A malware network has been discovered siphoning profits from Google, Yahoo, and Bing by spoofing the search engines and their DNS addresses.

Dubbed the “Bahama Botnet,” it hijacks search engine results with doctored links that run a user through a chain of sponsored ad sites. After clicking his or her way through the ads, the user eventually ends up on the requested page.

A traceroute of the connection shows that although the DNS name of the server appears to be legitimate, users are actually connected to 64.86.17.56, an unknown IP address in Canada.

It will be interesting to see how the major search engine corporations respond to this threat.

Back up over 80%, that is.

Remember the days of Bing’s launch? Microsoft retooled Windows Live Search and unveiled it as a challenger to Google. It was further enhanced by the well-timed acquisition of Yahoo!, which combined to make a formidable competitor.

In the month following Bing’s launch, things were looking bright, according to the boys in Redmond.

We’re gratified to report that there has been some great interest in trying out Bing and that those experiences are yielding positive results!   We saw 8 percent growth in unique users to Bing.com in June, which is an important indicator that you are trying Bing and the word is spreading. Based on our own polling, we have also seen the number of people “likely to recommend” Bing double in our debut month.

TechCrunch also did a comparison between Bing and Wolfram Alpha, noting a promising trend:

Searches for “Wolfram Alpha” began to build up the weekend that it soft launched on May 15, peaking the following Monday… Interest in Bing, on the other hand, started out just as strong [as Wolfram's peak] with its unveiling last week. Then when it actually launched, interest shot up even higher. The positive experience many people had with their first search certainly helped.

By all measures, a great success!

Then the hype died down, and everything returned to normal. September’s analytics indicate that Google once again owns more than 80% of the search market. And the flip side?

Bing’s usage share in the US descended by 1.13% to 8.51% for the month of September, while Yahoo’s dove 1.1% to 9.4%. Google’s share among the top three has now climbed above where it stood in May (78.72%), when Microsoft changed the name of Windows Live Search.

Well, it was fun while it lasted, fellas. Better luck next time?

Ed note: Did someone say Bing Bang?

Microsoft’s revamped Bing search engine has harnessed the power of Twitter to enhance the relevancy of the engine’s results.

The Redmond outfit has confirmed that a select number of prolific Twitter users are currently being indexed in the experiment.

“We’re not indexing all of Twitter at this time… just a small set of prominent and prolific Twitterers to start. We picked a few thousand people to start, based primarily on their follower count and volume of tweets,” wrote Microsoft Search Technology Center GM Sean Suchter. “We think this is an interesting first step toward using Twitter’s public API to surface Tweets in people search.”

The initial roster of Tweeple is designed to appeal to a broad range of unique interest groups; provided examples include Danny Sullivan, Kara Swisher, Al Gore and Ryan Seacrest. We can infer that Microsoft hopes to interest the critical Digg regurgitator, chatty Cathy, washed up politician and squealing fangirl demographics with these selections.

Suchter also encouraged users to follow Bing on Twitter.

Stances taken in several recent interviews suggest that Microsoft chief exec Steve Ballmer is remaining soft on his firm’s revamped search engine called “Bing.”

Despite intentions to shovel billions into the search furnace over the next five years, Ballmer has been wary to appear excited, much less exuberant as usual. In an interview conducted by Reuters, the exec demonstrated that he was even a little bearish about Bing’s hype.

“I don’t want to over-set expectations. We are going to have to be tenacious and keep up the pace of innovation over a long period of time,” he said.

“We may be successful, we may not, but we can’t be successful without being committed to changing things, changing the approach, changing the business model and you can’t give up in six months, or a year or two years,” he continued in an AFP interview.

While Bing briefly overtook Yahoo! for the number two spot in search shortly after its launch, Live’s replacement has once again fallen to its regular third place position. During the same period, arch rival Google picked up nearly one percent additional share of the search market.

Where’s that good ol’ Ballmer Rage we’ve come to love?

Image ©Albert Watson

Google CEO Eric Schmidt confirmed in an interview yesterday that the search giant remains unthreatened by the introduction of Microsoft’s revamped Bing search engine.

Schmidt said in an interview with Fox Business Network that Bing’s arrival is already passé.

“It’s not the first entry for Microsoft. They do this about once a year,” Schmidt said.

“And from Bing’s perspective, they’ve got a bunch of new ideas but some things are missing,” he said. “And we think that search is really about comprehensive and freshness. The scale and size of what we do, it’s just difficult for them to copy that.”

Research group ComScore Inc confirms that Bing.com’s search market share grew from 9.1 to 11.1 percent between June 2 and June 6 but remains mum on long-term growth potential.

On the upshot, Microsoft’s new search venture offers keen insight into the unspoken realities of the humand mind.

Whaaaaat's love got to do, got to do with it?