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How the “focus on first” helps hide Google’s relevancy problems
- supersillyus 16y agoNot the main point, but why would google.com search list google.com in the results for "Search engine"? You're at google already, so it isn't really a helpful result.
- patio11 16y agoYou drastically underestimate the number of people who think the Google is an Internet, browser, program, web page, etc. (I have at least one customer who thinks her school Internet and home Internet are different places because the start pages are different and The Google finds different sites on each. She uses Bing at school, but does not know Bing is not a Google.)
- Andrew_Quentin 16y agoWell, she should learn!
- joe_the_user 16y ago"In January, I was invited to speak to Google’s search quality team about issues I had with Google’s search results. My topic? For queries where I know a subject really well, I often found Google provided some pretty poor results in the top listings along with the good ones. I wanted more perfection!" Oddly enough, I like it that Google isn't going to return only things that a given field's experts like. It's good that it's possible that if you hit enough criteria, you can be one of the top search result even if you aren't what the authorities like. It keeps things interesting. What’s happening is that Google rewards longevity. AltaVista was around ages ago, gained a lot of links over time, and in particular links from other aged sites. Again, I think it's good that Google is using the Internet's memory. Searching is seeking information. Altavista might just be the term for information on search engines with the most discussion around it. Maybe it's the "best search engine" but perhaps my searches for "search engines" isn't about that but rather about how a search engine is built, how people interact with a search engine or what-not. There, the memory of the Internet is crucial. If every search for X becomes "what is the best X in the world", the Internet will be rather diminished.
- Natsu 16y agoI find it ironic that he's complaining about the relevancy of SEO companies on the first page. After all, if they made it to Google's first page of results, so they have to be pretty good at SEO to get high results for the search for SEO... right?
- Andrew_Quentin 16y agoYes. That is why he used the term SEO, to show that google is doing worse than the SEO companies who are so good at getting to the front page.
- Natsu 16y agoCall me crazy, but wouldn't someone searching for SEO want to find an SEO company?
- Andrew_Quentin 16y agoSorry, what I mean is that google is doing worse at protecting itself from being gamed by the clever SEOs who got to the front page without meriting it.