Monday, February 16, 2004
Future search
ResourceShelf: "'One thing [Google's Craig] Silverstein does like to talk about is his long-range goal for search technology, which he believes is still in its infancy. 'It's clear that the answer [to search] is not a ranked list of Web sites,' he says. No one expects to approach a librarian, ask a question about the Panama Canal, and get 50 book titles in response, he argues. Silverstein thinks information retrieval experts should aim high, building software that is every bit as good at pointing users toward the specific resources they need as a well-trained reference librarian.'"
Update Brandy Part 3 - Googleguy says...
Update Brandy Part 3: "People post around here about filters, blocking, penalties, etc. etc. A far better explanation is 'things which used to work before don't receive the same amount of credit now.' It's natural for people who are way out there with their linking strategies or their page-building strategies to think of a drop as an over-optimization penalty, but it's more realistic to conclude that Google is weighting criteria differently so that over-optimized sites just aren't doing as well now. "
Thursday, February 12, 2004
- Becoming an Authority - Recovering from Florida/Austin. Hubs & Authorities Cornell Paper
Cre8asite forums. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Becoming an Authority - Recovering from Florida/Austin. [ Search Engine Optimization, Usability and Web Design. ]: "it is important to clarify the differences of authorities and hubs, plus show you how a search engine will use both concepts to rank a page.
Authority: What makes a page an authority? There is strong belief that an authority is determined by the value of their InDegree (an InDegree in our terms is the number of pages linking from page A to page B). The larger the number, the more authoritative that page is in terms of the types of themed pages that are linked to that page. A page within a theme is stronger based on the number of times a query term is found within the page.
This works just fine by itself for ranking pages if we did not have words with double or even triples meanings (windows, java, etc.). To make up for this factor we need something called 'hubs' to help determine the best possible returned results for a keyword phrase.
Hubs: What makes up a hub? A hub can be defined as a site or page that has many links from pages that have the same links. So page A links to page B and page C, page B links to page A and page C, page C links to page A and page B and so on. The more similar and related links, the larger the hub is.
By looking at the authority of a page (InDegree) plus the hub or hubs the page is within (the similarity), the search engine can provide a better results page then just by looking at authority. "
Authority: What makes a page an authority? There is strong belief that an authority is determined by the value of their InDegree (an InDegree in our terms is the number of pages linking from page A to page B). The larger the number, the more authoritative that page is in terms of the types of themed pages that are linked to that page. A page within a theme is stronger based on the number of times a query term is found within the page.
This works just fine by itself for ranking pages if we did not have words with double or even triples meanings (windows, java, etc.). To make up for this factor we need something called 'hubs' to help determine the best possible returned results for a keyword phrase.
Hubs: What makes up a hub? A hub can be defined as a site or page that has many links from pages that have the same links. So page A links to page B and page C, page B links to page A and page C, page C links to page A and page B and so on. The more similar and related links, the larger the hub is.
By looking at the authority of a page (InDegree) plus the hub or hubs the page is within (the similarity), the search engine can provide a better results page then just by looking at authority. "
Google monopolizes search engine awards
Sexy Whitehouse.com domain for sale: "Google was named the Internet's 'Outstanding Search Service' in the 4th annual awards competition conducted by editors of Searchenginewatch.com. 'Google remains the top choice for anyone who wishes to start their web search quest. Much more often than not, it continues to help you locate what you are looking for. The service has maintained the consistency of its search interface, a relief when competitors seem to be constantly redesigning,' the award citation said.
In fact, Google placed first in 8 of the 11 categories, also taking honors for Best News Search, Best Image Search, and Best Paid Placement Service. Yahoo Shopping (YHOO: news, chart, profile) was ranked first in the shopping category and Dogpile was honored as the Best Meta Search Engine. Editors Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman surveyed their readers for advice and then made the selections."
In fact, Google placed first in 8 of the 11 categories, also taking honors for Best News Search, Best Image Search, and Best Paid Placement Service. Yahoo Shopping (YHOO: news, chart, profile) was ranked first in the shopping category and Dogpile was honored as the Best Meta Search Engine. Editors Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman surveyed their readers for advice and then made the selections."
