Google and Search Tweaks
February 25, 2011
Chatter blizzard! There is a flurry of commentary about Google’s change to cope with outfits that generate content to attract traffic, get a high Google ranking, and deliver information to users! You can read the Google explanation in “Finding More High-Quality Sites in Search” and learn about the tweaks. I found this passage interesting:
We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.
Google faces increasing scrutiny for its display of content from some European Web sites. In fact, one of the companies affected has filed an anti trust complain against Google. You can read about the 1PlusV matter and the legal information site EJustice at this link (at least for a while. News has a tendency to disappear these days.)
Source: http://www.mentalamusement.com/our%20store/poker/casino_accessories.htm
Why did I find this passage interesting?
Well, it seems that when Google makes a fix, some sites go up or down in the results list. Interesting because as I understand the 1PlusV issue, the site arbitrarily disappeared and then reappeared. On one hand, human intervention doesn’t work very well. And, if 1PlusV is correct, human intervention does work pretty well.
Which is it? Algorithm that adapts or a human or two doing their thing independently or as the fingers of a committee.
I don’t know. My interest in how Google indexed Web sites diminished when I realized that Google results were deteriorating over the last few years. Now my queries are fairly specialized, and most of the information I need appears in third party sources. Google’s index, for me, is useful, but it is now just another click on a series of services I must use to locate information.
A good example is trying to locate information about a specific US government program. The line up of services I had to use to locate the specific item of information I sought included:
- Bing.com
- Blekko.com
- DuckDuckGo.com
- EBSCO Electronic Publishing
- Exalead Search
- Google.com
- Google’s little known Uncle Sam
- Lexis.com
- ProQuest
- USA.gov (Keep in mind that my son is involved with this outfit.)
I also enlisted the help of two specialists. One in Israel and one here in the United States. As you can see, Google’s two services made up about one tenth of my bibliographic research.
Why?
First, Google’s Web index appears larger to me, but it seems to me that it returns hits that are distorted by either search engine optimization tricks such as auto-generated pages. These are mostly useless to me as are links to sites that contain incorrect information and Web pages for which the link is dead and the content no longer in the Google cache.
In my experience, this happens frequently when running queries for certain government agencies such as Health and Human Services or the documents for a US Congressional hearing. Your mileage may differ because the topics for which I want information are far from popular.
Second, I need coverage that does not arbitrarily stop after following links a couple of levels deep. Some services like Exalead do a better job of digging into the guts of large sites, particularly for certain European sources.
Third, the Blekko folks are going a pretty good job of keeping the older information easily identifiable. This date tagging is important to me, and I appreciate either seeing an explicit date or have a link to a page that displays a creation date.
Compusearch Launches PRISM Business Intelligence Dashboard
February 18, 2011
Why search? Look at the dashboard.
“Compusearch Puts Mission- Critical Information at Agency Fingertips” at redOrbit announces the release of Compusearch’s PRISM Business Intelligence Dashboard. Users can now access information on key performance indicators from within the PRISM software.
This is not, however, a simple point and click search. For confirmation, just take a look at the Dashboard. As the article explains:
“This add-on module to PRISM provides the power to support a wide range of custom report style widgets with drill-down and drill-through capability, as well as robust data visualization features that can be animated and interactive. The PRISM BI Dashboard is based on an open architecture and utilizes XML and web services, which allows data and information from across agency enterprises to be easily monitored, analyzed and reported.”
Compusearch focuses on software and systems integration, mostly for government agencies. The hitch may be that if you look at the dashboard when you drive, you may run over a pedestrian. Is this a risk when performing business intelligence and analysis?
Cynthia Murrell February 18, 2011
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OpenText Opens Advanced Content Analytics Market
February 14, 2011
Following in the footsteps of other vendors, Open Text has opened an advanced content analytics market.
“OpenText Licensing Agreement Brings Advanced Content Analytics to Market” reveals a tie up between OpenText and the National Research Council (Canada). The idea is that new Content Analytics innovations will be added to the ECM Suite and made available by spring 2011. The added content analytics to the ECM Suite will improve data mining and analysis. The key point is:
“Content analytics is the key to extracting business value from social media and text-rich online and enterprise information sources, an essential technology for marketing, online commerce, customer service, and improved search and Web experience. Given the mind-boggling growth in information volumes, no wonder uptake is booming, powered by rapid technical advances from leading-edge vendors such as OpenText.”
Content Analytics will perform data mining that will uncover and show relationships between businesses and other facts. It will be able to find information that a normal search engine wouldn’t find. This agreement is the beginning for OpenText to apply Content Analytics to all its enterprise content management Suite products.
Whitney Grace, February 14, 2011
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Google: How Big?
February 13, 2011
Google is an immense enterprise. It’s tendrils touch every corner of the Internet and a website does not exist that has not turned up on the results page. So how big is Google, really? Smashing Apps tried to answer that question: “The Massive Size of Google (Infographic).” Google was conceived as an experimental project back in 1996 and by American dream standards they’ve succeeded beyond ken.
“Till now it gets so many faces and expanded like an open sky. But there are so many of us who love to see the statistics. Here, we have found an infographic in which you can see the massive size of Google in numbers.”
