Google accuses Microsoft of copying search results

Google has accused Microsoft's Bing search engine of copying its search results, causing a war of words between the two companies.

In a blog post, Amit Singhal, the head of Google's core ranking team said that "some Bing results increasingly look like an incomplete, stale version of Google results - a cheap imitation."

Google created 100 unusual queries that a user would be unlikely to type (such as 'hiybbprqag') and then ensured that the only result displayed was a web page that had nothing to do with the query. At first, the results didn't appear in Bing, but "within a couple of weeks" Google said that its results started appearing on Bing.

In his blog post, Singhal said that the experiment confirmed their suspicion and that Bing was using a combination of Internet Explorer 8 and the Bing Toolbar to send data to Bing when people search using Google.

Microsoft denied the claim and on Tuesday a company spokesperson said: "We do not copy Google's results."

However, Microsoft's Harry Shum, corporate vice president of Bing was more vague, instead saying that Bing uses "over 1,000 different signals and features" in its own search rankings.

He continued by saying that anonymous data gained from users as they browse the web formed a "small piece of that".