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Google: The Reverse eBay - comments on personalisation
Posted in full as online version is only available to subscribers.
Business 2.0 - Web Article - Google: The Reverse eBay: "gle: The Reverse eBay"
Don't think of tech's latest star as just a search engine. Think of it as a keyword marketplace.
By Erick Schonfeld, February 06, 2004
Most of us know Google as a trusty Internet search engine and the most hyped, most anticipated IPO since Netscape. But there is another side of Google that is familiar to marketers and advertisers. Through a part of Google's site called AdWords, advertisers can bid on the search terms we all type into Google's search box 200 million times a day. AdWords, which launched two years ago, is now believed to account for the vast majority of Google's annual revenue of $700 million to $1 billion (the exact figure is not known, since Google has yet to file its IPO registration statement). If this is true, then Google makes most of its money as a keyword marketplace.
In a sense, Google is becoming a reverse eBay (EBAY), where the customers are advertisers and the inventory is made up of consumers' desires as expressed by their search terms. Google auctions off the search terms and connects businesses to consumers who are looking for what those businesses have to offer. Whoever bids the most for a term and receives the most clicks appears in a sponsored advertisement link either at the top or along the side of the search-results page.
This form of online advertising appears to be working. Paid search is on the rise while less effective forms of online advertising are waning. Overall industry revenues from paid search surpassed banner ads in the third quarter of last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. And Google counts more than 150,000 advertisers in its paid-search program, up from zero in 2002.
One reason paid search is working is that it is not an annoyance to consumers. It turns out that a lot of people go to Google to either research a purchase or buy a product. "A big percentage of queries we get are commercial in nature," confirms Salar Kamangar, Google's director of product management. Kamangar came up with the AdWords concept and oversees that part of the business today.
Does he think of Google as a keyword marketplace? "You bet," he says. "It is a marketplace where the advertisers tell us about themselves by telling us how much each lead is worth. They have an incentive to bid how much they really want to pay, because if they underbid, their competitors will get more traffic."
Paid search is the ultimate in targeted advertising because consumers type in exactly what they want. For this reason, a general search term like "tropical vacation" is worth less than a more specific term like "Hawaiian vacation." Advertisers pay only for terms that Web surfers actually click on. They enter the keywords they want to bid on and the maximum amounts they want to pay per click and per day, and then Google determines a price and a search ranking for those keywords based on how much other advertisers are willing to pay for the same terms. Some keywords are 5 cents a click and some are $3 or more. With millions of clicks a day, that starts to add up pretty fast.
A big part of AdWords's success is its simplicity. "We built AdWords so it is as easy to use for advertisers as possible," Kamangar says. The goal, he says, is that "five minutes out, the advertiser can start getting leads." But Google is also improving the ability to target ads. Advertisers can choose to display ads only to Web surfers in particular countries or even smaller geographical regions, and they can broaden their terms to include synonyms, common misspellings, and plurals. Google now also offers a way to track the number of clicks that lead to purchases. Expect more refinements down the pike.
The fact is that Google already knows a lot about its users. So why not build deeper profiles by incorporating information about where they've just come from or what they have searched for in the past? Kamangar professes that Google is not interested in such profiling. For one thing, it would raise a whole host of messy privacy issues. For another, Google's business is based on the trust of consumers, so it would not be wise to risk destroying that trust.
But there is an even better reason not to do such demographic profiling: It represents an old way of thinking from which advertisers need to free themselves. Predicting human behavior based on who someone is or what she has done in the past is not something you should build a business around. "There has been research on this," Kamangar says, "but it is not very promising. The searches people do are so unique and diversified that it is hard to predict what they will want based on their past profile." And when you think about it, why would you even want to? Through their actions and words, searchers are giving advertisers a great gift. "The users have very narrowly defined in their own words what they are looking for," Kamangar says. Google is proving that it is much better to let consumers target themselves.
