Interview: Chris Ridings on PageRank
Today we
talk to the rather knowledgeable
Chris Ridings about (surprise,
surprise) PageRank , SearchKing
and cowboys.
Thanks for
taking the time to talk with
us Chris. Can you tell us a
bit about yourself? What is
your background?
Well,
it looks like people are
stuck with me rather than
the "blind lesbian circus
performers with a grudge" that
you practically promised everyone
last week. It's a shame, I
was really looking forward
to reading what they had to
say. I'm sure your readers
will try to hide their obvious
disappointment. I come from
the silicon valley of SEO,
otherwise known as the UK.
I could try and make myself
sound interesting by starting
out with all my rubbish jokes
like "Well, I was born
and everyone just had to make
the best of it", but Mike
Grehan had the cheek to be
funny so it would just show
me up. I could try to dazzle
you with my knowledge of busines,
but Ammon Johns seems to have
covered that angle too. So
I guess you just get the real
me - one bloke stuck in an
office on the one sunny day
a year we get on an island
where it rains a lot and everybody
apparently drinks tea and eats
fish and chips.
I've
been using computers for
a pretty long time and
in fact I cut my teeth on a
ZX81 when I was 7 (I think
they were called Timex's in
the US?). Let's face it, about
that time in history every
parent plonked their child
in front of a ZX81 because
it promised their child a prosperous
future in IT. I quickly learnt
that if pilot's pressed the "j" key
too much in their aeroplanes
then their cockpit's filled
up with grey blocks and the
plane silently melted in to
oblivion. Pretty soon I'd managed
to crash most of Sir Clive
Sinclair's Boeing fleet in
to what I can only presume
was Iceland, so I learnt to
program by typing in listings
from magazines. That was the
only way you could get decent
games back then. Okay, more
accurately - that was the only
way you could get any games
back then (decent being a relative
term). When I went to university
in 1993 they had this bizarre
thing called the Internet,
which for some reason I had
never heard of until then.
I learnt that it was invented
by the military so that, presumably,
they too could email their
friends across the room to
arrange which pub they were
going to that night.
After
a while of struggling with
lynx (the text based browser
not the cat) somebody showed
me this revolutionary tool
- Mosaic. That would be when
I first got in to web design.
Whilst the founders of Yahoo
were busy putting together
a multi-million dollar list
of sites I was busy putting
a picture of a cathedral and
a link that said "this
is my friends site" on
to a web page that virtually
nobody ever saw. It took me
weeks, mostly trying to find
somebody to host it. Nowadays,
of course things have progressed
and we have geocities to create
those pages in minutes. Frankly,
I'm disgusted - if you don't
have to spend six months learning "vi" to
create a web page that says "Hello
World" then what's the
point?
After I left University I
went in to a techie job, gradually
ending up doing Network support.
To cut a long story short,
during that time period I didn't
use the internet that much.
It was harder for me to get
hold of and didn't seem worth
the effort, there was little
need for me to email people
across the room - that's what
pagers were for. Then I went
back to college and university
to do a business degree and
the internet was back in force,
although apparently we were
now meant to use it to find
information and do research.
Whilst I was doing my business
degree I started getting back
in to doing web sites and such,
and obviously I wanted more
visitors to my site.
So
I started reading as much
as I could. Obviously I became
a skilled master of meta tags,
automatically submitting sites,
link exchanges and FFAs. I
knew to follow the advice I
read to the letter in order
to maximise my success. Or
in other words - I was naïve. "It's
right there on the web, and
they rank okay, so it must
be true". So I decided
that anybody who gave Internet
Marketing advice was not to
be trusted!
If you don't trust anybody
that gives Internet marketing
advice, that tends to give
you a minor problem in terms
of getting information! So
at the time I began to look
at research papers and so on,
taking me closer to the original
sources. There was one in particular
that I read, from Stanford
about Google. Google by this
time was pretty much everything,
so I set about reading it.
