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This stuff is tough

Thursday, February 25, 2010
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Labels: Competition , Consumers , European Union , Google in Europe Blog , Innovation

20 comments :

  1. "Scuba" SteveFebruary 25, 2010 at 3:34 PM

    Amazing stuff

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  2. UnknownFebruary 25, 2010 at 3:39 PM

    great insight into the search technology..keep up the good work Google

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  3. AnonymousFebruary 25, 2010 at 4:38 PM

    Great job Amit. I love that you clarified the definition of Google ranking being a collection of algorithms. Too often we think about it (or drive ourselves nuts about it) being based on one algorithm or formula.

    My favorite attribute about the entire Google search philosophy is 3. Keep it simple. Even after the YaBing conversion, Google will always have minimalism as a sustaining value proposition - and that's the way I like it.

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  4. UnknownFebruary 25, 2010 at 4:50 PM

    Amit - you forgot to mention one last thing: those results for "search engine" will vary depending on where you live, where your web hosted is serving from, what you've search for and clicked on before, and what Google data center you are hitting at the time. Then, you leave the user to contemplate whether they want to see a web search result, a news result, a social network, a blog post, a book result, or a paid ad. While diversity and options are great, this may leave me, as the user, so much more confused and almost forgetting what I originally wanted to find.

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  5. jordonFebruary 25, 2010 at 4:51 PM

    Nice! Love the first paragraph. Well done.

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  6. oblong.orgFebruary 25, 2010 at 5:55 PM

    Really exciting to hear just how much more evolution there is in search.

    I work in seo and can't wait for caffeine to 'kick in'. What I look forward to is socialprseo all coming together and link building on mass becoming a thing of the past.

    Google really has a great thing, 'Not be stuffy' should be the next mission statement after not be evil that is!

    Matthew D. Wright

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  7. UnknownFebruary 25, 2010 at 6:13 PM

    This was really clear and I appreciate the honesty behind Googles search philosophy.

    If you don't mind me asking, why have you spent 20 years in search? You seem to have a huge passion for it and know the landscape for it's future. Even though I seem to have answered my own question(?) are there any other reasons?

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  8. UnknownFebruary 25, 2010 at 6:21 PM

    I don't know if it's the same in the other countries, but in France (the place the complaints comes) the feeling is Google is manupaling the search results manually.

    Some magazines or online website made the demonstration about some "rank boost" for some websites (e.g. allocine.com for movies, commentcamarche.net for hi-tech topics, etc...).

    There's also in the background some internal Google docs about the manual search result flaging ("mandatory", "relevant", "spammy")...

    Believe me, if you experience Google in France, you can sometimes have questions about some search results.

    In the end, this inquiry is not a big surprise from a french view.

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  9. Eldred CurwenFebruary 25, 2010 at 7:05 PM

    What is such a shame is that the interfering government do gooders will probably read the first line of this excellent post, consider themselves informed and then go off on a money wasting spree similar to the UK's bailout of Northern Rock. They will set limits, goals and other useless targets and then conveniently forget what they were meant to be doing in the first place when they get called infont of a parliamentary committe or a congressional oversight committee!

    However without such imbeciles I wouldn't have any one to rant about and this post would have just said....

    Excelent and clear info, keep up the knowledge stream, we are all sponges out here!

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  10. cblilliFebruary 25, 2010 at 10:38 PM

    "... Here's one last one: "search engine." In 0.14 seconds from among a few hundred million pages, our initial results are: AltaVista, Dogpile Web Search, Bing and Ask.com. I guess I'd better get back to work"

    : )))))))))))))))

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  11. Samuel LavoieFebruary 26, 2010 at 10:36 AM

    clear and honest from Google. thanks Amit.

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  12. Dr. ClueFebruary 26, 2010 at 11:49 AM

    Uncle bill and his shills have a long standing credibility problem that extends back to well before Google first lifted Susan Wojcicki's garage
    door.

    I've always been impressed with
    Google's ability to stick to it's
    philosophies, and continue to pursue
    the magic.

    Even though I started programming before the advent of the PC, I still believe in the magic of what we do and
    cherish the presence of companies like
    Google that exemplify magic in motion.

    Given the difficulties that governments
    have in running themselves, I could
    just imagine what a government search
    engine would look like, and just how
    err honest those results might be. :)

    Keep to the light!!!

    --Doc

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  13. kiwiboiFebruary 26, 2010 at 11:42 PM

    I think it is good to have some mechanical approach in having an algorithm working for us.

    It is self regulating in the sense that if it doesn't work, it will get punished and have to adapt to give better results.

    It also gives us humans an opportunity to take some distance from a problem and do not interfere in the process in an attempt to have control over it.

