Page and Brin's Blog: "May 24, 2003 PageRank Broken
Posted by: Sergey Brin
According to the forums PageRank is broken again. Never mind. Larry fixed it, he understands these things."
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Google Results: australia totaltravel
Google Results: australia totaltravel: "Google Results: australia totaltravel
These 0 links are missing from the top 100; the red number just counts them and the black number following it is the position it would have occupied in the top 100"
Their "previous" are not the same as positions I knew about....to watch esp in HighRankings forum.
These 0 links are missing from the top 100; the red number just counts them and the black number following it is the position it would have occupied in the top 100"
Their "previous" are not the same as positions I knew about....to watch esp in HighRankings forum.
Customers rage at Google tweak | CNET News.com
Customers rage at Google tweak | CNET News.com: "The search engine giant tweaked its AdWords service in late October, saying it was making the move to better identify successful ads--those that get clicks--and to increase their visibility. It also took steps to reduce the number of unsuccessful ads that show up on its search results pages...
the new system pits smaller companies against bigger ones, ultimately favoring deep-pocketed advertisers that can afford to outbid rivals for coveted keywords...
Google is seeking to address shortcomings in its service without building up a large, well-trained staff of human editors to review ads--the course taken by its main rival, Overture Services.
"Google is trying to accomplish through technology what Overture essentially does through an editorial staff--they have a much more intense review process of what ads can appear against what words, whereas Google relies a lot more on technology," Lamberti said. "The financials are going to play into Google's favor, because they relying on the efficiency of the technology. It's yet to be seen whether it will work."
a recent study from the IAB and Comscore, the average click-through rates for travel- and finance-related sponsored ads were 18.3 percent for April and May of 2003. That compares to click-through rates of 4.3 percent for ordinary search results for related terms...
Under the old system, a hotel-chain advertiser could bid for a term such as "hotel." If the price was right and its Web page was a popular destination for Web surfers, its ads would surface to the top of Google results pages for the term. The buyer's ads would also show up in searches on phrases that included the word, such as "hotel with swimming pool," in a system called broad match.
Opening up broad match
Broad match terms evolve over time, based on the click-through rates of an ad in different contexts. For example, a keyword advertiser for the term "accommodations," might see ads appear for related keywords such as "hotels," "inns," and "hostels." But if the system learns that searchers aren't clicking on the ad in relation to the term "hostels," it will eventually remove that term from the mix.
Google expanded broad match so that it now automatically matches keywords to a wider set of terms, including synonyms and misspellings. Advertisers might now see their ads appear in results for search queries that don't use their keyword at all. For example, an ad tied to the keyword "hotel" might show up in searches on related terms, such as "vacations" or "car rentals."
Google changed a key measure it uses to determine an ad's placement, known as the "minimum click-through threshold." Google now disables any ad that has a click-through rate lower than 0.5 percent. In addition, ads must now show a higher click-through rate than they did previously in order to appear within a certain broad match phrase...
One owner of a travel Web site said that AdSense has displayed ads for hotels in Madrid on pages about Amsterdam, for example. That publisher said that for the last two weeks of October, click-through rates were down 10 percent and earnings were down 14 percent on the AdSense program, compared with the last two weeks of September.
"The relevancy of the ads has deteriorated significantly in the past month," said the publisher, who asked to remain nameless because of Google's terms of service forbid publishers from discussing the program. "When an ad appears on the page that has nothing to do with the topic of the page, click-through and revenues go down significantly."
"
the new system pits smaller companies against bigger ones, ultimately favoring deep-pocketed advertisers that can afford to outbid rivals for coveted keywords...
Google is seeking to address shortcomings in its service without building up a large, well-trained staff of human editors to review ads--the course taken by its main rival, Overture Services.
"Google is trying to accomplish through technology what Overture essentially does through an editorial staff--they have a much more intense review process of what ads can appear against what words, whereas Google relies a lot more on technology," Lamberti said. "The financials are going to play into Google's favor, because they relying on the efficiency of the technology. It's yet to be seen whether it will work."
a recent study from the IAB and Comscore, the average click-through rates for travel- and finance-related sponsored ads were 18.3 percent for April and May of 2003. That compares to click-through rates of 4.3 percent for ordinary search results for related terms...
Under the old system, a hotel-chain advertiser could bid for a term such as "hotel." If the price was right and its Web page was a popular destination for Web surfers, its ads would surface to the top of Google results pages for the term. The buyer's ads would also show up in searches on phrases that included the word, such as "hotel with swimming pool," in a system called broad match.
Opening up broad match
Broad match terms evolve over time, based on the click-through rates of an ad in different contexts. For example, a keyword advertiser for the term "accommodations," might see ads appear for related keywords such as "hotels," "inns," and "hostels." But if the system learns that searchers aren't clicking on the ad in relation to the term "hostels," it will eventually remove that term from the mix.