Whilst I read it I made a few
notes, which turned in to a
list of points. The list of
points turned in to a very
short article about how to
rank in Google. Having used
the points myself, I gave the
article away freely and a new
SEO commentator was born (although
nobody would have ever heard
of him and nobody cared :-)
).
Following backlinks and the
like I started to find sources
of internet marketing information
that were perhaps less wrong
then the ones I had previously
found. It's that age old thing
that good information tends
to cluster together. So I gradually
picked up hints and tips on
things that actually worked!
Over time, my faith in some
internet marketers grew and
I realised there was good information
amongst a lot of junk.
About that time PageRank was
one of the most misunderstood
things in the SEO world. So
I started gathering together
information and reading research
papers to enable me to grasp
an understanding of PageRank.
At the time I was also programming
some small scale search engines,
so I had opportunity to do
some tests and experiments.
I wrote all this down and PageRank
Explained was born. I should
probably, at this point, remark
that PageRank Explained was
a grammatical nightmare and
a lot of it's readability was
down to Jill Whalen who offered
to put little yellow comments
on it and refused to take them
off until I spellled and said
things proper like. PageRank
Explained turned out to be
more popular than I thought.
Skipping
time a bit, so this doesn't
become the longest
background ever, PageRank Explained
afforded me the opportunity
to get to know some very clever
people, start Support Forums
and of course rewrite it with
Mike Shishigin as "PageRank
Uncovered". Whether I'm
technically an SEO or not is
probably a matter of opinion,
perhaps we could have SEORank
and judge that with a little
green bar on a scale of 1 to
10? I have very few clients
who generally approach me and
who have specific SEO work
needing doing. It's all top
secret hush hush due to client
confidentiality, competitive
advantage, and of course my
men in black obsession. I don't
work on SEO full time, mainly
because nobody's offered me
a fortune to work for them,
and because this enables me
to have more time to research.
Probably one of the differences
between myself and many SEOs
is that my background leads
me to be about having a general
understanding but then focusing
on a few things really well.
I'm the kind of person that
has to take things apart for
themselves to see how they
actually work, that won't believe
the sun goes round the earth
unless he's actually done the
work to deduce it himself.
The kind of person you wouldn't
want to show your new computer
too because at the end of it
you would have a mass of disconnected
cards, a motherboard and a
few sticks of memory.
You're
well known for your deconstruction
of PageRank. For those new
to the topic, can you explain
briefly what PageRank is
and how it operates.
"Well known",
you know how it is Peter
- there's
hardly a day I can walk down
the street without somebody
asking me about PageRank, it's
difficult to go to a restaurant
without getting troubled by
the paparazzi and holidays
are just impossible. It has
it's advantages, the groupies,
the emails from adoring female
fans awe-struck by my knowledge
of PageRank. But the telephoto
lenses and the rumours hit
hard. It's all okay now, I've
done rehab and the lucozade
addiction is under control.
If I wear dark glasses and
a hat I don't get recognised
by quite so many people and
the press crews have moved
on. Should we maybe settle
on just known? :)
One
of the reasons that PageRank
is so hard to explain and understand
is because it is analogous
to something we all do all
the time without thinking about
it. Consider I want to buy
a new DVD player, I might ask
a group of friends what the
best DVD player to buy is.
Now some of them are going
to give me names of DVD players,
but some of them are going
to say "I don't know,
Tim knows a lot about DVD players".
When I talk to Tim, I have
a greater respect for his advice
because everybody said he knows
this stuff. Now if Tim says "Ask
Harry too, he knows a lot about
DVD players", then despite
the fact that nobody else has
told me to ask Harry I can
assume that Harry probably
does know more than the rest
(although probably not more
than Tim).
PageRank
is the same mechanism. Instead
of trying to find out
who knows most about DVDs,
it tries to find out what pages
are the most "important".
It's hard to actually "ask" a
page something, and talking
to a computer monitor is not
the best way to impress your
colleagues, so they make a
general assumption. That assumption
is "If a page links to
another page then it thinks
that page is important".
