SearchEngineZ - News and Ideas

Google's Downfall - Quality Control

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 05:27:00 +0000

Well, to be more precise, the lack of human intervention. This is something Google has been very proud of - no humans meddling with their search results. The legendary algorithm makes sure that only quality sites appear in the search results.

Oops! Quality is diminishing. I'm seeing more and more spam in the search results. And worse still, pseudo-content. This is what is happening:

Dozens of automated processes are bombarding Google with automated content, and Google is not keeping up. As soon as they tackle the current batch, the next batch of automations arrive and there's even more of them

But worse still - humans are churning out the stuff. It doesn't matter than someone in India writes it for $15, or an expert in the field writes a worthy article - Google's algorithm cannot tell the difference. And unfortunately, some humans will genuinely link to it, because they can't tell the difference!

...companies like Demand Media and Answers.com which create thousands of pieces of content per day and are making a big impact on the Web. Both of those two companies are now firmly inside the top 20 Web properties in the U.S., on a par with the likes of Apple and AOL.

Demand are churning out 2,000 articles and videos per day.

The average writer earns $15 per article for pieces that top out at a few hundred words, and the average filmmaker about $20 per clip, paid weekly via PayPal. Demand also offers revenue sharing on some articles, though it can take months to reach even $15 in such payments. Other freelancers sign up for the chance to copyedit ($2.50 an article), fact-check ($1 an article), approve the quality of a film (25 to 50 cents a video), transcribe ($1 to $2 per video), or offer up their expertise to be quoted or filmed (free). Title proofers get 8 cents a headline. From Wired.

The quality of Demand's articles and videos is passable. But the next company to do the same will have less quality, and I suspect Google will fall for it.

And in a few years, computer will do the entire process - discover what people are searching for, and create content to suit. And the end user will use software to find what fits their interests... At some stage, we will need humans again.

Status - The Key to the Survival of Phone Companies

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sat, 30 May 2009 22:25:00 +0000

It's way to late for me or anyone else to come up with this idea. It could only be of use if every phone company in the world decided on a standard and implemented it within a year. Sounds impossible.

The idea: just like you can set a status in IM, you should be able to do it on your phone. For example, if I am in the cinema, I don't want to take calls period. And I don't want people to leave messages. But if I could set my status to unavailable, and my status message to "in cinema until 8:15", then people would understand, and call me back after the movie finishes.

Specs:

Status options of Available, Unavailable & Busy
Status Messages of a length up to 130 chars, leaving 14 for the status type
Options of who gets to see your status, or your status and your message
The ability to change the status dependant on who is calling

That's it - all that is needed. The rest can be handled by software on the phones.
Phones can then do things like "if Bob calls, and my status message is "asleep", let the phone ring.

In doing so, people will retain their phone services, rather than switching to VOIP, IM etc. Otherwise, bye-bye phone companies, hello ISPs.

The #1 Problem with the Rise of Video

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:22:00 +0000

As one becomes more experienced in surfing the web, one learns to quickly judge whether a web page contains credible, useful information, or not. The clues are not necessarily obvious, but deep-down you've learned to spot them:

- more ads than content
- brevity
- ads not related to content
- ads for gambling, credit cards, adult dating
- no sign of an author's name
- poor writing quality in the first paragraph
- lack of related imagery
- domain name with hyphens
- domain name using generic keywords
- lack of links to related content
- links within the content that lead to ads (commonly with a double-underline)

...and that's just off the top of my head. Most of time I can choose whether to read the content of a page, or not, in less than a second.

With video, most of the time all I have to judge it by is the title and the opening frame. That is next to nothing. Given how easy it is put together a professional looking, cut and paste video these days (I wouldn't have a clue how, but given how many appear on YouTube each day, it must be easy), a good portion of videos you come across are a waste of time. If you only ever visit the BBC you won't have a problem, but the more you stray from super-trustworthy sites, the lower the quality of the embedded videos you are likely to encounter.

