Bing Search Falsely Propped Up Using MSN Portal?

Microsoft’s Bing search portal has seen tremendous growth in the last year, however a new report by sources for the NYPost have revealed that Microsoft may be “artificially propping up” site numbers by cannibalizing MSN site visitors, providing them with Bing search results pages.

Those same sources also revealed that MSN homepage headlines now features Bing results 50 percent of the time, up from 20 percent in the last quarter.

While it’s true that Microsoft can do as they please in terms of driving site traffic, one of the biggest issues is the divide reportedly occurring within the company as both the Bing and MSN ad sales teams are squaring off against one another.

According to the NYPost:

“It’s warfare between the ad sales folks and the people at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond.”

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is downplaying the page redirects, telling the USA Today that Microsoft is:

“Constantly making different bets to see how things play out. We’re doing programs that go from MSN to Bing. We’re experimenting with new landing pages” while adding, “We bet on Bing and are growing like a weed in that business.”

If there’s any truth to the rumors, it reminds me of the early days at Apple when Steve Jobs pitted his own hardware and software teams against one another. Hey it worked in the long term for Apple, so maybe Microsoft is on to something here.

[via Slashgear]