There are lots of things wrong
with this assumption, but you
said "briefly" so
I'll leave people to research
more if they want to. Just
like Tim's advice to "ask
Harry also" is given greater
weighting because most people
told me to ask Tim, if a page
has lots of "important" links,
when it says another page is
important then PageRank gives
that more merit.
By using a mathematical formula
to work all this out, Google
ends up with a numerical value
for each page. Known as it's
PageRank.
One of the common misconceptions
is that if a page has a higher
PageRank than another page,
then it must rank higher in
the results. This, of course,
cannot be true or the page
with the highest PageRank on
the web would always show first
whatever you searched for.
To get the actual results you
see on Google's results page
they will actually first calculated
the relevancy of the page to
the search term you typed and
then apply the PageRank to
sort them. When PageRank is
applied to sort them it is
applied in a way that gives
a tendency for higher PageRanked
pages to do well rather than
merely sorting the results
in to PageRank order.
PageRank Uncovered is certainly a comprehensive document, and obviously required
a deep level of research. Can you tell us a little about how you went about
your analysis of PageRank?
I have a problem defining
that, if you find a topic really
interesting then the line between
research and obsession becomes
a very blurry thing. I probably
started research before I could
consciously define it as research.
Am I sounding geeky enough
yet? Before you start researching
a topic you clearly need to
start with an idea of what
that topic is, which means
that I had to get to a basic
understanding first. When I
was first researching for PageRank
Explained, there wasn't that
much reliable information around
so I started from the original
Stanford papers.
One
of the things about it being
a logical and mathematical
topic, is that we can extrapolate
a lot of information from a
very small amount of base information.
So for example, whilst the
Stanford paper may not specifically
say that internal pages can
have an effect on your PageRank
we can see from what they present
that it must. Thus, hidden
in the depths is the counter
to one of the more common myths
at the time "Only links
coming in from other sites
matter". The problem with
extrapolating information is
that you need to test it, which
being able to program helped
no end with. Another example
would be that the stanford
papers formula reveals that
the PageRank given is divided
by the number of links, we
can deduce that by putting
more internal links on pages
with out going links we get
more total PageRank across
all pages of the site.
PageRank
Uncovered is really an extension
to those basics
I deduced in PageRank Explained.
Once you have an understanding
of PageRank you can then begin
to watch and adjust your opinions
depending on what Google do.
For example, when looking at
the Google toolbar there were
a couple of occasions on which
a lot of page's PageRank dropped.
Followed not many months later
by a rise in the index size.
Now until you know the basics,
that's not understandable.
But as soon as you know the
basics then you can begin to
work out why that's happening
and how it relates to what
the toolbar shows and how PageRank
worked, or at least you can
begin to say "maybe it's
because…". Essentially,
because we know Google are
never going to come out and
tell us exactly how it works,
the process is to watch for
many of these little "effects" and
see how they fit in to or change
the overall picture. Because
PageRank Uncovered was a year
later, there are a lot of these
little effects that can help
solidify deductions or discount
them. In effect we're talking
about a process where you're
continually theorising, modifying
those theories and refining
them based on the data presented.
I think that when we talk
about research, in this context,
we are really talking more
along the lines of scientific
research. It is akin to early
scientists trying to work out
whether the earth goes round
the sun or the sun goes round
the earth, we can theorise
and then test those theories.
We need to do that again and
again and again. Whilst we
may end up with an established,
well accepted, answer that
describes all situations that
we have ever seen it still
remains a theory.
One
thing I've always wondered
is how much PageRank may
have changed since Brin & Page
published their paper. After
all, why would you want a
key company asset on public
display? How much do you
think PageRank has changed
since the original paper
was written?
If
PageRank hasn't changed since
Brin & Page published
their paper then I'd be shocked.
This is one of the reasons
I try hard to stress the "theoretical
aspect". One of my pet
hates, incidentally, is those
who repeat the theory as fact.
However, a theory can describe
every conceivable event that
could occur in real life and
I believe this to be the case
with PageRank. When I read
about PageRank, researched
it, and did the testing I came
to the conclusion that small
and subtle changes would almost
certainly have been made but
that the main principles must
always be the same. Anything
more than the principles is
of little worth to anybody
but Google and perhaps their
competitors. Unless you're
the kind of nut that would
take apart a friend's new computer
to see what was in it.