Ongoing, people will need to learn how to decide which videos are worth watching. This will be a serious skill, because you cannot judge a video on the first second. Some don't even really get going until 10, 20 even 30 seconds from the start. And even then, if it takes them a while to get to the thing you desire to see, you might stick around, waiting...

These indicators of quality might help:

- personal knowledge of the quality of the site
- surrounding article - the more supporting words the better
- is it something that needs to be on video rather than words?

Regarding the last factor - UFO footage would be a definite, so would a celebrity interview or a plane crash. Or a demonstration of a product - I love video reviews of tech gear. But if it is a concept or theory, give me an article over a PowerPoint presentation any day.

In the future, I can see two things happening:

- a rise in bait and switch videos
- a rise in rating services

A bait and switch video is where you start watching one thing, and slowly but surely the content changes to something else. Perhaps a video on fixing credit problems that morphs into a pitch for a pyramid scheme. We know from infomercials on TV that people will continue to watch something once they have given it their initial attention.

Rating services could be in the form of a toolbar with thumbs up, thumbs down buttons. Or a paid service. Plenty of commercial website have badges in the footer of the page to indicate how trustworthy they are. Why not take this a step further and have a video certified to be of a high standard?

Or, we might just find that, unless it is from a site they trust, people will just stop watching videos.

This Will Be Big - Online Game Show

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 12 May 2009 04:11:00 +0000

Microsoft is debuting an interactive version of "1 vs. 100," an Endemol-created game show in which one person combats 100 others for a sizable cash prize.
"1 vs. 100" marks the first offering for Xbox Live Primetime. The show will air in North America over the summer and fall, MediaWeek writes, and as many as 200,000 Xbox Live Gold members are expected to play either the live versions, which will air Fridays and Saturdays, or quick-play versions throughout the week.

I'm not predicting that this first iteration will be a hit, but the concept in general. Everyone that watches a game show wishes they were playing it. Online PCs and consoles are very capable of running muti-player games, even massive ones, so such contests should be easy to host, and popular. Early adopters clever at finding ways to cheat could intially make some good $$

Twitter Tiny URL service

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:22:00 +0000

There has been lots of talk lately about Twitter, TinyURL, and other URL shortening services. To me the solution is obvious....

Twitter develops their own URL shortening service. Shouldn't be hard, such scripts can be purchased for $10...
Twitter adjusts their software, so that when they check the length of any tweet, the first URL is counted as just 7 characters
URLs embedded in tweets just appear like this uGT5ER7 - with the u denoting it is a Twitter short URL
If Twitter also launched a browser toolbar, with a big button for Tweet This Page, which automatically embedded a short URL for the page you are visiting, then the process is complete

By doing so, Twitter could gather data on which pages online were being tweeted the most, and the click through rate.

19% of Google sessions now come from Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:03:00 +0000

So the article says. Extremely misleading, and the author then extrapolates this to suggest that "Facebook could kill Google".

Here's what is said:

Ross also illustrates how important Facebook has become to Google as a traffic source. Fully 19% of Google sessions now come from Facebook, up from 9% a year ago. At the very least, this will likely give Facebook the leverage to negotiate a sweet referral deal at some point.

Here's the reality:

Facebook does not link to Google (unless some places a link, or a YouTube video on their page)
The traffic comes from people finishing whatever they were doing at Facebook, and typing google.com directly into the browser
This result is directly related to the amount of time people spend on such a popular site. It would be the same for other popular sites
Google would not give Facebook anything for these referrals, because they are purely related to the popularity of Google; Facebook isn't doing anything to help

Farewell Wikia Search

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:32:00 +0000

Well, a few people will be saying farewell, but most of us didn't care for or use Wikia Search. With only 10,000 unique visitors per month it just didn't have enough users to work. About the only good it has done is prompting Google to enable users to personalise results.

Wikia Search had the right idea, but the wrong methodology. The search engine that knocks Google off their perch will be mostly automated, but augmented by paid staff - experts that tweak results and remove spam. For example, if an algorithm can show me websites that it thinks are spam, I could probably verify their spammy-ness at a rate of 20 per minute. The algorithm can then use this knowledge to delete in bulkfrom the index similar sites made by the same people... I could go on. Google, hire me! (again).

