Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Uses Human Computing Game To Tune Bing
Al writes "Microsoft researchers have come up with a novel way to fine-tune the algorithms behind the company's new search engine, Bing: a game that harnesses human computing power to improve the results. Called Page Hunt, the game (which of course requires Silverlight to run) shows users a web page and asks them to figure out a search query that should produce the page within the first five results. The idea is to better understand user behavior and expectations and ultimately improve its search algorithms. Other human-computing projects have sought to digitize out-of-print text (reCAPTCHA) and image labeling (Google Image Labeler). Can Microsoft use a similar approach to gain the edge over its rival? Or does Google already have the edge with SearchWiki, which lets searchers re-rank its results?"
If users have the ability to tailor search results, won't page rank "fixers" (aka spammers) have an easier time? Or am I missing something?
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Maybe they can use the real world data to fix this issue
http://www.bing.com/search?q=why+is+microsoft+word+so+expensive&form=QBLH&qs=n
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=why+is+microsoft+word+so+expensive&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g1
Flooded with blog articles about the same query now, and yes, it looks like there's probably a technological reason (or at least viable excuse) for it, but it still seems pretty shady to me.