It's a bit like driving a
car, I need to know what the
pedals are, how the steering
wheel works and how the stereo
works but I don't need to know
the detailed scientific specifics
of combustion. If I get a hire
car, it may be different. The
layout may change slightly
and it might be electric; but
for my purposes I can still
work out what the pedals do,
where the steering wheel is
and how the stereo works. Even
those of us who are information
junkies have to accept that
there are limits to what we
need to know, and that those
limits define the tolerance
to which a theory will apply
or not.
Many companies do have their
key assets on display, it's
one of the prices paid for
doing business and also for
a patent. I think that in Google's
case, even without the original
paper somebody else would have
come up with a similar mechanism
and realised it closely resembled
the results Google were giving.
There's nothing mystical or
magical about it, who knows
- it could well have been DaVanzoRank!
I have to ask you (and this is your chance to put your side of the story) -
Ian Rogers claims you made a fundamental mistake in your earlier "PageRank
Explained" analysis and said some of the recommendations in the paper
are not quite accurate. Did he have a point?
Naughty Naughty, you're a
lot more Jerry Springer and
less Oprah when it comes to
being the king of search engine
chat aren't you?! :) It would
appear that since then Ian
has become an SEO (http://www.iprcom.com/services/search_engine_optimisation.html).
It's a little hard for me to
preach ethics whilst simultaneously
criticising a competitor so
I'll keep this brief. Let's
just say that I'd be perfectly
happy for anybody who's actually
reads what I write and thinks
about it, or for anybody who's
written anything specifically
to the capabilities of a target
reader group at a particular
time to make their own judgement
on this.
On
a general view (just to expand
a little), earlier on
you asked me to explain PageRank
briefly. I could have said
it's "a recursive algorithm
to calculate the statistical
probability that a random surfer
would come across a web page".
Does this make me wrong earlier
or did I tailor it and generalise
to what the readership can
best understand at a minimal
loss of technical accuracy?
In a years time would I write
it the same way? If I have
done a good job with my general
description, have I ensured
the readers knowledge of PageRank
to be equal to that statement
as a minimum? And if I have
does that not make it easy
for them to criticise my example?
And will that criticism be
as a result of my success in
explaining or my failure? And
don't you just hate a person
who answers a question with
lots of their own? :)
How
can webmasters benefit from
knowing about PageRank? What
is the best thing they can
do to help boost this score,
without annoying Google of
course? ;)
I think
that the biggest benefit
to knowing about PageRank
is
to know when to worry about
it and when not to. Seriously.
When I read anything about
PageRank it tends to be the "PageRank
is everything" or "PageRank
is worthless" type comments,
occasionally misquoting me,
which show little regard for
the situation. E.g. The more
key phrases you want a page
to rank for, the more you need
good PageRank on that page.
They will of course prove to
be self-fulfilling prophecies,
if you believe PageRank is
everything then you will concentrate
so heavily on PageRank that
you will eventually get what
you desire. If you believe
PageRank is worthless then
you will fail to use it at
all and be blissfully unaware
of what you could have achieved.
It's not exactly a state of
affairs that will help progress
the fledgling SEO industry,
but at least everybody's happy
:) Those who take the bother
to truly look in to PageRank
and assess it objectively are
those who will use it when
it benefits them.
The
easiest way to boost PageRank
is to write something that
people will want to link to.
It sounds silly to say, but
time spent writing information
is often a lot more effectively
spent than time spent asking
for links. Many successful
sites only ever ask for a handful
of links and submit to a handful
of directories. I'm not one
for mantra's or catch phrases,
I don't want to say "Content
is King" because frankly
it's another tool and there
are no King's. I also don't
want to use that phrase because
it's become synonymous with "only
ever worry about content".