Farewell Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:27:00 +0000

This week Facebook changed the focus of their layout, making it more to do with updates. At the same time, my friends (not exactly early adopters) started updating twice as often. Given that Facebook is one place to achieve everything, and that they easily have the ability to create an interface to use it via mobile phones, I predict that Twitter has peaked.

Not far behind will probably be the IM services, such as Yahoo Messenger. If they know what is good for them, they'll add in the ability to broadcast updates. My Microsoft Messenger already broadcasts the song I am currently listening to, so it can't be hard.

Both IM servies and Facebook can tweet in ways superior to Twitter, and have many more existing users, and are not under pressure to find a revenue model. I predict that Twitter's number of users will peak on or before May 2009, and this time next year you will not be hearing Twitter mentioned at all, not even in tweets.

The new tiny iPod

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:05:00 +0000

They've managed to make it so small by moving the controls to the earbud cord. My prediction: the next version will just be the earbuds and cord!

Future of Reputable Journalism

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:06:00 +0000

It's hard to tell where news organisations are headed. The trends we are seeing include massive circulation drops for print newspapers, as they are replaced by the popularity of a few popular news blogs - Huffington Post, TMZ, Perez Hilton and hundreds or thousands of others.

We now have a situation where "real news", from Reuters or Associated Press, can instantly be repackaged in a more sensationalist, but less accurate way. And the source doesn't make a penny. Just like pirated movies, this cannot be stopped, but perhaps the majority of folk will end up preferring the real deal in the long term.

But how can people determine how authentic a news item is? Historically, if it was in a major newspaper, it was reliable. These businesses had a lifetime measured in centuries, and a rigorous approach was essential for long-term credibility. Nowadays, short-term profits seem to be a priority over longevity.

In the near future, we will need some form of accreditation to assure us of a news item's accuracy. A few sites will get by on reputation alone, but the rest will need a touch of something extra. There are two dominant ways of achieving this:

Journalist Accreditation - either an eBay type rating system, or something hard-earned like a degree in jorunalism.

Site Accreditation - either an eBay type rating system, or an automated system that looks at number of other sites that refer to its articles, or a peer-review system.

I predict a combination of all 5!

One service can look at all 5 factors and combine them into a score that can be viewed in a browser toolbar. A rating system / wiki combination can let readers debate the credibility and levels of bias of a journalist, or news site.

Links to news sites can be tagged with a for or against value (perhaps -/=/+) that lets the service know if, when linking to story, you are voting for its credibility, or not. A PageRank type system can add weight to links from more popular sites.

Once an online news service reaches a certain level of popularity/traffic, a professional body might offer to review and accredit a site for a fee.

Ultimately, if a news site has positive incoming links, few negative reviews, and pays for + receives accreditation, then it will score high, and I will see this in my browser toolbar, aqnd trust it.

Remember General Magic?

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 11:39:00 +0000

I don't. In the USA, late 90s, General Magic were making a product very similar to the modern-day smartphone (email, music, phone), but it never took off.

Why they are worth mentioning is the staff they had prior to going broke in 2002:

Pierre Omidyar - founder of eBay
Tony Fadell - in charge of iPod hardware
Kevin Lynch - creator of Flash
Andy Rubin - creator of Sidekick and Android

Try telling me that none of the above have affected your life!

(found in the Dec 2008 issue of Wired)

Web Mail Spam Filters Still Lacking

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 07:29:00 +0000

In terms of identifying spam using complicated methods, the three major providers do very well. But at a very simple level they are failing...

I've signed up with the Microsoft Partner program. It appears to be some behemoth covering all professionals who work with or sell Microsoft products. They send me an email, because I am a subscriber. It is sent from Microsoft@newsletters.microsoft.com. For some reason Hotmail doesn't display the content. Instead I get a message saying "This message may be dangerous." and I need to click on a link to see it. It's their own freaking message!