Business 2.0 - Web Article - Google: The Reverse eBay: "gle: The Reverse eBay"
Don't think of tech's latest star as just a search engine. Think of it as a keyword marketplace.
By Erick Schonfeld, February 06, 2004
Most of us know Google as a trusty Internet search engine and the most hyped, most anticipated IPO since Netscape. But there is another side of Google that is familiar to marketers and advertisers. Through a part of Google's site called AdWords, advertisers can bid on the search terms we all type into Google's search box 200 million times a day. AdWords, which launched two years ago, is now believed to account for the vast majority of Google's annual revenue of $700 million to $1 billion (the exact figure is not known, since Google has yet to file its IPO registration statement). If this is true, then Google makes most of its money as a keyword marketplace.
In a sense, Google is becoming a reverse eBay (EBAY), where the customers are advertisers and the inventory is made up of consumers' desires as expressed by their search terms. Google auctions off the search terms and connects businesses to consumers who are looking for what those businesses have to offer. Whoever bids the most for a term and receives the most clicks appears in a sponsored advertisement link either at the top or along the side of the search-results page.
This form of online advertising appears to be working. Paid search is on the rise while less effective forms of online advertising are waning. Overall industry revenues from paid search surpassed banner ads in the third quarter of last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. And Google counts more than 150,000 advertisers in its paid-search program, up from zero in 2002.
One reason paid search is working is that it is not an annoyance to consumers. It turns out that a lot of people go to Google to either research a purchase or buy a product. "A big percentage of queries we get are commercial in nature," confirms Salar Kamangar, Google's director of product management. Kamangar came up with the AdWords concept and oversees that part of the business today.
Does he think of Google as a keyword marketplace? "You bet," he says. "It is a marketplace where the advertisers tell us about themselves by telling us how much each lead is worth. They have an incentive to bid how much they really want to pay, because if they underbid, their competitors will get more traffic."
Paid search is the ultimate in targeted advertising because consumers type in exactly what they want. For this reason, a general search term like "tropical vacation" is worth less than a more specific term like "Hawaiian vacation." Advertisers pay only for terms that Web surfers actually click on. They enter the keywords they want to bid on and the maximum amounts they want to pay per click and per day, and then Google determines a price and a search ranking for those keywords based on how much other advertisers are willing to pay for the same terms. Some keywords are 5 cents a click and some are $3 or more. With millions of clicks a day, that starts to add up pretty fast.
A big part of AdWords's success is its simplicity. "We built AdWords so it is as easy to use for advertisers as possible," Kamangar says. The goal, he says, is that "five minutes out, the advertiser can start getting leads." But Google is also improving the ability to target ads. Advertisers can choose to display ads only to Web surfers in particular countries or even smaller geographical regions, and they can broaden their terms to include synonyms, common misspellings, and plurals. Google now also offers a way to track the number of clicks that lead to purchases. Expect more refinements down the pike.
The fact is that Google already knows a lot about its users. So why not build deeper profiles by incorporating information about where they've just come from or what they have searched for in the past? Kamangar professes that Google is not interested in such profiling. For one thing, it would raise a whole host of messy privacy issues. For another, Google's business is based on the trust of consumers, so it would not be wise to risk destroying that trust.
But there is an even better reason not to do such demographic profiling: It represents an old way of thinking from which advertisers need to free themselves. Predicting human behavior based on who someone is or what she has done in the past is not something you should build a business around. "There has been research on this," Kamangar says, "but it is not very promising. The searches people do are so unique and diversified that it is hard to predict what they will want based on their past profile." And when you think about it, why would you even want to? Through their actions and words, searchers are giving advertisers a great gift. "The users have very narrowly defined in their own words what they are looking for," Kamangar says. Google is proving that it is much better to let consumers target themselves.
Monday, February 09, 2004
Why Google is such a great brand: February 09, 2004 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern
Why Google is such a great brand: February 09, 2004 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern: "Google has clarity and focus. Google knows that great brands serve a purpose. They are useful. Google genuinely believes in the motto: the searcher is king. It demonstrates that you can put the customer first and make a profit. Google keeps it simple and wins.