Google expanded broad match so that it now automatically matches keywords to a wider set of terms, including synonyms and misspellings. Advertisers might now see their ads appear in results for search queries that don't use their keyword at all. For example, an ad tied to the keyword "hotel" might show up in searches on related terms, such as "vacations" or "car rentals."
Google changed a key measure it uses to determine an ad's placement, known as the "minimum click-through threshold." Google now disables any ad that has a click-through rate lower than 0.5 percent. In addition, ads must now show a higher click-through rate than they did previously in order to appear within a certain broad match phrase...
One owner of a travel Web site said that AdSense has displayed ads for hotels in Madrid on pages about Amsterdam, for example. That publisher said that for the last two weeks of October, click-through rates were down 10 percent and earnings were down 14 percent on the AdSense program, compared with the last two weeks of September.
"The relevancy of the ads has deteriorated significantly in the past month," said the publisher, who asked to remain nameless because of Google's terms of service forbid publishers from discussing the program. "When an ad appears on the page that has nothing to do with the topic of the page, click-through and revenues go down significantly."
"
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Google Spam Filtering Gone Bad
Google Spam Filtering Gone Bad: "Abstract: This report describes a possible explanation for recent changes in Google search results, where long-time high-ranking sites have disappeared. It is hypothesized that the changes are a result of the implementation of a 'Bayesian spam filtering' algorithm, which is producing unintended consequences."
Hilltop: A Search Engine based on Expert Documents
Hilltop: A Search Engine based on Expert Documents: "Hilltop: A Search Engine based on Expert Documents"
"propose a novel ranking scheme for broad queries that places the most authoritative pages on the query topic at the top of the ranking. Our algorithm operates on a special index of "expert documents." These are a subset of the pages on the WWW identified as directories of links to non-affiliated sources on specific topics. Results are ranked based on the match between the query and relevant descriptive text for hyperlinks on expert pages pointing to a given result page.
Three approaches to improve the authoritativeness of ranked results have been taken in the past:
1) Ranking Based on Human Classification: Human editors have been used by companies such as Yahoo! and Mining Company to manually associate a set of categories and keywords with a subset of documents on the web. These are then matched against the user's query to return valid matches. The trouble with this approach is that: (a) it is slow and can only be applied to a small number of pages, and (b) often the keywords and classifications assigned by the human judges are inadequate or incomplete. Given the rate at which the WWW is growing and the wide variation in queries this is not a comprehensive solution.
2) Ranking Based on Usage Information: Some services such as DirectHit collect information on: (a) the queries individual users submit to search services and (b) the pages they look at subsequently and the time spent on each page. This information is used to return pages that most users visit after deploying the given query. For this technique to succeed a large amount of data needs to be collected for each query. Thus, the potential set of queries on which this technique applies is small. Also, this technique is open to spamming.
3) Ranking Based on Connectivity: This approach involves analyzing the hyperlinks between pages on the web on the assumption that: (a) pages on the topic link to each other, and (b) authoritative pages tend to point to other authoritative pages.
PageRank relies on (b)
Our approach is based on the same assumptions as the other connectivity algorithms, namely that the number and quality of the sources referring to a page are a good measure of the page's quality. The key difference consists in the fact that we are only considering "expert" sources - pages that have been created with the specific purpose of directing people towards resources. In response to a query, we first compute a list of the most relevant experts on the query topic. Then, we identify relevant links within the selected set of experts, and follow them to identify target web pages. The targets are then ranked according to the number and relevance of non-affiliated experts that point to them. Thus, the score of a target page reflects the collective opinion of the best independent experts on the query topic. When such a pool of experts is not available, Hilltop provides no results. Thus, Hilltop is tuned for result accuracy and not query coverage.
Our algorithm consists of two broad phases:
(i) Expert Lookup
We define an expert page as a page that is about a certain topic and has links to many non-affiliated pages on that topic. Two pages are non-affiliated conceptually if they are authored by authors from non-affiliated organizations.
(ii) Target Ranking
We believe a page is an authority on the query topic if and only if some of the best experts on the query topic point to it.
The problem is, how can we distinguish an expert from other types of pages? In other words what makes a page an expert? We felt than an expert page needs to be objective and diverse: that is, its recommendations should be unbiased and point to numerous non-affiliated pages on the subject. Therefore, in order to find the experts, we needed to detect when two sites belong to the same or related organizations.
2.1 Detecting Host Affiliation
We define two hosts as affiliated if one or both of the following is true:
They share the same first 3 octets of the IP address.
The rightmost non-generic token in the hostname is the same.