But in terms of effectiveness,
one well written page can draw
in a lot of links. With the
search engines steadfastly
refusing to actually define
their rules in black and white,
it's also the only method that
can be considered truly safe
(unless of course you happen
to write about ranking methods
they don't approve of, review
software they don't like, etc)
More important than any of
these is to know what to do
with your PageRank. If I made
a million dollars it is essentially
worthless to me if I leave
it in the bank all my life
until I die, there are ways
I could use my millions to
my benefit and ways I effectively
waste it even though it is
still in my possession. The
same holds true of PageRank.
I've always talked a lot about
internal structure, and to
be honest over time my views
on internal link structure
have increased. It is largely
irrelevant how much PageRank
you have and there is little
use in having more if you don't
make maximum use of the PageRank
you already have in your site.
I think too many people are
keen to have a toolbar PR7
on their home page targeting
one easy to get key phrase
whilst neglecting their internal
pages. By arranging internal
structure to focus PageRank
on important internal pages
they can maximise the use of
PageRank, as it happens there
are also good benefits in terms
of navigation for the user.
And how could Google possibly
complain at that?!
On
your site, supportforums.org,
you're big on dispelling
myths propogated by cowboy
seos. What are some of the
more pervasive myths out
there? Any new tips you'd
care to share?
I promised
you some news, so I'm sure
you won't mind
me digressing from the question
slightly - by the time your
readers read this supportforums.org
won't be my pet project anymore!
Frankly supportforums.org and
I have been together for a
while, and we've gradually
come to realize that we want
different things. She wants
to grow and further her career,
she wants to be more than just
a mouthpiece for an idealist
and I want to work on other
things without stifling her
ability to evolve. It's an
amicable split, I get to keep
the server and she gets the
links and articles. She's gone
to live with her new owner,
and she's very happy. I'll
miss her, we just seemed to
click and she used to organise
everything so gracefully. But
it's time to move on, and I'm
sure there's another site out
there for me…somewhere.
As an industry commentator,
I will be taking much more
of a back seat. As much as
I think this is a good idea
for the site, and me, I will
miss the ability to afford
some people the opportunity
to talk when they might not
be able to elsewhere. I don't
really want to lose that opportunity,
I visit the bulletin board
style forums a lot and have
seen their potential to allow
fully open discussion in a
way that helps progress the
industry. For that reason,
I have designed a bulletin
board system at http://www.searchguild.com/ that
has been built from the ground
up to enable people to speak
freely and honestly. My presence
there, should people choose
to come, is really only in
an administrative capacity
to provide the facility.
Back
to the question - I spent
a long time being fooled by
myths when I first started
to try to understand the search
engines, so I guess perhaps
I'm on a little bit of a moral
crusade to point them out when
I see them. This isn't the "Joe
Blogg's is spamming, isn't
he a naughty boy" type
crusade, I find those petty
and annoying. I would say that
rather than acting against
any individual cowboy SEOs
I am reacting to the propagation
of bad or misleading information.
I'm
not sure if you could define
it as a myth, but one
of the biggest and most annoying
things are those pages where
SEOs list key phrases that
nobody searches on as examples
of how good they are. If you
want to detect a cowboy SEO,
apart from looking for a horse
and some spurs (obvious signs,
they hardly need saying), then
one of the best things to do
is run the key phrases they
advertise through wordtracker.
Unfortunately this trickery
is a growing trend and your
average webmaster can't be
expected to know this. If there
was a proper industry body
for SEO I'd be the one petitioning
them to make their members
put the number of searches
per day on their pages along
side those terms. If not maybe
percentage ROI, or something
that means anything other than
number one for "tibetan
goats carrying backpacks up
a mountain for a balding man
with a beard". As there
isn't, I'll just have to say
that I personally applaud anybody
who does do that. If everybody
put up that further information
then the trickery would eventually
be obvious to all.
Beyond
that there are probably more
I could list here but
I think I'm probably in the
running for having given the
longest interview answers already.
Often, myths are distributed
unwittingly by peope with good
intentions, rather than propogated
by cowboy SEOs. They seem to
make sense. I'll pick just
one example, It's recently
been stated that in Google
the anchor text of links to
a page only counts if that
term appears on the page. Intuitively
this has a logical basis, but
we can say it's likely wrong
or at best not fully considered.