What do you think of the following heading?
Solving tomorrow�s challenges. Today.
Why is it, do you think, that you would never find this sort of heading on the homepage of Google? "
What do you think of the following heading?
Solving tomorrow�s challenges. Today.
Why is it, do you think, that you would never find this sort of heading on the homepage of Google? "
Monday, February 02, 2004
Google Guide: Interactive Tutorial Making Search Even Easier
For newbies? Google Guide: Interactive Tutorial Making Search Even Easier: "Why Take The Google Guide Tutorial? "
Nancy Blachman ... has written a book on Google searching, How to do everything with Google, together with Fritz Schneider and Eric Fredricksen, software engineers at Google...
However, before you invite her to do a workshop for your institution, you might want to take a look at her Google ~Guide web site. There she gives away a lot of web search information for free.
Nancy Blachman ... has written a book on Google searching, How to do everything with Google, together with Fritz Schneider and Eric Fredricksen, software engineers at Google...
However, before you invite her to do a workshop for your institution, you might want to take a look at her Google ~Guide web site. There she gives away a lot of web search information for free.
Friday, January 30, 2004
Google faces trademark suit over keyword ads | CNET News.com
Google faces trademark suit over keyword ads | CNET News.com: "A lawsuit filed this week has intensified an ongoing dispute over whether Google's policy of selling ads related to search terms is legal or involves trademark infringement. "
About.com : http://www.seoinc.com/seo-newsletters/seo-enewsVol6-Google-Hilltop.html#Google-Removes-DNS-Entries
About.com : http://www.seoinc.com/seo-newsletters/seo-enewsVol6-Google-Hilltop.html#Google-Removes-DNS-Entries: "Google removes DNS entries from the data base = No more Google Dance Tools?"
GOOGLE Hilltop Algorithm Changes Vol6 1-27-2004
SEO Insites GOOGLE Hilltop Algorithm Changes Vol6 1-27-2004
Here is what the Hilltop Algorithm looks like:
Old Google Ranking Formula = {(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)} New Google Ranking Formula = {(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)} * {(1-f)+c (LS)}
Google quickly found that the Hilltop algorithm also had flaws. So Google created a two-step search process that combines PageRank technology and the Hilltop algorithm.So how do companies continue to enjoy top rankings on Google?Getting top rankings on Google depends on meeting the criteria of PageRank and Hilltop. Therefore, companies have to receive significant numbers votes or quality links from authority sites (PageRank) and have meaningful / relevant hypertext links (Hilltop) inbound to their web pages. Just as it has always been, Content is critical and linking is now more important that ever.Two Conclusions can be drawn from our research:
1.Google is not trying to force companies to buy keywords; it is simply trying to improve its algorithm.
2.The search engine optimization methodology and strategies used to achieve top placements just became significantly more complicated with the addition of Hilltop With Google handling 75 to 85 percent of all search requests, companies doing business on the Web must retain top rankings in the search engines in order to survive. And that means making sure that your firm satisfies the criteria of the two algorithms.
Here is what the Hilltop Algorithm looks like:
Old Google Ranking Formula = {(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)} New Google Ranking Formula = {(1-d)+a (RS)} * {(1-e)+b (PR * fb)} * {(1-f)+c (LS)}
Google quickly found that the Hilltop algorithm also had flaws. So Google created a two-step search process that combines PageRank technology and the Hilltop algorithm.So how do companies continue to enjoy top rankings on Google?Getting top rankings on Google depends on meeting the criteria of PageRank and Hilltop. Therefore, companies have to receive significant numbers votes or quality links from authority sites (PageRank) and have meaningful / relevant hypertext links (Hilltop) inbound to their web pages. Just as it has always been, Content is critical and linking is now more important that ever.Two Conclusions can be drawn from our research:
1.Google is not trying to force companies to buy keywords; it is simply trying to improve its algorithm.