Keywords - Indexing the experts
document text. URLs located within the scope of a phrase are said to be "qualified" by it. For example, the title, headings (e.g., text within a pair of
For a target to be considered it must be pointed to by at least 2 experts on hosts that are mutually non-affiliated and are not affiliated to the target. For all targets that qualify we compute a target score reflecting both the number and relevance of the experts pointing to it and the relevance of the phrases qualifying the links.
Conclusions
We described a new ranking algorithm for broad queries called Hilltop and the implementation of a search engine based on it. Given a broad query Hilltop generates a list of target pages which are likely to be very authoritative pages on the topic of the query. This is by virtue of the fact that they are highly valued by pages on the WWW which address the topic of the query. In computing the usefulness of a target page from the hyperlinks pointing to it, we only consider links originating from pages that seem to be experts. Experts in our definition are directories of links pointing to many non-affiliated sites. This is an indication that these pages were created for the purpose of directing users to resources, and hence we regard their opinion as valuable. Additionally, in computing the level of relevance, we require a match between the query and the text on the expert page which qualifies the hyperlink being considered. This ensures that hyperlinks being considered are on the query topic. For further accuracy, we require that at least 2 non-affiliated experts point to the returned page with relevant qualifying text describing their linkage. The result of the steps described above is to generate a listing of pages that are highly relevant to the user's query and of high quality.
"propose a novel ranking scheme for broad queries that places the most authoritative pages on the query topic at the top of the ranking. Our algorithm operates on a special index of "expert documents." These are a subset of the pages on the WWW identified as directories of links to non-affiliated sources on specific topics. Results are ranked based on the match between the query and relevant descriptive text for hyperlinks on expert pages pointing to a given result page.
Three approaches to improve the authoritativeness of ranked results have been taken in the past:
1) Ranking Based on Human Classification: Human editors have been used by companies such as Yahoo! and Mining Company to manually associate a set of categories and keywords with a subset of documents on the web. These are then matched against the user's query to return valid matches. The trouble with this approach is that: (a) it is slow and can only be applied to a small number of pages, and (b) often the keywords and classifications assigned by the human judges are inadequate or incomplete. Given the rate at which the WWW is growing and the wide variation in queries this is not a comprehensive solution.
2) Ranking Based on Usage Information: Some services such as DirectHit collect information on: (a) the queries individual users submit to search services and (b) the pages they look at subsequently and the time spent on each page. This information is used to return pages that most users visit after deploying the given query. For this technique to succeed a large amount of data needs to be collected for each query. Thus, the potential set of queries on which this technique applies is small. Also, this technique is open to spamming.
3) Ranking Based on Connectivity: This approach involves analyzing the hyperlinks between pages on the web on the assumption that: (a) pages on the topic link to each other, and (b) authoritative pages tend to point to other authoritative pages.
PageRank relies on (b)
Our approach is based on the same assumptions as the other connectivity algorithms, namely that the number and quality of the sources referring to a page are a good measure of the page's quality. The key difference consists in the fact that we are only considering "expert" sources - pages that have been created with the specific purpose of directing people towards resources. In response to a query, we first compute a list of the most relevant experts on the query topic. Then, we identify relevant links within the selected set of experts, and follow them to identify target web pages. The targets are then ranked according to the number and relevance of non-affiliated experts that point to them. Thus, the score of a target page reflects the collective opinion of the best independent experts on the query topic. When such a pool of experts is not available, Hilltop provides no results. Thus, Hilltop is tuned for result accuracy and not query coverage.
Our algorithm consists of two broad phases:
(i) Expert Lookup
We define an expert page as a page that is about a certain topic and has links to many non-affiliated pages on that topic. Two pages are non-affiliated conceptually if they are authored by authors from non-affiliated organizations.
(ii) Target Ranking
We believe a page is an authority on the query topic if and only if some of the best experts on the query topic point to it.
The problem is, how can we distinguish an expert from other types of pages? In other words what makes a page an expert? We felt than an expert page needs to be objective and diverse: that is, its recommendations should be unbiased and point to numerous non-affiliated pages on the subject. Therefore, in order to find the experts, we needed to detect when two sites belong to the same or related organizations.
2.1 Detecting Host Affiliation
We define two hosts as affiliated if one or both of the following is true:
They share the same first 3 octets of the IP address.
The rightmost non-generic token in the hostname is the same.
Keywords - Indexing the experts
document text. URLs located within the scope of a phrase are said to be "qualified" by it. For example, the title, headings (e.g., text within a pair of
tags) and anchor text within the expert page are considered key phrases. The title has a scope that qualifies all URLs in the document. A heading's scope qualifies all URLs until the next heading of the same or greater importance...