    It also enlightens us from boring tasks so we can use our creativity for things that are more fun to us.

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  14. Francotel SARLFebruary 28, 2010 at 7:55 AM

    you are very funny google, your statement sounds clear and now all people understand the algo, but why google not explain us this:

    If Company 1 have many landingpages and/or affiliates, all this guys have relevant sites or short urls maybe, and you display in the first 10 of 5 millions results 8 from Company(a1) with the effectiv same target url ! Than its not a question how your indexing and algo is working, its more a question why you not block more results with the same target url ??? or is it not true also is it me i see this issue only ???

    This looks for me anti competition and nobody can tell me now that have to do with SEO or someone else, it have to do simple google not block this target urls and give 8 of 10 first results to the same company, i call this prefered listing !

    Its easy to fix, if you crawl make a limit of 2 same target urls for the first 100 results, dont display the landingpages and short urls what have effectiv same target and nobody will cry.

    Will think about !

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  15. The Ex SmokerFebruary 28, 2010 at 8:44 AM

    Great info. It is just a pleasure to read this blog.

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  16. Dr. ClueFebruary 28, 2010 at 10:04 PM

    [This looks for me anti competition and
    nobody can tell me now that have to do
    with SEO or someone else,...]

    There are certain situations where my
    attempts to perform research are
    hampered by junk result sets.

    No matter how clever an algorithm Google
    devises, there will be folks looking to
    game the system and conversely folks
    who inadvertently demote themselves.

    It's a delicate balancing act for both
    the indexer and the indexed in trying to
    get both the quality content that is
    oblivious to SEO and the content
    leveraging every last strategy to weigh
    out more by their relevance then their
    cleverness in jousting the crawler.

    Overall, I'm pretty happy with the
    results I get, and when I get junk
    it's typically pretty obvious to me
    the nature of the issue and I adjust my queries accordingly.

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  17. UnknownMarch 1, 2010 at 11:11 AM

    Great to get reaction from Google directly but imho it includes a little bit to less really new instructions ;-)
    Especially for renoseo germany
    Cheers!

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  18. incrediblehelpMarch 1, 2010 at 10:18 PM

    2. No query left behind.

    Interesting that you feel fixing one lousy result will fix a host of other issues. i would think the opposite would be true or possible. Identifying a solution specific for one set of results could cause a huge list of problems for many other website that were probably doing nothing wrong.

    This type of thinking really helps me understand why mom and pop shops that are doing nothing wrong get de-indexed or demoted all of the time in your index.

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  19. AmitMarch 3, 2010 at 2:08 AM

    Gary said...

    This was really clear and I appreciate the honesty behind Googles search philosophy.

    If you don't mind me asking, why have you spent 20 years in search? You seem to have a huge passion for it and know the landscape for it's future. Even though I seem to have answered my own question(?) are there any other reasons?

    February 25, 2010 6:13 PM

    ---

    First of all, let me thank everyone for their kind comments and honest views in this discussion. Gary, I love search, after having done search for almost 20 years, I still come into work every morning like a kid going to a candy store. Alongside my passion for search, one fact that keeps me so excited is that what was science fiction in search research twenty years ago is now coming to fruition at Google. The semantic systems we have built are something I didn't expect to see in my lifetime. Secondly, Google has given me an environment where researchers like me can practice search in its pure algorithmic form. I can't put in words how incredibly satisfying this combination is for a search geek like me :-).

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  20. JezCMarch 6, 2010 at 1:09 PM

    By representing a heuristic as an algorithm, Amit has attempted a sleight of hand. An algorithm can be tied back to a body of knowledge, such as mathematics, from which the algorithm is obtained.

    Search is informed by human intuition - it is heuristics that drive search ranking. Expressed as what programmers tend to call an algorithm, a heuristic embeds in a computer program, social and cultural assumptions. Expression as a computer program doesn't make the heuristic and the assumptions behind it, transparent, or remove the cultural and social biases. If anything, representing a value laden heuristic as a neutral algorithm allows Google to conceal US cultural values as eternal truths - deceiving the observer into thinking that human factors play no part in choosing how to rank search results.

    Google's problem with Europeans is that at every turn, Google shows it favours the US view of the world and US interests, over non-US. Why then, faced with a search engine based on human informed heuristics, should we not fear implicit US favour in the results?

    Explain the technical mechanisms, and demonstrate in actions, that people outside the US are regarded as being of equal value, and you may remove the fear that Google is implicitly favouring US interests.

    When you have US residents, paying US taxes in US dollars, subjected to parochial US media, under US law, why would we assume that you're thinking about us, and valuing us? Show us that you genuinely *care* about us, and you'll change opinions.

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