2.The search engine optimization methodology and strategies used to achieve top placements just became significantly more complicated with the addition of Hilltop With Google handling 75 to 85 percent of all search requests, companies doing business on the Web must retain top rankings in the search engines in order to survive. And that means making sure that your firm satisfies the criteria of the two algorithms.
SEO Insites GOOGLE Hilltop Algorithm Changes Vol6 1-27-2004
SEO Insites GOOGLE Hilltop Algorithm Changes Vol6 1-27-2004: "ogle removes DNS entries from the data base = No more Google Dance Tools?"
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Major Google Update
Major Google Update -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "there seems to have been another major update on google"
labs.google.com - Papers by Googlers
labs.google.com - Papers by Googlers: "Below is a partial list of papers written by people now at Google, showing the range of backgrounds of people in Google Engineering"
Saturday, January 24, 2004
Google spawns social networking service | CNET News.com
Google spawns social networking service | CNET News.com: "A Google representative said that the site is the independent project of one of its engineers, Orkut Buyukkokten, who works on user interface design for Google. Buyukkokten, a computer science doctoral candidate at Stanford University before joining Google, created Orkut.com in the past several months by working on it about one day a week--an amount that Google asks all of its engineers to devote to personal projects. Buyukkokten, with the help of a few other engineers, developed Orkut out of his passion for social networking services...
The goal of a social networking service is a far cry from Google's long-stated mission of organizing the world's information. Instead of helping connect people to information on the Web, it would be helping people connect with other people.
It also once again raises the notion that Google aspires to become a portal like Yahoo, something that the company has long denied. Google already helps people shop, read news, thwart pop-up advertisements, get stock information and publish to the Web"
orkut - helpMembership to orkut is by invitation only.
If you have a friend who's a member of orkut, have them invite you to join.
The goal of a social networking service is a far cry from Google's long-stated mission of organizing the world's information. Instead of helping connect people to information on the Web, it would be helping people connect with other people.
It also once again raises the notion that Google aspires to become a portal like Yahoo, something that the company has long denied. Google already helps people shop, read news, thwart pop-up advertisements, get stock information and publish to the Web"
orkut - helpMembership to orkut is by invitation only.
If you have a friend who's a member of orkut, have them invite you to join.
Friday, January 23, 2004
eyefortravel.com - Travel Distribution News, Events and Analysis
eyefortravel.com - Travel Distribution News, Events and Analysis: "BT Openzone Access Points at Railway Stations
BT Openzone will be available at 13 key railway stations by spring of this year - with more to follow. The roll out will mean that passengers will be able to surf the web wirelessly at broadband speed from stations in the capital at Euston, Liverpool Street, Waterloo, Victoria, Fenchurch Street, Paddington, Cannon Street, and Charing Cross. (1/23/2004)
In other parts of England, commuters and other passengers will be able to sample the benefit of BT Openzone service at Birmingham New Street, Leeds City, Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street. North of the border, Edinburgh Waverley will have its own BT Openzone access point.
In addition, BT Openzone access points will be installed at London Bridge and Glasgow Central by summer, taking the total to 15 stations."
BT Openzone will be available at 13 key railway stations by spring of this year - with more to follow. The roll out will mean that passengers will be able to surf the web wirelessly at broadband speed from stations in the capital at Euston, Liverpool Street, Waterloo, Victoria, Fenchurch Street, Paddington, Cannon Street, and Charing Cross. (1/23/2004)
In other parts of England, commuters and other passengers will be able to sample the benefit of BT Openzone service at Birmingham New Street, Leeds City, Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool Lime Street. North of the border, Edinburgh Waverley will have its own BT Openzone access point.
In addition, BT Openzone access points will be installed at London Bridge and Glasgow Central by summer, taking the total to 15 stations."