For a target to be considered it must be pointed to by at least 2 experts on hosts that are mutually non-affiliated and are not affiliated to the target. For all targets that qualify we compute a target score reflecting both the number and relevance of the experts pointing to it and the relevance of the phrases qualifying the links.
Conclusions
We described a new ranking algorithm for broad queries called Hilltop and the implementation of a search engine based on it. Given a broad query Hilltop generates a list of target pages which are likely to be very authoritative pages on the topic of the query. This is by virtue of the fact that they are highly valued by pages on the WWW which address the topic of the query. In computing the usefulness of a target page from the hyperlinks pointing to it, we only consider links originating from pages that seem to be experts. Experts in our definition are directories of links pointing to many non-affiliated sites. This is an indication that these pages were created for the purpose of directing users to resources, and hence we regard their opinion as valuable. Additionally, in computing the level of relevance, we require a match between the query and the text on the expert page which qualifies the hyperlink being considered. This ensures that hyperlinks being considered are on the query topic. For further accuracy, we require that at least 2 non-affiliated experts point to the returned page with relevant qualifying text describing their linkage. The result of the steps described above is to generate a listing of pages that are highly relevant to the user's query and of high quality.
Been Gazumped by Google? Trying to make Sense of the "Florida" Update!
Been Gazumped by Google? Trying to make Sense of the "Florida" Update!: "The following is an attempt to put down rationally (I hope) most of the information that is known and the (unproven) theories behind the update algo.
Starting on the 16th of November, a major shift in results was seen on Google...
In many areas all the top 20 ranking sites disappeared, including industry leaders, to be replaced by educational sites, news review sites, government sites, major shopping portals or directories. Something major had happened - but what?
After tests on over 500 phrases we have concluded that certain phrases kick in the new algo, and certain don't. The ones that do are always highly commercial and the ones that are not, are often also commercial.
Be aware these are theories, some are bizarre, some may be close to the truth - but only Google knows what they are doing.
Main theory; Google manages to identify sought-after search terms. It then, when the search term is looked for, applies an optimisation filter to redress the influence SEOd sites may have and reveals the adjusted, "authoritative" results. This is why you tend to see governmental, educational, shopping portal, business directory and news sites on many searches. However, some commercial sites will still be considered the authority on that subject and remain - many, though, will drop out. This is the theory we subscribe to. We believe this was, and is, the intention of Google in this update.
Google is trying to separate their results into non-commercial and commercial. Commercial results will be AdWords and non-commercial the natural listing, primarily used for research purposes. My conclusion - well, it was probably me who started this, with a rather cynical tongue-in-cheek remark on the High Rankings Forum. Well, in reality, this is pretty much impossible and would defeat Google's idea of returning the most suitable sites for all searches. But some searches do make it look that way. However, in my opinion, this is not true.
Google has changed their algo to suit their biggest advertisers. My conclusion - highly unlikely and I do not believe that Google has any wish to be seen as an unethical company, regardless of their growing unpopularity with "jilted" webmasters.
There is no separate algo for "commercial" phrases and this is a new over-all update. My conclusion - all evidence points to this not being the case. I'm waiting to be convinced I am wrong, though.
This is a result of a virus or blog results upsetting the standard results which can only be seen if you type in -mt-tb.cgi as revealed in The Register. My conclusion - this is confusing the results returned unfiltered as shown with our -waffle (or any other garbage word) with a method of getting rid of extraneous listings from Blogs in the search results by excluding from the search the signature of the most used blogger trackback script.
Conclusion:
Despite the furore, there is no great conspiracy theory. Google are trying to redress the balance by trying to eradicate obvious search engine manipulation from their most competitive results. Remember, it is what Google considers their most competitive results probably gauged by both value and number of searches. As such, certain types of site don't fall into this category. SEO sites, for example, may be competitive but are not searched for with huge frequency.
The results of the filter have probably surprised Google, but, for the moment, few surfers will notice anything - unlike webmasters. The quality of the results has changed, with searches for home alarm, web design Calgary, and medela breast pumps showing, variously, sites with nothing to do with home alarms, a hockey team being top for web design and a listing of pretty much nothing but shopping portals. (My thanks to some of the many people who have posted some of the searches they have seen and I have used - you know who you are!) Many feel this has been a severe downgrading in relevancy, others believe that this is an improvement in the surfer experience. It is your judgement!
It is certain that Google will be watching the result of their change and will adjust the algo if they think it will reward sites of merit and increase relevancy. Whatever happens, though, the days of easy rankings through simple SEO are over"
Starting on the 16th of November, a major shift in results was seen on Google...
In many areas all the top 20 ranking sites disappeared, including industry leaders, to be replaced by educational sites, news review sites, government sites, major shopping portals or directories. Something major had happened - but what?