Partially indexed pages are
pages that the search engine
hasn't crawled about but it
knows from link information
alone. If we accept this "theory" to
be true as it stands then we
must also accept that partially
indexed pages can show in searches.
The search engine does not
know what text is on the page
so it can't rank it from that,
if the theory is true every
anchor text must be discounted
because the search engine cannot
see them on the page. That
would make having partially
indexed pages pretty pointless
and partially indexed pages
do show in searches. Now if
you really think about it,
the probability that in general
anchor text is going to appear
on the actual page as well
is quite high - so it would
be easy to imagine that somebody
testing this theory might indeed
build up a body of evidence
supporting it. But that body
of evidence really only demonstrates
human nature and natural linking
process. Ergo, there would
appear to be very little evidence
to support this theory in general
and at least for the case of
partially indexed pages the
theory must be false.
The
SearchKing case has highlighted
the power relationship between
search engines and webmasters.
Do you think the search engines
have wider responsibilities
to the webmaster community?
Often,
it is easier to explain things
with analogies. Consider
that there is an election of
some kind, let's say for leader
of a university's student union.
George is elected to be president
for the year, saying that he'll
be the best and cut the price
of beer in the student union.
George has obtained power because
he was the best candidate.
However, George doesn't really
care for people with ginger
hair "they're unimportant" and
George is in a position of
power so George decides that
only people who don't have
ginger hair get half price
beer. Now George is the president,
he was fairly elected, it turns
out he's a good president (unless
you're ginger), and there's
no rule against him doing this.
It's his right and there's
nothing that can be done. But
when George was elected he
took on moral and ethical responsibilities
to the people that put him
there (even some misguided
ginger's voted for him).
The same is true with the
search engines, because they
have the same degree of control.
A search engine may be put
in power because it is the
best technologically. The process
of attaining that power may
be free and fair and they may
have a right to do certain
things, but they still have
a moral and ethical responsibility
to all parties concerned whether
they consider them unimportant
or not.
On the modern day Internet,
the search engines are so important
that they effectively act as
a barrier between users and
web sites. Regardless of how
you get that big, when you
are that big you get responsibilities.
The most important of which
being the universal responsibility
of fairness. To be fair, they
must be accountable.
If
I say accountable, let's
be clear here. Because I'm
well aware that there are some
who would be more than happy
to blow that statement up in
to "search engines should
be legally regulated" for
me. Accountable to me means
that they should have procedures
for situations that affect
more parties than just themselves.
Those procedures should be
subject to frequent review
and independent advice taken
on them. Such procedures should
be published and all stakeholders
should have their eyes wide
open. It's not enough to ban
a site, there must be reasons
for banning a site and those
reasons must be verifiable.
That's important not only for
the progression of the industry
but to stop individuals within
the search engines acting in
a rogue capacity. If webmasters
don't have an involvement in
that then a major control and
checking mechanism is missed.
It's a myth that webmasters
cannot be told what they are
doing wrong, offering them
the chance to correct it, and
I dare say that the first engines
to awaken to that will be the
most successful in the future.
It's
a topic where it's easy to
cloud the issue with things
like "goodness" and
the "correctness of the
path that led to that power",
some like to believe that search
engines are the only businesses
on earth with responsibility
to only one stakeholder (the
searchers). So let me isolate
it down to some very simple
questions:
If I have a big red button
on my desk, that when I push
it destroys several businesses
and seriously damages many.
Then regardless of how that
button got there, regardless
of whether I'm a good person
or Dr Evil, if I choose to
press that button then do I
have an ethical duty to have
sound reasons and to explain
them when asked? I.e. Does
that big red button place responsibility
on me simply because it is
on my desk? If I spill my coffee
on it and it sets it off, is
it enough of an excuse that
I'm a good person and it wasn't
intentional?
I
note you've been following
the SearchKing case closely.
What are your views on the
judges ruling?