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Free Charts Generated from your Google Adsense Reports
Free Charts Generated from your Google Adsense Reports: "charts based on your
Google AdSense Reports"
Google AdSense Reports"
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Search Engine Theme Pyramids
Search Engine Theme Pyramids: "The whole Themes theory is to look at the site as a whole and compartmentalize it. Start with broad content (1 keyword) and work your way down to the specific keywords you want to target. Then link to the topics above and below, but not across, to reinforce the pages with link text and insite link popularity"
Semantics -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum
Semantics -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: This "paper that describes the processes that were going on over at Applied Semantics before Google bought them up. It's long and you probably won't even be able to get it in a single read - pretty heavy stuff in there. If you can muscle your way through and then go back to the stuff you aren't clear on, you'll have an excellent foundation for understanding how all this works.
Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data
Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization"
This paper doesn't deal specifically with Google, but is an overview of the entire thing (though it does explain some potential uses for it - a search engine included). Once you wrap your mind around the concepts, you can almost look at Google and see it happening.
Also bear in mind that this is only part of it. There's Topic Sensitive PageRank and LocalRank that are also somewhat new to the game (within the last year) and vastly overlooked (I suppose due to the complexities of it all) by most. With the semantics kicking in, the levels of integration of these two are also boosted considerably....
Interesting theory:
So, in your competitive markets where people vie for the same terms and everyone is optimizing pages for the "terms" and not the "concept" of a "martin guitar" owned by "Scott Rahin", the whole semantics thing falls apart.
In the end, if there's a sector like this (think "real estate" and "hotels" and "airfares" and other highly optimized and competitive areas) then the semantics have no hope of working so it either works poorly, or Google has something in there to kick that part of the algo out. ...
Comments re:August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com): "Amazon, remember, scooped up Alexa a while back. Alexa isn't so much a "search" property, but rather, an "indexing engine" which is, as this article points out, the primary problem with the Semantic Web - you have no way of indexing all the documents...
How Consistent Page Structure Allows Google To Extract and Assume Specific Information, we can see how Google doesn't always need an RDF feed to make its Semantic extractions. It just needs to be set up in a way that it can identify what's what. In that example, you can also see that it doesn't necessarily have to be products for which it's extracting the information. And, even if you only have a few pages on your site, you can still be in good shape if there are enough people in your sector using the same "pointer words" and they have employed consistency factors (even if they aren't exactly consistent with your own layout). This post also talks about how URL structure (even though what you name the directories and pages isn't important) can help in this too.
This post about navigational structure helps you understand how you can use site structure to achieve the same types of results. The pyramid scheme (in this case, that's a good thing) allows your "pointers" to be pointing to concepts on the deeper pages and not on the same page as in the first example.
----
I should point out that these techniques now work very well on larger sites.
...the semantics portion of the algo is only going to increase in importance. It does work - if you are presenting the data to them in the right way. There will be a grace period (how long? I dunno) where you'll be able to rank well using the "keyword" model but over the next 12-24 months, expect that model to slowly and progressively become less effective as more and more SEOs embrace the new technology and those patterns and semantic extrapolations become more the norm in web design."
NEW CONCEPTS: TSPR (Topic Sensitive PageRank) and LocalRank
ARTICLES & PAPERS REFERRED TO ABOVE:
:August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com)
Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data
Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization"
Scientific American: The Semantic Web: "The Semantic Web
A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities
By Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila "
Integrating Applications on the Semantic Web: "For the Web to reach its full potential, it must evolve into this Semantic Web, providing a universally accessible platform that allows data to be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people"
RDF Semantics: "This is a specification of a precise semantics, and corresponding complete systems of inference rules, for the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and RDF Schema (RDFS)."
Heavy:
Sitemaps? -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "The page relationships are derived from linking structure, not URL structure. "
How Consistent Page Structure Allows Google To Extract and Assume Specific Information, we can see how Google doesn't always need an RDF feed to make its Semantic extractions. It just needs to be set up in a way that it can identify what's what. In that example, you can also see that it doesn't necessarily have to be products for which it's extracting the information. And, even if you only have a few pages on your site, you can still be in good shape if there are enough people in your sector using the same "pointer words" and they have employed consistency factors (even if they aren't exactly consistent with your own layout). This post also talks about how URL structure (even though what you name the directories and pages isn't important) can help in this too.