After tests on over 500 phrases we have concluded that certain phrases kick in the new algo, and certain don't. The ones that do are always highly commercial and the ones that are not, are often also commercial.
Be aware these are theories, some are bizarre, some may be close to the truth - but only Google knows what they are doing.
Main theory; Google manages to identify sought-after search terms. It then, when the search term is looked for, applies an optimisation filter to redress the influence SEOd sites may have and reveals the adjusted, "authoritative" results. This is why you tend to see governmental, educational, shopping portal, business directory and news sites on many searches. However, some commercial sites will still be considered the authority on that subject and remain - many, though, will drop out. This is the theory we subscribe to. We believe this was, and is, the intention of Google in this update.
Google is trying to separate their results into non-commercial and commercial. Commercial results will be AdWords and non-commercial the natural listing, primarily used for research purposes. My conclusion - well, it was probably me who started this, with a rather cynical tongue-in-cheek remark on the High Rankings Forum. Well, in reality, this is pretty much impossible and would defeat Google's idea of returning the most suitable sites for all searches. But some searches do make it look that way. However, in my opinion, this is not true.
Google has changed their algo to suit their biggest advertisers. My conclusion - highly unlikely and I do not believe that Google has any wish to be seen as an unethical company, regardless of their growing unpopularity with "jilted" webmasters.
There is no separate algo for "commercial" phrases and this is a new over-all update. My conclusion - all evidence points to this not being the case. I'm waiting to be convinced I am wrong, though.
This is a result of a virus or blog results upsetting the standard results which can only be seen if you type in -mt-tb.cgi as revealed in The Register. My conclusion - this is confusing the results returned unfiltered as shown with our -waffle (or any other garbage word) with a method of getting rid of extraneous listings from Blogs in the search results by excluding from the search the signature of the most used blogger trackback script.
Conclusion:
Despite the furore, there is no great conspiracy theory. Google are trying to redress the balance by trying to eradicate obvious search engine manipulation from their most competitive results. Remember, it is what Google considers their most competitive results probably gauged by both value and number of searches. As such, certain types of site don't fall into this category. SEO sites, for example, may be competitive but are not searched for with huge frequency.
The results of the filter have probably surprised Google, but, for the moment, few surfers will notice anything - unlike webmasters. The quality of the results has changed, with searches for home alarm, web design Calgary, and medela breast pumps showing, variously, sites with nothing to do with home alarms, a hockey team being top for web design and a listing of pretty much nothing but shopping portals. (My thanks to some of the many people who have posted some of the searches they have seen and I have used - you know who you are!) Many feel this has been a severe downgrading in relevancy, others believe that this is an improvement in the surfer experience. It is your judgement!
It is certain that Google will be watching the result of their change and will adjust the algo if they think it will reward sites of merit and increase relevancy. Whatever happens, though, the days of easy rankings through simple SEO are over"
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Google 'supplemental results'
Google 'supplemental results': "Hey, the supplemental results are a new experimental feature to augment the results for obscure queries. This is a new technology that can return more results for queries that for example have a small number of results. So it might not affect the results for a popular search, but for a researcher doing a more specific query, it can improve the recall of the results. The supplemental collection of pages has been collected from the web just like the 3.3 billion pages in Google's main index. "
Boston.com / Business / Technology / As Google grows, critics emerge
Boston.com / Business / Technology / As Google grows, critics emerge: "'Every few years there's another big fish,' he said. 'Nothing lasts forever on the Web.'
True enough. You remember AltaVista -- barely. It was the Google of the late 1990s, acclaimed as the world's best search service. But the tech-heads dropped AltaVista for Google and brought the rest of the world along with them. If Google makes them mad enough, it could happen again"
True enough. You remember AltaVista -- barely. It was the Google of the late 1990s, acclaimed as the world's best search service. But the tech-heads dropped AltaVista for Google and brought the rest of the world along with them. If Google makes them mad enough, it could happen again"
Fortune.com - Technology - Can Google Grow Up?
No apologies for quoting at length.... Fortune.com - Technology - Can Google Grow Up?: "We'll sing more of Google's praises later, but first the worrisome news: Google has grown arrogant, making some of its executives as frustrating to deal with in negotiations as AOL's cowboy salesmen during the bubble. It has grown so fast that employees and business partners are often confused about who does what. A rise of stock- and option-stoked greed is creating rifts within the company. Employees carp that Google is morphing in strange and nerve-racking ways. And talk swirls over the question of who's really in charge: CEO Schmidt or co-founders Brin and Page?"...
All are aiming for what they see as Google's weak spot: lack of customer lock-in. ...Google's foes have a much firmer hold on customers, argues Seth Godin, a well-known Internet consultant and editor of last summer's widely distributed online book What Should Google Do?... consider the way My Yahoo brings you information on everything from your portfolio to fixing your house. They will probably use that same information to tailor search results. Google, meanwhile, knows little more about you than what you are currently searching for.
...
versus...
In a short time Google has become one of the world's best-loved brands. Movie stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and ex-Presidents like Jimmy Carter drop by for visits. A thousand people apply for jobs at Google every day."...
Though web-search startups were a dime a dozen, investors couldn't hand money over to Google fast enough. When the founders showed Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim a demo in the summer of 1998, he wrote a $100,000 check on the spot. Brin and Page had to wait a month until Google actually existed to cash it. In 1999 top venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital invested $25 million. "It was very unfashionable to invest in a company like Google back then," said Michael Moritz, the Sequoia partner in charge of the deal, in an interview with FORTUNE last year. "But we thought Larry and Sergey were taking a fresh look." Soon after, Yahoo anted up $10 million...
Larry and Sergey spent more time talking about how they weren't going to make money—no user registration, no blast e-mails, no banner advertising—than how they were," says a participant in Google's early discussions. On Google's website, under the heading "Ten things Google has found to be true," No. 6 still reads, "You can make money without doing evil." Not doing evil is a common concern around Google and loosely translates into avoiding anything that mars Google's user experience...
Adsense, which puts ads on nonsearch sites. Read about the New York marathon on newyorktimes.com, for instance, and Adsense serves up ads for sports drinks, running shoes, or whoever else pays...
Those close to Google say that the company has begun to more closely resemble a madhouse than any kind of serene dot-com dream. It's a tough place to work, and a tough place to do business with.
Beyond the bean-bagged lobby, 12-hour days are considered standard, and an unspoken caste system has emerged. At the top are the engineers, people in the mold of Brin and Page. At the bottom are the contractors, the 30% of Google workers who labor alongside full-timers—yet without benefits, stock options, or access to the company intranet, not to mention to meetings or social events. That's fostered anger in Google's overeducated ranks....
The most immediate threat is Yahoo. It's expanding into new areas like product search (helping people to find goods, read reviews, compare prices, and buy) and local search (enabling users to find a plumber or landscaper in their neighborhood). Google has prototype sites that provide those services (froogle.google.com and labs.google.com/location), but they're not nearly as good. With about a 5% stake in Google, Yahoo goes quiet when talking about the company. Yet it's likely Yahoo will dump the stock after the IPO. Even sooner it will stop using Google's search on its site, relying instead on its newly acquired units. Says Jeff Weiner, senior vice president in charge of search: "We have every intention of deploying Inktomi and Overture throughout all our search..."
Then there's Microsoft. The company has an army of brainiacs working on incorporating web search into MSN and its new operating system, code-named Longhorn, due out in 2006. It plans to be able to index every user's hard drive and use the information to provide better searches. "All I'll say is that search is vitally important to us," says Chris Payne, Microsoft's executive in charge of search
All are aiming for what they see as Google's weak spot: lack of customer lock-in. ...Google's foes have a much firmer hold on customers, argues Seth Godin, a well-known Internet consultant and editor of last summer's widely distributed online book What Should Google Do?... consider the way My Yahoo brings you information on everything from your portfolio to fixing your house. They will probably use that same information to tailor search results. Google, meanwhile, knows little more about you than what you are currently searching for.
...
versus...
In a short time Google has become one of the world's best-loved brands. Movie stars like Gwyneth Paltrow and ex-Presidents like Jimmy Carter drop by for visits. A thousand people apply for jobs at Google every day."...
Though web-search startups were a dime a dozen, investors couldn't hand money over to Google fast enough. When the founders showed Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim a demo in the summer of 1998, he wrote a $100,000 check on the spot. Brin and Page had to wait a month until Google actually existed to cash it. In 1999 top venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital invested $25 million. "It was very unfashionable to invest in a company like Google back then," said Michael Moritz, the Sequoia partner in charge of the deal, in an interview with FORTUNE last year. "But we thought Larry and Sergey were taking a fresh look." Soon after, Yahoo anted up $10 million...
Larry and Sergey spent more time talking about how they weren't going to make money—no user registration, no blast e-mails, no banner advertising—than how they were," says a participant in Google's early discussions. On Google's website, under the heading "Ten things Google has found to be true," No. 6 still reads, "You can make money without doing evil." Not doing evil is a common concern around Google and loosely translates into avoiding anything that mars Google's user experience...
Adsense, which puts ads on nonsearch sites. Read about the New York marathon on newyorktimes.com, for instance, and Adsense serves up ads for sports drinks, running shoes, or whoever else pays...
Those close to Google say that the company has begun to more closely resemble a madhouse than any kind of serene dot-com dream. It's a tough place to work, and a tough place to do business with.
