In the Algorithm research session at Search Engine Strategies today several panelists mentioned that search engines might use the length of time one spends on a result page to downgrade its relevance in certain circumstances. If everyone immediately clicks back to the search engine for example quickly after visiting a page, the engines may take this as an indication [...]
There has never been an easier time to get your thoughts out there. For like $10 a month you can have a website, spout your opinions, and share your wisdom with the world. More and more people spend time reading things like blogs now, and these independent resources are playing a greater role in informing the culture. At the same time, this means that there has never been an easier time to spread false information.
I think one of the more difficult issues those of us that work in the search marketing field have to deal with is the issue of to what extent our promotion efforts are harming the internet as an open information resource. Osx86 project wrote a nice article on how hacking contests can lead to a [...]
Whenever I search for domain names, I am amazed by how many are being held for ransom by speculators. Is there information anywhere about the number of domain names that are owned versus the number that are active sites? I would define active as those having some content live that are updated at least once per year, excluding [...]
In a continuing trend of more and more entities embracing the potential of social search, Kratia.com has launched what they call a ‘democratic’ search engine. From the greek word ‘to rule’ Kratia attempts to put the power to control the SERPs in the hands of its users.Â
You start off with the MSN search results which you can vote [...]
One of the problems with trying to fight content redundancy over multiple sites is that if you don’t properly identify the original source of the content, you might penalize the author by wrongly labeling them as a redunandant instance. This has been pointed out by various sources as a possible problem with the current Google rules around duplicate content.Â
Here [...]
There is a ton of great information online. There is lots of garbage out there as well. One of the recurrent themes of this site is the need for more meta data, generated both by users and site owners, to be used by search engines to improve result quality, and by web browser clients to increase [...]
What does a link mean? If you are going to have link relationships govern the logic of search applications, it seems you have to have a good answer to this deceptively simple question. In many situations it seems that we takes links as a kind of vote of confidence. There are lots [...]
I define Search Literacy as the ability to find what one is looking for in an efficient manner. This breaks down into 2 major questions. 1. Did you find what you were looking for? (Did you end up with the right information? Are you happy with your purchase?) 2. Were you able to conduct the [...]
More and more people are talking about how society is becoming increasingly tribal in character. Instead of broad common values and common media types uniting us, we are splintered into smaller, more specialized groups often distributed geographically and connected only by virtual web-based or incidental communities. Comic lovers and trekkies unite at conventions. [...]