Google has accused Microsoft, and more specifically Bing, of to improve its own performance. In fact, Google went so far as to by creating a bunch of nonsense terms (like "hiybbprqag" and "mbzrxpgjys"), manually tweaking Google results to display a specific honeypot site in response to those terms, then using Internet Explorer and the Bing toolbar to search for them.

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Before the sting, searches for these terms came up empty in both engines. Afterward, the honeypots Google assigned to these searches started showing in Bing results -- not all of them by any stretch, but enough for Google to shout "J'accuse!" yesterday in .

Naturally, Microsoft denied this, but only after first appearing to admit it. Here's the first response, issued by Bing director Stefan Wietz (per ):

We use multiple signals and approaches in ranking search results. The overarching goal is to do a better job determining the intent of the search so we can provide the most relevant answer to a given query. Opt-in programs like the toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites.