[sc0ttbeardsley]

Interesting. The privacy implications are disturbing if true. I'm neither an IE nor windows user but I suspect most users wouldn't opt-in if given that choice. Any refs to research/evidence about the topic would be appreciated.

[Matt_Cutts]

The IE privacy policy is at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/product... . Look under the section titled "Suggested Sites." Here's the relevant section:

"When Suggested Sites is turned on, the addresses of websites you visit are sent to Microsoft, together with standard computer information. ... Information associated with the web address, such as search terms or data you entered in forms might be included. For example, if you visited the Microsoft.com search website at http://search.microsoft.com and entered "Seattle" as the search term, the full address http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?q=Seattle&qsc0=... will be sent."

Most people have little idea that allowing a feature called "Suggested Sites" will result in their Google searches and clicks being sent to Microsoft, or that Microsoft will use clicks on Google search results in Bing's ranking.

MSFT also uses something called the Microsoft CEIP (Customer Experience Improvement Program), and I think that's either opt-out already or they're making it opt-out in Windows 8--it's built into the "Use Express Settings," I believe.

Again, I haven't looked at this very recently, but if you're using a recent version of Windows and IE, you're probably sending your searches and clicks to Microsoft unless you've been very careful about how you configured your computer.

[sc0ttbeardsley]

Agreed about "most people have little idea...". I wish more companies were more honest and open about these things instead of burying it in the fine print. I wonder what would happen if you enable "Suggested Sites" but then install IE 9+ (since it appears to support the DNT flag) and select "Do Not Track". The pessimist in me suspects it will just turn off tracking for all non-msft experiments.

In any case, I think you've convinced me that my decision to use a non-windows OS and a non-IE browser was the correct one.

Thanks for mentioning this...

[majormajor]

For the longest time, I didn't even realize that clicking a Google result sent the click back to Google (I just didn't think about it).

Then I right clicked one of the results one day and did "copy link" since I wanted to send it to a friend, and got something like this (with a bunch of other stuff in it too that I've yanked out cause I have no idea if any of it would be identifying info, but the end result is that this link no longer works):

http://www.google.com/url?&source=web&url=http%3A%2F...

I just hadn't thought about it before. It makes sense that they want and use that info, but it wasn't obvious at all that they were collecting it in that way, since the address shown in the status bar is the destination site, not the actual link target. I had just always assumed that the results were based on links and such around the web, and didn't think clicks would be factored in.

[sc0ttbeardsley]

To answer my own question: http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/search/archive/20...

Seems it is opt-in users.