Learn From A Forum's Structural Design -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "a sitemap is murder on your PR. PR works in a way where a page has a certain 'number' assigned to it. 80% of that number is divided up equally amongst all the outgoing links on that page and passed along to the next page. So if you had regular navigation that passed through a couple of pages, your site would start with a high PR out front and get a little lower at the next level and a little lower at the next level and so on. Your 'broader' less focused pages (the ones with the more general and more competitive search terms) will have a higher PR and your more specific pages (the ones with focused terms that aren't as competitive and don't need as much PR to rank well) get less PR.
When you link through the sitemap, though, all of your pages get an equal share of a highly dilluted amount of pagerank.
---
Oh - and Google's only going to crawl a certain number of links on a page. I think their site says 100, but I suspect that it may be higher in some cases. PR of the page with all the links on it seems to have a bearing upon how many of those links on it Google will bother to crawl.
So, if your site has 125 pages, then 25 pages of your site will never get crawled. "
Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data
Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization"
This paper doesn't deal specifically with Google, but is an overview of the entire thing (though it does explain some potential uses for it - a search engine included). Once you wrap your mind around the concepts, you can almost look at Google and see it happening.
Also bear in mind that this is only part of it. There's Topic Sensitive PageRank and LocalRank that are also somewhat new to the game (within the last year) and vastly overlooked (I suppose due to the complexities of it all) by most. With the semantics kicking in, the levels of integration of these two are also boosted considerably....
Interesting theory:
So, in your competitive markets where people vie for the same terms and everyone is optimizing pages for the "terms" and not the "concept" of a "martin guitar" owned by "Scott Rahin", the whole semantics thing falls apart.
In the end, if there's a sector like this (think "real estate" and "hotels" and "airfares" and other highly optimized and competitive areas) then the semantics have no hope of working so it either works poorly, or Google has something in there to kick that part of the algo out. ...
Comments re:August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com): "Amazon, remember, scooped up Alexa a while back. Alexa isn't so much a "search" property, but rather, an "indexing engine" which is, as this article points out, the primary problem with the Semantic Web - you have no way of indexing all the documents...
How Consistent Page Structure Allows Google To Extract and Assume Specific Information, we can see how Google doesn't always need an RDF feed to make its Semantic extractions. It just needs to be set up in a way that it can identify what's what. In that example, you can also see that it doesn't necessarily have to be products for which it's extracting the information. And, even if you only have a few pages on your site, you can still be in good shape if there are enough people in your sector using the same "pointer words" and they have employed consistency factors (even if they aren't exactly consistent with your own layout). This post also talks about how URL structure (even though what you name the directories and pages isn't important) can help in this too.
This post about navigational structure helps you understand how you can use site structure to achieve the same types of results. The pyramid scheme (in this case, that's a good thing) allows your "pointers" to be pointing to concepts on the deeper pages and not on the same page as in the first example.
----
I should point out that these techniques now work very well on larger sites.
...the semantics portion of the algo is only going to increase in importance. It does work - if you are presenting the data to them in the right way. There will be a grace period (how long? I dunno) where you'll be able to rank well using the "keyword" model but over the next 12-24 months, expect that model to slowly and progressively become less effective as more and more SEOs embrace the new technology and those patterns and semantic extrapolations become more the norm in web design."
NEW CONCEPTS: TSPR (Topic Sensitive PageRank) and LocalRank
ARTICLES & PAPERS REFERRED TO ABOVE:
:August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com)
Cover Page: "Patterns in Unstructured Data
Discovery, Aggregation, and Visualization"
Scientific American: The Semantic Web: "The Semantic Web
A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities
By Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila "
Integrating Applications on the Semantic Web: "For the Web to reach its full potential, it must evolve into this Semantic Web, providing a universally accessible platform that allows data to be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people"
RDF Semantics: "This is a specification of a precise semantics, and corresponding complete systems of inference rules, for the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and RDF Schema (RDFS)."