I think that judges face problems
with each and every case they
come to, in that they must
try to understand the issues
involved. When we move in to
the area of technology they
are faced with a myriad of
concepts and difficulties and
the tendency is to relate that
to things that they can personally
understand in the real world.
This is no bad thing, and is
what allows us all to understand
computers but it allows us
to understand only at a very
superficial level. Whilst it
might serve us well if we're
learning to use Word, if we're
making a judgement that affects
the ability of each and every
webmaster or of each and every
search engine to do particular
things in the future then that
somehow seems inadequate. Maybe
in technological cases it's
even more important for the
parties involved to be extremely
careful to explain things well,
but I have to confess to being
a little disappointed in the
judge's understanding of PageRank.
For
example, take the statement "Page
3 - The PageRank is derived
from a combination of factors
that include text-matching
and the number of links from
other web pages that point
to the PageRanked web site.
The higher the PageRank, the
more closely the web site in
question supposedly matches
the search query, and vice
versa. The highest possible
PageRank is 10, and the lowest
is 1.". I might be tempted
to offer this up as an example
of all of the most common misconceptions
of PageRank. PageRank, by definition
cannot include "text-matching",
because to do so would mean
calculating PageRank for every
possible query that could be
typed in to Google (there are
an infinite number of those,
so it would take till infinity).
And PageRank is not measured
on a scale of 1 to 10, for
a start this is what Google's
toolbar shows and not the actual
PageRank that was reduced,
secondly even that starts at
0.
I don't claim to be as sure
of the outcome as many seem
to be on one side or another,
but from an observers viewpoint
I would like to see decisions
and rulings based on actual
understanding of the technology
and issues.
If
you could build the ultimate
search engine, what would
it look like? How would it
operate?
Google, fair, not for profit,
with input from all the stakeholders,
without the bits I don't like
(The Tour, Google Answers,
News, We're Feeling Cocky -
just a plain old search engine),
and ranks all my sites at number
one :-)
Oh,
you want me to be imaginative
and future looking? Very well,
but it's a lot like several
before. More user based and
less general. You'd turn up
at the home page and it would
know who you were (you're already
cookied so why not?). It knows
what you like and what searches
you do at particular times
of day, times of the year and
on particular days (all the
information's in their logs
anyway, so why not use it).
You'd get the page design/layout
you'd chosen from a selection
of thousands, and down the
list of searches you likely
want to do would be "mother's
day card". It would recognise
that not everyone's from the
US so that when you clicked
it would tend to give you mother's
day card sites for your geographical
location. It would try and
get more information from you
to try and turn a general query
in to a more specific one,
like whether you want to actually
buy a mother's day card or
be cheap and send a cheesy
email one. Here's where I differ
from most other viewpoints
of the ultimate search engine.
I don't want it to try and
guess what I mean. If I type
in the word "jaguar" it
shouldn't try to guess whether
I mean the car or the animal
and then just return that set.
That just reminds me of a little
paper clip popping up in a
certain application and saying "it
looks like you're writing a
letter" or that same application
constantly changing my spelling.
The ultimate search engine
would get a collection of results
for both the animal and the
car and provide me with a mixture
of both right there on the
front page, it should then
provide easy links to view
either one or the other.
By every search result would
be buttons which would let
you say you really liked that
page or you really hated it.
The search engine would use
this information to help raise
or lower that site and sites
most like it in the future
for any searches you do. Because
this is specific to you it
would begin to learn what design
elements you like, what level
of textual content you like
and so on. This data may be
cross-referenced from everybody
to provide a general starting
point for every user on to
which the user specific preference
data could be mapped.
In terms of communication:
It's a search engine, so I
figure that a proper searchable
database of frequently asked
questions, how to documents,
rules and instructions isn't
completely out of the question.
And beyond that there should
be some kind of live support
with a real, instant response.
I'd suspect that this would
have to be paid for, but that
would seem fair.
</end>
Thanks Chris. And best of
luck with the new forums. Over
the next few weeks we'll be
talking to Fast and Looksmart.
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