Google and Its Search Soccer Team: Shot Hits the Post
February 28, 2017
I read “Google’s Search Algorithm Is Like a Soccer Team.” Interesting notion but an old one. Years ago Google patented a system and method for deploying communication software agents. Some of these were called “janitors.” The name was cute. The idea was that the “janitors” would clean up some of the mess left when unruly bots left litter in a file structure.
The write up ignores Google’s technical documentation, journal papers, and wild and crazy patent documents. The author has a good sense of how algorithms work and how clever folks can hook them together to create a business process or manufacturing system to further the sale of online advertising.
The discussion of Google’s search algorithm (please, note the singular noun). I thought that Google had a slightly more sophisticated approach to providing search and retrieval in its various forms to its billions of information foragers.
I remember a time in the late 1990s, when co-workers would ask one another which search engine they used. Lycos? AltaVista? Yahoo? Dogpile? Ask Jeeves? The reason there was such a time, and the reason there is no longer such a time, is that Google had not yet introduced its search algorithm. Google’s search algorithm helped Google gain market share on its way to search engine preeminence. Imagine you were searching the internet in the mid 1990s, and your search engine of choice was Ask Jeeves.
Yep, that’s an interesting point: AskJeeves. As I recall, AskJeeves used manually prepared answers to a relatively small body of questions. AskJeeves was interesting but fizzled trying to generate money with online customer service. This is a last ditch tactic that many other search vendors have tried. How is that customer service working for you, gentle reader? Great, I bet.
So how does Google’s algorithm compare to a soccer team? I learned:
The search algorithm looks at a website’s incoming links and how important those pages are. The higher the number of quality page links coming in, the higher the website ranks. Think of a soccer team playing a match. Each player on one team represents a web page. And every pass made to a player on the team represents links from another website. A player’s ranking depends upon the amount of passes (links) they receive. If the player receives many passes from other important players, then the player’s score rises more than if they received passes from less talented players, i.e. those who receive fewer passes by lesser quality players. Every single time there is a pass, the rankings are updated. Google’s search algorithm uses links instead of passes.
Yep, that’s a shot on goal, but it is wide. The conclusion of this amazing soccer game metaphor is that “thus SEO was born.” And the reason? Algorithms.
That shot rolled slow and low only to bounce off the goal post and wobble wide. Time to get another forward, pay for a referee, and keep the advertising off the field. Well, that won’t work for the GOOG will it?
Stephen E Arnold, February 28, 2017
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