Beyond the bean-bagged lobby, 12-hour days are considered standard, and an unspoken caste system has emerged. At the top are the engineers, people in the mold of Brin and Page. At the bottom are the contractors, the 30% of Google workers who labor alongside full-timers—yet without benefits, stock options, or access to the company intranet, not to mention to meetings or social events. That's fostered anger in Google's overeducated ranks....
The most immediate threat is Yahoo. It's expanding into new areas like product search (helping people to find goods, read reviews, compare prices, and buy) and local search (enabling users to find a plumber or landscaper in their neighborhood). Google has prototype sites that provide those services (froogle.google.com and labs.google.com/location), but they're not nearly as good. With about a 5% stake in Google, Yahoo goes quiet when talking about the company. Yet it's likely Yahoo will dump the stock after the IPO. Even sooner it will stop using Google's search on its site, relying instead on its newly acquired units. Says Jeff Weiner, senior vice president in charge of search: "We have every intention of deploying Inktomi and Overture throughout all our search..."
Then there's Microsoft. The company has an army of brainiacs working on incorporating web search into MSN and its new operating system, code-named Longhorn, due out in 2006. It plans to be able to index every user's hard drive and use the information to provide better searches. "All I'll say is that search is vitally important to us," says Chris Payne, Microsoft's executive in charge of search
Saturday, November 22, 2003
Google: Current Algo Update-Dance -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum
Google: Current Algo Update-Dance -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "AND,.. this I like,... it means that in order to rank high,... a commercial site now will need to give much more content,. more information,... more general information,.. and I think that that is something many SEO consultants (like your self) have been preaching for many years already. That´s probably why you don't see that many of your sites effected."
Friday, November 21, 2003
Google: Current Algo Update-Dance -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum
Google: Current Algo Update-Dance -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "New type of message from google. When we type 'seo' initially it was dominated by commercial sites like topseo.com now they are gone disappeared. Now no.1 ranking is google webmaster warnings on SEOs.
www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
So they definetely want to send a message to everyone. Dont use SEOs first read our guidelines on selecting an SEO.
oops this definetely looks manually manipulating the SERPs to tell people what they are not supposed to do. Got to see how long google sets the rules,
VIJAY."
www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
So they definetely want to send a message to everyone. Dont use SEOs first read our guidelines on selecting an SEO.
oops this definetely looks manually manipulating the SERPs to tell people what they are not supposed to do. Got to see how long google sets the rules,
VIJAY."
Google: Current Algo Update-Dance -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum
Google fuck over conspiracy theoriesGoogle: Current Algo Update-Dance -> High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum: "QUOTE (Toadally @ Nov 21 2003, 12:36 AM)
I think this is the most reprehenisble tactic that Google has ever undertaken. AND I think it all has to do with their upcomoming IPO. By putting everything as far as organic placement in flux, right before Christmas, they make everybody start to pay PPC, which drives their profit margin way up (and ours way down) before their upcoming IPO early next year.
Hmmm...Very, very interesting, I had exactly the same speculation, as strangely enough my firm was contacted by Google to upgrade our adwards just today...as long as we maintain or increase our monthly budget that is...!
...targeting the same (competitive) phrase that we have dropped for....nerve... "
I think this is the most reprehenisble tactic that Google has ever undertaken. AND I think it all has to do with their upcomoming IPO. By putting everything as far as organic placement in flux, right before Christmas, they make everybody start to pay PPC, which drives their profit margin way up (and ours way down) before their upcoming IPO early next year.
Hmmm...Very, very interesting, I had exactly the same speculation, as strangely enough my firm was contacted by Google to upgrade our adwards just today...as long as we maintain or increase our monthly budget that is...!
...targeting the same (competitive) phrase that we have dropped for....nerve... "
Google as a Public Utility? No Results in This Search for Monopoly - TechKnowledge Newsletter
Google as a Public Utility? No Results in This Search for Monopoly - TechKnowledge Newsletter: "technology consultant Bill Thompson in a recent online BBC News column: �Perhaps the time has come to recognize this dominant search engine for what it is�a public utility that must be regulated in the public interest.� Thompson adds, �A government serious about ensuring that the net benefits society as a whole could start by investigating Google and considering whether we should create Ofsearch, the Office of Search Engines.� Daniel Brandt of Google Watch / Public Information Research, Inc., has similar dire predictions. �It's way too powerful�It�s scary because if Google drops you, you could be out of business in no time.� "
Retailers Rise in Google Rankings as Rivals Cry Foul
I think that this example demonstrates the deep tension betweens the Google ranking philosophy & commerce, especially where resellers & affiliates are involved.
Retailers Rise in Google Rankings as Rivals Cry Foul: "Danny Sullivan, who is the editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, said the problem had hit other industries too, particularly as companies encourage affiliates, or online brokers, to sell their products. He worries about the impact on consumers.
