad on the right side of the wonderhowto page says: “life can be unpredictable” lol…bing!
Bing is #14 in Google’s result for ’search’
http://www.goog...4ac779a98ba7b08
You have to laugh- bing’d “rim job” and just under urban dictionary came up “Careers Research in Motion”
You have to laugh- bing’d “rim job” and #4 was urban dictionary and #5 came up careers at “Research in Motion”
lol I’d say MA loves his job too and man, that is a HUGE bug regarding Bing — They need to build upon the porn niche or somehow filter it all out (I’d say build it and make it an adult.bing.com for example with filters for the bing.com regular site)
Relates searches can also be a worry, I searched for “kids movies” on the Bing image search, first “Related search”: kids kissing.
More than a little wrong…. Can only imagine who is using Bing to search for images.
http://www.bing...s&FORM=BIFD
Haha, this is awesome.