3 ms·

This is so stupid. Pagerank is based on links, Knol has a lot of links, therefore it has good pagerank. Why is that evil? Update: At the moment this comment is

by paul 18y ago

This is so stupid. Pagerank is based on links, Knol has a lot of links, therefore it has good pagerank. Why is that evil? Update: At the moment this comment is moderated -2, and the factually incorrect reply is +4. Nice.

sh1mmer 18y ago
But it takes inbound links from non-knol domains to give it page rank. The point is it shouldn't have been able to bootstrap it's page rank like this.
- paul 18y ago
  PageRank is computed based on the links in the page graph, not domains. Knol was all over the news, so it has links from a variety of other high-pr sites. It also ranks high in Yahoo search -- do you believe that they are in on the conspiracy too?
  - greendestiny 18y ago
    That'd certainly put pages linked to from the front knol page up quite high. It does make me wonder what happens when a page changes its outlinks a lot, does pagerank get distributed along the last snapshot or does it amalgamate them. If this is whats driving the high page ranks they'll certainly drop off in time. To preserve their reputation as an impartial index they should make those front page content links nofollow.
  - aneesh 18y ago
    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=buttermilk+pancakes http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=buttermilk+pancakes http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=buttermilk+pancakes&form=QBRE http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=buttermilk+pancakes&#3... http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGkwE.oo5IxRgBQGpXNyoA?fr2=sg-gac&sado=1&p=buttermilk%20pancakes&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8 http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGkwE.oo5IxRgBQGpXNyoA... Ranking of the Knol on Buttermilk pancakes: Google: #4 Yahoo: #34 Live: #55
    - paul 18y ago
      Google: #2 http://www.google.com/search?q=Pediatric+Sports+Injuries http://www.google.com/search?q=Pediatric+Sports+Injuries Yahoo: #1 http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGklD1pY5I0hcByd1XNyoA?p=Pediatric+Sports+Injuries&y=Search&fr=sfp&ei=UTF-8 http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGklD1pY5I0hcByd1XNyoA... I didn't bother searching msn. I'm sure the results vary from query to query, as they do for all sites. The point is that many of these pages are ranking quite high on Yahoo as well. Either you can attribute that to Yahoo being in on Google's evil plan, or you can understand that these pages naturally rank quite high because they are linked to from the front page of a highly linked site that has been all over the news and blogs recently (Knol). Unfortunately the truth is not as dramatic as these "Google is evil" stories, so people often prefer the later.
      - greendestiny 18y ago
        It still remains that pages on Knol are getting much higher rankings than the pages themselves warrant. I wondered why the front page of Knol had such a random collection of content links - it seemed very ungoogle - now it looks like SEO that's damaging the reputation of their search engine.
        paul 18y ago
        I think it had a random collection of links because Knol is tiny and that's all they have. I'm sure it will change as they grow.
        greendestiny 18y ago
        It sounds innocent enough, but it does point to some problems with their search ranking. The quality of their search results has to be far more important than Knol.
  - 13ren 18y ago
    Complaining about Knol's ranking contributes to it. any publicity is good publicity
nickb 18y ago
How many sites/pages have you seen that have received a rank of 5 in a day and appear on the first page of SERPs, often at the top spot? As for number of incoming links, I doubt Knol pages have many from non-Google properties... they've been out there for less than a week.
- fauigerzigerk 18y ago
  But think about it. It would be such an incredibly stupid move for google to slay their golden goose just to prop up one of many new projects. And I am actually unable to consistently reproduce evidence for preferencial ranking. If you search google for "Knee Surgery" knol is #109 and wikipedia is #11. The same search on yahoo gives you knol on #78 and wikipedia on #3

by paul 18y ago

sh1mmer 18y ago

But it takes inbound links from non-knol domains to give it page rank. The point is it shouldn't have been able to bootstrap it's page rank like this.

paul 18y ago
PageRank is computed based on the links in the page graph, not domains. Knol was all over the news, so it has links from a variety of other high-pr sites. It also ranks high in Yahoo search -- do you believe that they are in on the conspiracy too?
- greendestiny 18y ago
  That'd certainly put pages linked to from the front knol page up quite high. It does make me wonder what happens when a page changes its outlinks a lot, does pagerank get distributed along the last snapshot or does it amalgamate them. If this is whats driving the high page ranks they'll certainly drop off in time. To preserve their reputation as an impartial index they should make those front page content links nofollow.
- aneesh 18y ago
  http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=buttermilk+pancakes http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=buttermilk+pancakes http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=buttermilk+pancakes&form=QBRE http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=buttermilk+pancakes&#3... http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGkwE.oo5IxRgBQGpXNyoA?fr2=sg-gac&sado=1&p=buttermilk%20pancakes&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8 http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGkwE.oo5IxRgBQGpXNyoA... Ranking of the Knol on Buttermilk pancakes: Google: #4 Yahoo: #34 Live: #55
  - paul 18y ago
    Google: #2 http://www.google.com/search?q=Pediatric+Sports+Injuries http://www.google.com/search?q=Pediatric+Sports+Injuries Yahoo: #1 http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGklD1pY5I0hcByd1XNyoA?p=Pediatric+Sports+Injuries&y=Search&fr=sfp&ei=UTF-8 http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGklD1pY5I0hcByd1XNyoA... I didn't bother searching msn. I'm sure the results vary from query to query, as they do for all sites. The point is that many of these pages are ranking quite high on Yahoo as well. Either you can attribute that to Yahoo being in on Google's evil plan, or you can understand that these pages naturally rank quite high because they are linked to from the front page of a highly linked site that has been all over the news and blogs recently (Knol). Unfortunately the truth is not as dramatic as these "Google is evil" stories, so people often prefer the later.
    - greendestiny 18y ago
      It still remains that pages on Knol are getting much higher rankings than the pages themselves warrant. I wondered why the front page of Knol had such a random collection of content links - it seemed very ungoogle - now it looks like SEO that's damaging the reputation of their search engine.
      - paul 18y ago
        I think it had a random collection of links because Knol is tiny and that's all they have. I'm sure it will change as they grow.
        greendestiny 18y ago
        It sounds innocent enough, but it does point to some problems with their search ranking. The quality of their search results has to be far more important than Knol.
- 13ren 18y ago
  Complaining about Knol's ranking contributes to it. any publicity is good publicity

nickb 18y ago

How many sites/pages have you seen that have received a rank of 5 in a day and appear on the first page of SERPs, often at the top spot? As for number of incoming links, I doubt Knol pages have many from non-Google properties... they've been out there for less than a week.

fauigerzigerk 18y ago
But think about it. It would be such an incredibly stupid move for google to slay their golden goose just to prop up one of many new projects. And I am actually unable to consistently reproduce evidence for preferencial ranking. If you search google for "Knee Surgery" knol is #109 and wikipedia is #11. The same search on yahoo gives you knol on #78 and wikipedia on #3