'If I do a search for gift baskets, I'd probably like to get a balanced list,' he said. 'If I get 10 listings from the same company, that doesn't help me.'
But other search engine experts say that occupying multiple slots in search rankings may simply be smart marketing. Greg Boser, the founder of WebGuerrilla.com, a search-engine marketing consultancy, likened the Gift Services sites to GMC and Chevrolet. 'They have different logos and different TV commercials,' he said, 'but a Chevy truck is exactly the same thing as a GMC truck.'"
Retailers Rise in Google Rankings as Rivals Cry Foul: "Danny Sullivan, who is the editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, said the problem had hit other industries too, particularly as companies encourage affiliates, or online brokers, to sell their products. He worries about the impact on consumers.
'If I do a search for gift baskets, I'd probably like to get a balanced list,' he said. 'If I get 10 listings from the same company, that doesn't help me.'
But other search engine experts say that occupying multiple slots in search rankings may simply be smart marketing. Greg Boser, the founder of WebGuerrilla.com, a search-engine marketing consultancy, likened the Gift Services sites to GMC and Chevrolet. 'They have different logos and different TV commercials,' he said, 'but a Chevy truck is exactly the same thing as a GMC truck.'"
Google filters
Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine News, Blog Search: "Google recently introduced a new keyword phrase filter during its most recent update. Some phrases were unchanged, but many highly optimized and highly competitive phrases were drastically altered. Some webmasters saw their sites drop from top listings to not being in the top 1,000 sites. Unlike other filters, this spam peanalty does not affect a page or sites overall perceived value. The end effect is lowered rankings for various specific searches for that page."
Thursday, November 20, 2003
The Search Light Vol.3 Issue 9, free search engine newsletter
The Search Light Vol.3 Issue 9, free search engine newsletter: "Speaking of rumors, this week I heard one from a very reliable source that a large online retail company in Pakistan has just launched a lawsuit against Google for alleged violation of their own TOS via the closure of the company's AdWords advertising accounts.
According to my source, if Google doesn't respond within 7 days, the Pakistani firm will apply for a ruling from a local court restricting Google from operating in Pakistan, including denial of access to Google search sites (and their partners sites such as Yahoo. AOL etc) from within Pakistan. I've asked Google to confirm or deny the rumor and I'll post more details to my blog as soon as I receive them..."
According to my source, if Google doesn't respond within 7 days, the Pakistani firm will apply for a ruling from a local court restricting Google from operating in Pakistan, including denial of access to Google search sites (and their partners sites such as Yahoo. AOL etc) from within Pakistan. I've asked Google to confirm or deny the rumor and I'll post more details to my blog as soon as I receive them..."
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Google No. 1 search site in the world according to OneStat.com (OneStat.com) - Pressi.com
Google No. 1 search site in the world according to OneStat.com (OneStat.com) - Pressi.com: "News release 11/18/2003 10:55:19 AM GMT
Google No. 1 search site in the world according to OneStat.com"
Google No. 1 search site in the world according to OneStat.com"
What Future for Search?
Take heed...
What Future for Search?: "If Google were to continue with this model, (and in the absence of any other major competitor some might argue there's little reason why they should not) we could reasonably assume that for people who rely on organic search there's still plenty of time for a free lunch. However, with IPO on the horizon and the lure of even bigger profits, combined with inevitable shareholder pressure any existing 'free real estate' could rapidly diminish. "
What Future for Search?: "If Google were to continue with this model, (and in the absence of any other major competitor some might argue there's little reason why they should not) we could reasonably assume that for people who rely on organic search there's still plenty of time for a free lunch. However, with IPO on the horizon and the lure of even bigger profits, combined with inevitable shareholder pressure any existing 'free real estate' could rapidly diminish. "
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Localized Google Search Result Exclusions: Statement of Issues & A Call for Data
Localized Google Search Result Exclusions: Statement of Issues & A Call for Data: "A note on search criteria: The authors' searches use standard Google search syntax to request 1) pages on the specified web site (using the site:stormfront.org restriction), and 2) pages that lack a phrase of gibberish (using the exclusion syntax -asdfasdf), since some search term must be specified. Similar searches for other sites confirm that these search criteria provide a reliable estimate of the number of pages indexed by Google on a given web site."
Localized Google Search Result Exclusions: Statement of Issues & A Call for Data
Localized Google Search Result Exclusions: Statement of Issues & A Call for Data: "The authors are studying exclusions from search engine search results, and have found some 113 sites excluded, in whole or in part, from the French google.fr and German google.de compared with google.com. Learn more about the situation and context, test the exclusions for yourself, and submit further sites suspected to be excluded."
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