IE vs Foxfire on Google mystery resolved

[angelpure]

I posted this on another thread, but think it deserves it's own discussion. We now know the reason for the difference in rankings using FF vs IE for the same keywords. Google is paying Foxfire!

Our own WPW Feedbot found this blog on Searcheningeinsider:

Ingrid Marson's ZDNet article: Google keeping the wolf from Firefox' door, offers several details about the Google's relationship with the Mozilla Foundation.

Gervase Markham, a Mozilla staff member, said on Sunday that over the past year the Foundation has hired around 10 people, which would not have been possible without the money that Firefox makes by linking to Google.
"The Google deal has provided a significant stream of income for the Foundation," said Markham, speaking at the FOSSDEM conference in Brussels. "Without that deal the Foundation would not have been in a position to have hired some of the people that it has."


Following an agreement reached last year, Firefox includes Google as the default option for users wanting to search the Web directly, and also has its default start page hosted by Google. Markham didn't reveal full details of the Foundation's deal with Google. The main disadvantage of the deal with Google is that native language versions of Firefox are not permitted to change the default search engine to one that is more useful for searching Web pages in a particular language. "That [the Google deal] is why official localised builds are not allowed to change the search engine," said Markham. "In one way this is a restriction, but the deal has allowed things to happen."

It has to have something to do with why the results are returned more relevent using FF than IE. Hard to prove, but if it's true, it is a way of getting people loyal to Google to switch to FF for better search relevance. Now I know why Jason calls them the evil Google.

Gordon

[Faglork]

I do not believe this.

As I responded to the original post:

You say, you perform the "same search", one time with IE and the other time with FF. IMO this is not correct.

AFAIK you are querying a *different* data center, since a search in a second browser, albeit on the same PC/IP, opens a whole new "search session" on google. Coincidentally, it just *might* be the same data center your search is performed on, but in most cases it is not.

Now, if the data centers are not synchronized (yet), you get different results ...

You would have to "take over" the session from one browser to the other to make sure you query the same data center.

Google would have to set up a whole different PageRank system just for FF, since AFAIK PageRank is applied "offline", so to speak: Your PR is determined not at runtime. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong).


Alex