Meanwhile Gmail is sending virtually every piece of spam to the spam folder, with the exception of spam that pretends to be Google :(

Google Scales Back Further

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:19:00 +0000

The genius idea of 20% of staff's time being spent on private side projects has been scaled back (Google talk for scrapped perhaps):

In addition to bonus cuts this year, Google has scaled back on the 20-percent-time projects Googlers enjoyed as a break from official duties to innovate in some peripheral area. These projects paid off sometimes—Gmail, for example—but Marissa Mayer once noted that these side products had an 80 percent fail rate.

Maybe corporate Google is unaware of how much people prefer to use Google because of their creative genius. Services like Gmail might not make much money, but they keep Google in my life just that little bit more.

Web 3.0 - Personal Operating System

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:43:00 +0000

It has been tried by many, and the time is not far off when someone will get it right. Think iGoogle on steroids.

One page that you will really want to use as your browser home page. It will do everything that could possibly be personal.

- email, including "one-off" accounts to thwart spammy companies
- backup management, connecting with an online service
- file uploads, mostly this would be photos and videos, straight to their online home
- music downloads
- your blog
- RSS feeds
- bookmarks (shared or not)

Basically, a portal to your online world, but covers everything. The page would look a bit like a Windows desktop, with icons, widgets and a cascading menu. Or it could be a series of tabs along the top of the page.

Google, Apple & Microsoft will each have one, and it might only work on their particular browser. But the widgets and applications won't be service dependent

Google's will have the best look and features, but will be constantly updated and will stay in beta. Apple's will have no bugs, and Microsoft's will be the only one with ads.

A Personal Appeal from Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 01:37:00 +0000

That's what the giant banner on the Wikipedia homepage says, and if you click on it you get a letter from Jimmy asking for donations. You can also see this, or an alternative with a $$ graph, on every page of this hugely popular site. There is a little link that lets you hide it.

And how, I wonder, is this any different to having adverts? Could it be ego? There are plenty of ads they could run that do not compromise integrity, AdSense for example.

I'm wondering if they have considered opt-in ads? Nobody will ever see them unless they register and tick a box saying they want to see ads. The small percentage of visitors that choose to do so would probably be enough to fund the site.

Perhaps they are scared of what to do with the money if they make a big profit?

Hotmail - How Hard is it to Test Things??

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:54:00 +0000

I've had a right wrist problem recently, causing me to use my left hand for mouse work, and I'm not ambidextrous.

The new Hotmail interface is mostly an improvement, but I have a major complaint. Typically I delete about half of my new emails from the inbox page. I just look at the subject line, decide I haven't got time to read that, and check the box alongside it. I check a dozen or so, then hit delete.

Unfortunately, if I am very slightly off-target clicking on the check box, for some crazy reason, all the boxes already checked are cleared. So after all that hard work getting my left hand to align the mouse pointer with the check boxes, I miss one and they are all gone. Start again. Aaaaargh!

Gmail and Yahoo don't have this problem, so I figure it's a coding mistake. It wouldn't take much testing to pick this up before inflicting it on the public. As hard as they are trying, usability is still not a priority for Microsoft, to their detriment.

UPDATE: They have responded to user complaints, and now the folder drop-down box doesn't work very well (you can get stuck in it), and the page never stops loading, so all I see in the FireFox tab is "Loading..."

Microsoft - Trying Hard but Never Top of the Class

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 04:01:00 +0000

Poor Microsoft. For all the work they are doing, for all their staff and cash reserves, many things we've grown to expect in the Web 2.0 / Google era seem to be beyond them.

Hotmail - after years of having to scroll to the top to push delete (the misguided logic is that we will see the banner ad again, but they probably never tested such), they have fixed that. But simple stupid problems remain. While their competitors offer unlimited storage, Hotmail still serves me up this message when I try to mark a sender as safe:

Your list of safe senders is full. To add more, remove addresses until there are fewer than 250 safe senders.

Branding - years too late they are rebranding the Microsoft/MSN/Live search engine to the Japanese word for cloud. Right from the start, they should have copied Google - brands where it suits (Orkut, Picasa), Microsoft whatever where it doesn't (Google Maps). Microsoft is a powerful brand, why dilute it with MSN and Live? People will still refer to you as Microsoft.

Vista - if only I could easily go back to XP. Every single aspect is better, IMHO, except for one tiny thing - it is extraordinarily slow, so slow no future RAM or processor will ever fix it.

Classmates.com - Very Naughty

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 08:51:00 +0000

I've received them too - emails from sites like Classmates.com and Reunion.com, telling me that a friend is trying to contact me. I ignore them, but those who are curious need to take out a paid subscription to find out that the friend doesn't exist.

Thankfully a white knight, Anthony Michaels (one of the few people to ever successfully sue Google) is suing Classmates.com.

In the internet age it is vital to be squeaky clean in all endeavours, business or personal.

How to get into Google News

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Your blog does not qualify. So what does? Here are the factors that Google considers before accepting an application to be a source for Google News:

1) Original content, not just regurgitated news.
2) Multiple Authors (Create an “Authors” page of the writers, editors, etc).
3) Organization info: Contact info, About Us.
4) Homepage/Logo should clearly state what industry segment you cover (music, sports, finance, etc.).
5) Use a news template/theme for a blog. I’m a big fan of three-column themes.
6) Article URL’s should consist of at least 3 digits, and appear static not dynamic. For examples, just mouse over the URL’s on the homepage of Google News.
7) Author’s name on each article.
8) Article Title should be the same on the H1 and Title tag.
9) Article Frequency: Publish 3 times per day.
10) Images & Video are good. They should be contained within the article.
11) Advertising on site is good. It show’s there is visitor traffic.

Found here via Sphinn.

Network Solutions Get Greedy

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:26:00 +0000

Not happy with having a tidy little monopoly on aspects of the domain name business, they've now begun a very sneeky, dirty tactic. Basically, if you use NS for hosting, and someone visits a page on your site that doesn't exist, they serve ads and keep the profits. Not only is this unethical, it can damage the reputation of your site.

Yes, they mention it in their T&C (amongst 59,000 other words), and yes it is possible to turn it off, but the default is on.

Meta-Video Search at Mefeedia

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:10:00 +0000

I don't like the name, but it functions very well, a is an excellent place to find video content online. Mefeedia indexes YouTube, DailyMotion, Metacafe, Blip, Veoh, BoingBoing TV, Video Blogs, TV Sites (Hulu, CBS, ABC, and others), News Sites (CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, CBS News, etc.) and Music sites.

Images In Regular Search Results

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 08:29:00 +0000

Eric Enge has compared the 4 major search engines, and found that Google and MSN are not nearly as good as Yahoo and Ask when it comes to providing images in regular search results.

Google particularly failed when the search phrase actually included words like pic and picture.

TinyMax going places?

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 01:22:00 +0000

TinyMax have a new blog, and it looks like they might be coming up with some new products or services. The name is kinda catchy: TinyMAX.

Microsoft buys FAST

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 21:41:00 +0000

Microsoft has announced a deal to purchase Norway-based Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a leading provider of enterprise search solutions, in a deal valued at $1.23 billion.

FAST were the owners of AllTheWeb and FAST search engines, which at one time were the best there was, in the eyes of some.

Amazon's Author Search Needs Improving

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 10:50:00 +0000

When looking for a book by Thomas Moore - the author of popular spiritual books including the New York Times best seller, Care of the Soul (1993), Amazon also lists "Utopia" by Sir Thomas Moore, who died in 1535.

I know that Amazon is not able to tell which Thomas Moore I was searching for. But when I find the Thomas Moore I am after, I would like to see just books from that specific Thomas Moore.

Currently Amazon cannot tell one from the other. It might be too difficult to achieve using a computer algorithm. But it could be done manually, and even if they did just the most searched for authors, manually created authors' biographies and bibliographies would add real value to Amazon as a great book resource. Maybe they could make a wiki of authors?