4 ms·

I think the "evil moment" is more about the new "Search Plus Your World". Every big social site that doesn't let Google index (and therefore, display) their con

I think the "evil moment" is more about the new "Search Plus Your World". Every big social site that doesn't let Google index (and therefore, display) their content has called SPYW "evil", in that it "pollutes" Google Search results with content from Google+, Youtube, and other Google sites, instead of using stuff from Facebook, Twitter, etc. (who, as mentioned above, do not let Google see their content). The whole thing reeks of "You can't see my data, Google, but I DEMAND to be in your search results anyways". The new privacy policy is only incidental, and, as nknight mentions here [1], it is probably motivated by government regulation as much as it is Google's focus on integration. [1]: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3507707 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3507707

ceejayoz 15y ago
> ... instead of using stuff from Facebook, Twitter, etc. (who, as mentioned above, do not let Google see their content) Oh come on. A quick Google search shows three billion results from Twitter.com, and nearly eight billion from Facebook.com.
- trobertson 15y ago
  tl;dr: Yes they do, and most of it is worthless. There's data, and there's data. I distinctly remember that Google used to have an "Instant feed" on Google News (I may remember the name wrong), where it showed relevant results from Twitter in real-time. They don't do that anymore, because Twitter no longer allows Google access to the real-time data. Google now has to crawl for it, which takes much longer and completely destroys any semblance of immediacy. They had to take the feature down (or, in any case, I can't find it after about 15 minutes of searching). Facebook has always hid as much data as they could. Searching for "site:facebook.com" in Google does, as you say, return about 7.5 billion results. Glancing through the first few pages, a majority seem to be from various organizations whose profiles are left completely open to the public. I'm not contesting that Google has some data from Twitter and Facebook (though on rereading my post, it does sound like I am saying that). Rather, I am saying that Google no longer has accurate, up-to-date information on a majority of profiles from Twitter and Facebook. If a majority of the data from a site is not complete, then Google has no choice but to penalize those pages in its results, because it has no way of guaranteeing that those results are relevant. It used to be able to do this with Twitter, but one side or the other let that deal fall through (I don't know which side is most responsible, but I heard, from here and other places, that Twitter was the primary culprit). It never had an information sharing deal with Facebook. What Twitter and Facebook are getting pissy about is that Google is refusing to send Twitter and Facebook pages to the top of the results page. They want this done, no questions asked. Google cannot in good conscience do this, because they do not have enough data to make accurate relevancy predictions. Google also cannot use Twitter and Facebook data in the Search Plus Your World results, because they have absolutely no access to Twitter and Facebook's social graphs. So, yes. Google has incomplete and outdated data from several billion pages from each site. It does not have enough data to guarantee relevancy, and so chooses to penalize those pages it does have, thus making Twitter and Facebook upset.
- saalweachter 15y ago
  How many days worth of tweets do you think 3 billion is? Answer: about a fortnight's worth. http://www.quora.com/Twitter-1/How-many-tweets-per-day-are-there-on-Twitter http://www.quora.com/Twitter-1/How-many-tweets-per-day-are-t...
  - ceejayoz 15y ago
    Do you really want individual tweets showing up in Google's main search results? Google doesn't seem to individually index Google+ posts, either - there's only 15 million search results for "site:plus.google.com".

ceejayoz 15y ago

> ... instead of using stuff from Facebook, Twitter, etc. (who, as mentioned above, do not let Google see their content) Oh come on. A quick Google search shows three billion results from Twitter.com, and nearly eight billion from Facebook.com.

trobertson 15y ago
tl;dr: Yes they do, and most of it is worthless. There's data, and there's data. I distinctly remember that Google used to have an "Instant feed" on Google News (I may remember the name wrong), where it showed relevant results from Twitter in real-time. They don't do that anymore, because Twitter no longer allows Google access to the real-time data. Google now has to crawl for it, which takes much longer and completely destroys any semblance of immediacy. They had to take the feature down (or, in any case, I can't find it after about 15 minutes of searching). Facebook has always hid as much data as they could. Searching for "site:facebook.com" in Google does, as you say, return about 7.5 billion results. Glancing through the first few pages, a majority seem to be from various organizations whose profiles are left completely open to the public. I'm not contesting that Google has some data from Twitter and Facebook (though on rereading my post, it does sound like I am saying that). Rather, I am saying that Google no longer has accurate, up-to-date information on a majority of profiles from Twitter and Facebook. If a majority of the data from a site is not complete, then Google has no choice but to penalize those pages in its results, because it has no way of guaranteeing that those results are relevant. It used to be able to do this with Twitter, but one side or the other let that deal fall through (I don't know which side is most responsible, but I heard, from here and other places, that Twitter was the primary culprit). It never had an information sharing deal with Facebook. What Twitter and Facebook are getting pissy about is that Google is refusing to send Twitter and Facebook pages to the top of the results page. They want this done, no questions asked. Google cannot in good conscience do this, because they do not have enough data to make accurate relevancy predictions. Google also cannot use Twitter and Facebook data in the Search Plus Your World results, because they have absolutely no access to Twitter and Facebook's social graphs. So, yes. Google has incomplete and outdated data from several billion pages from each site. It does not have enough data to guarantee relevancy, and so chooses to penalize those pages it does have, thus making Twitter and Facebook upset.
saalweachter 15y ago
How many days worth of tweets do you think 3 billion is? Answer: about a fortnight's worth. http://www.quora.com/Twitter-1/How-many-tweets-per-day-are-there-on-Twitter http://www.quora.com/Twitter-1/How-many-tweets-per-day-are-t...
- ceejayoz 15y ago
  Do you really want individual tweets showing up in Google's main search results? Google doesn't seem to individually index Google+ posts, either - there's only 15 million search results for "site:plus.google.com".