Comparative Searches Ding Google
February 11, 2011
Macworld’s “Study: Bing Searches More Accurate than Google’s” raises an interesting point. Bing delivers more relevant results, according to Experian Hitwise, the outfit conducting the study. Here’s the key passage:
Bing and Yahoo, which is now using Microsoft’s Bing search technology, had the highest search success rates last month, reported Experian Hitwise, an Internet monitoring firm. More than 81 percent of searches on their sites led users to visit a Web site. However, Google, the dominant player in the search market, wasn’t as successful with its January searches.
In isolation, the study is not worth too much. But in the context of other information, maybe Bing is doing something to deliver better “accuracy”.
A recent post on ZDNet titled “Google Launches Algorithm Change to Tackle Content Copying. Will It Help?” explains some of the newer measures Google has employed in its battle against spam among search results. Having already rolled out a number of tools including a new fangled document classifier that can weed out “spammy words” from planted blog comments, Google seems to be taking this endeavor pretty seriously. Its next step in gaining a further reduction in spam levels includes identifying certain sites as lower quality due to an abundance of copied content or an overall lower percentage of original content.
If you trust the findings reported on Google’s Web spam blog, the initial response to the new search engine optimization procedures is positive; of course, as with any sort of judgment, there will be controversy and complaints. Per the article “… readers are expressing their gratefulness for the change. But others still have questions. They want to know how Google determines original content from scraped content. They’re wondering what happens to the small blog that posts something first and then is followed by larger sites that have more credibility. And what happens to sites that have a legitimate “mirror” of their content?” All valid queries. Guidelines will hopefully be published as the refining process continues, in which case it will be up to the website owners to comply.
In light of recent criticisms, Google has preemptively assured the web community that the quality valuation is totally independent of a site’s usage of Google ads. A valiant effort, but that probably matters little. ZDNet very delicately mentioned that the quality rulings will have an unknown impact on site operators. I would predict that once the gavel swings, be it fairly or unduly, the owners of what are deemed the ‘lower quality’ websites will likely be seeking an appeal, a lawsuit or perhaps even a good old fashioned round of trash talking.
Worth monitoring even if the notions of “precision” and “recall” are not of much interest to Experian, blog posters, and poobahs.
Stephen E Arnold, February 11, 2011
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