Heavy:
Sitemaps? -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "The page relationships are derived from linking structure, not URL structure. "
How Consistent Page Structure Allows Google To Extract and Assume Specific Information, we can see how Google doesn't always need an RDF feed to make its Semantic extractions. It just needs to be set up in a way that it can identify what's what. In that example, you can also see that it doesn't necessarily have to be products for which it's extracting the information. And, even if you only have a few pages on your site, you can still be in good shape if there are enough people in your sector using the same "pointer words" and they have employed consistency factors (even if they aren't exactly consistent with your own layout). This post also talks about how URL structure (even though what you name the directories and pages isn't important) can help in this too.
Learn From A Forum's Structural Design -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "a sitemap is murder on your PR. PR works in a way where a page has a certain 'number' assigned to it. 80% of that number is divided up equally amongst all the outgoing links on that page and passed along to the next page. So if you had regular navigation that passed through a couple of pages, your site would start with a high PR out front and get a little lower at the next level and a little lower at the next level and so on. Your 'broader' less focused pages (the ones with the more general and more competitive search terms) will have a higher PR and your more specific pages (the ones with focused terms that aren't as competitive and don't need as much PR to rank well) get less PR.
When you link through the sitemap, though, all of your pages get an equal share of a highly dilluted amount of pagerank.
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Oh - and Google's only going to crawl a certain number of links on a page. I think their site says 100, but I suspect that it may be higher in some cases. PR of the page with all the links on it seems to have a bearing upon how many of those links on it Google will bother to crawl.
So, if your site has 125 pages, then 25 pages of your site will never get crawled. "
CNN.com - Sources: Google developing ad service for e-mail - Jan. 19, 2004
CNN.com - Sources: Google developing ad service for e-mail - Jan. 19, 2004: "Google developing ad service for e-mail"
Google is getting more and more concerned about locking in users. It wouldn't surprise me if they did something very sophisticated with e-mail,' said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, who tracks the industry.' Apparently, Google has purchased an e-mail management software maker and registered the domain name googlemail.com. The article also speculates that Google is slowly on the way to becoming a full-fledged portal, with the gradual addition of more and more portal-like features like Froogle.
In an e-mail response to questions from Reuters, (Google) spokesman David Krane said, "Google has a number of projects in the works to test monetization in various scenarios.
"In fact, Google's AdSense contextual ads are already used in a number of e-mail newsletters," he said
Future????
Google Eyes New Email Service, Expansion: "You log into your GoogleMail account, and it has emailed you an entire evening's worth of web crawling for the data you were looking for. It's searched for places for your for your next vacation, and has managed to provide you with not only information, but Froogle'd for the best prices too. It's suggested things you'd like to do, and gone out and found the most popular sites about that as well. All you have to do is log into your Google HomePage and accept its suggestions, or negotiate with your own little GoogleBot for other venues.
Could this be the beginning of intelligent software agents? It would seem that if anyone could bring such a thing to us, it would be the Google folks"
"
Google is getting more and more concerned about locking in users. It wouldn't surprise me if they did something very sophisticated with e-mail,' said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, who tracks the industry.' Apparently, Google has purchased an e-mail management software maker and registered the domain name googlemail.com. The article also speculates that Google is slowly on the way to becoming a full-fledged portal, with the gradual addition of more and more portal-like features like Froogle.
In an e-mail response to questions from Reuters, (Google) spokesman David Krane said, "Google has a number of projects in the works to test monetization in various scenarios.
"In fact, Google's AdSense contextual ads are already used in a number of e-mail newsletters," he said
Future????
Google Eyes New Email Service, Expansion: "You log into your GoogleMail account, and it has emailed you an entire evening's worth of web crawling for the data you were looking for. It's searched for places for your for your next vacation, and has managed to provide you with not only information, but Froogle'd for the best prices too. It's suggested things you'd like to do, and gone out and found the most popular sites about that as well. All you have to do is log into your Google HomePage and accept its suggestions, or negotiate with your own little GoogleBot for other venues.
Could this be the beginning of intelligent software agents? It would seem that if anyone could bring such a thing to us, it would be the Google folks"
"
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