Microsoft learns lessons from Michael Jackson Bing blunder
Microsoft has conceded Bing’s performance was under par in dealing with the death of Michael Jackson. The firm says in the future it will consider manual alterations to the system to cope with major news events.
The firm responded to criticism by the Search Engine Journal Web site which looked at how major search engines were responding to searches for “Michael Jackson” approximately an hour after he was pronounced dead, at which point some major mainstream news outlets were beginning to confirm the TMZ report of the death.
While Yahoo’s results included several stories on the topic, Google had just one in its summary of news stories, which appears atop its main search results page. But while Bing had several news stories, the news section appeared at the very bottom of the page (several screen scrolls down), beneath sections for downloads, merchandise and even poster sales.
Microsoft says the problem is that Bing is set up to automatically order results to meet the needs of its day-to-day users and that it finds that normally people searching for a celebrity are most likely to be looking for images, which is why they appear first on the results page.
Once Microsoft realized Bing was lagging behind, it launched what it describes as a “news go big experience” which over-rode the automated system to put news stories in prime position. It says it will investigate ways of having this happen automatically for future breaking stories. It’s also learning from the experience to better plan how to tweak the site for developments in the days after a major story. For example, in the Jackson case, it took around a day before a spike in people searching for his music and videos.
Another visible problem with Bing on the day of Jackson’s death was with its xRank feature. That’s an automated chart designed to show which public figures have had the most interest among people carrying out queries. In the hours after his death, Jackson was not rated at the top of this list as would seem the logical result. Microsoft didn’t say why this occurred and whether there’s a specific problem with the feature.
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July 7th, 2009
Manual updates of a search engine – Microsoft is just asking for trouble with that approach. It’s the algorithm, stupid.