The infographic visualization puts Google in an understandable perspective. If you’re familiar with children’s literature it reads like How Much is a Million? by David M. Schwartz and Seven Kellog. It’ll bring out your internal intellectual child , however, don’t take the information for fact. How are we supposed to determine how accurate the data is, when we can’t conceivably measure the Internet? Google. Big. Real big.
Whitney Grace, February 13, 2011
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Augmenting Output for Clarity
February 12, 2011
We love it when mid tier consulting firms “discover” a trend. A Gartner expert has revealed “Relationship Context Metadata.” Here’s the definition of the polysyllabic concept:
“Relationship context metadata explicitly describes the relationship from which the identity information was obtained and the constraints imposed by the participants in that relationship on the use and disclosure of the information.”
The consulting firm’s example is that of a credit card number. Instead of just sending the number, you could tag the number with metadata that specifies how it is to be used and what relationship will be damaged if it is misused.
This mid-tier consulting firm is applying a new name, “relationship context,” to the social graph. Will we apply their metadata to information from Foursquare, Gowalla, and other social networking / geospatial services?
One of the goslings here in Harrod’s Creek asked, “Could we include a tag that means no stalking?”
Cynthia Murrell, February 12, 2011
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Not Search, But Mighty Useful
February 12, 2011
The article “50 Free iPad Apps for Business Users” at Datamation provides a helpful service. The authors have combed through the apps at the iTunes Store and compiled a list of free apps they feel are worthy of your attention:
Whoever claimed that business software costs a bundle never heard of the free iPad app.
Indeed, the iPad is showing that you don’t need a speedy notebook full of programs to run your company on the go; all you need is a tablet with free iPad apps.”
The offerings are organized by category: productivity, utilities, remote access, and knowledge.
It does look like there are some decent entries here- do check it out. Unfortunately, though, there is not a robust search app in the lot. (Job-hunting tools don’t count.) Search just doesn’t command respect in the free iPad app world. Sigh.
Cynthia Murrell February 12, 2011
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Will We Pay for News Online?
February 10, 2011
BBC Mobile’s article “News Corp Launches Daily Newspaper for iPad” prompts a few questions.
The article examines the Rupert Murdoch empire’s launch of the Daily, via Apple’s iTunes store. A dedicated staff of journalist has been hired, a choice which separates this from most device-specific news sources. Alongside traditional news articles will be interactive graphics, videos, Twitter feeds, and personalized content.
The Daily will cost 99 cents a week. That doesn’t sound like much, but will consumers be willing to pay anything to access news online?
“Mr Murdoch has made no secret of his desire to get consumers paying for news on the Web. The Wall Street Journal, The Times and The Sunday Times, all owned by Murdoch, have introduced pay walls for their websites. However, the Times has since seen an 87% drop in online readership.
We now have many sources for free, quality news coverage online, so it is no wonder readers are reluctant to pay. However, I predict that that flow will be stemmed in the coming years as companies become less willing to give their work away for free. Nevertheless, it is difficult to generate significant revenues online. Experimentation ahead.
Cynthia Murrell February 10, 2011
Online Outfits as Political Power Houses
February 9, 2011
We noted “Google Launches Phone Tweeting Service as Last Egyptian ISP Goes Down.”
The headline that Egypt turned off the Internet has made the global rounds and scared the entire developed world. If you do your research, you’ll find that in the US it will be extremely difficult to shut down the web, especially if Google is your ally. Noor Group, the last surviving Egyptian ISP, was shut down and totally blacked out the web. Maximum PC has the story, “Google Launches Phone Tweeting Service as Last Egyptian ISP Goes Down.”
“Over the weekend, engineers from Google, Twitter and SayNow — a company the internet giant bought just last week — extended a lifeline to the restive Arab country by coming up with the “idea of a speak-to-tweet service—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.”
Google and Twitter to the rescue folks! Who would have thought these Internet companies would provide a voice in a time of crisis. While I applaud their efforts, I’m curious where Facebook, Amazon, and Apple are. Why aren’t these online outfits involving themselves in the political affairs of countries half a world away? What happened to search and content processing as an objective activity? Maybe search and content processing are no longer objective? Quite a shift for some, not much of a change for other organizations, however.
Whitney Grace, February 9, 2011
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Textalyser Highlighted on Podcast
February 9, 2011
Text analysis was mentioned by the podcast No Agenda, which is hosted by Adam Curry (professional broadcast journalist) and John C. Dovorak (technical and business columnist). The No Agenda podcast team runs certain text through Textalyzer and uses the output to identify “memes”; that is, words or phrases designed to be magnetic and persist in a conversation.
You can give Textalyser, the tool No Agenda mentioned, by navigating to http://textalyser.net/. There are two Web accessible modes. First, you can take a chunk of text and paste it into the Analysis Box on the Web page. The system will generate a report. Shown below, is a portion of the Textalyser report for one of my 2010 for fee columns.
The report generates a word frequency report, word length summary, and two, three, and four word phrase frequency reports.
The service carries this identification notice: V 1.05 help Traduction Nieruchomo?ci Magazine interactif Umarex Airsoft + Paintball. For more information about the service, you can navigate to this link and leave a message.
Stephen E Arnold, February 9, 2011
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Search into Politics
February 8, 2011
Here in Harrod’s Creek, we find search technology more interesting that political hoop jumping. Our question, “Has anyone noticed that companies with a foundation in search and content processing seem to be getting involved in politics?” Probably not, judging from the discussions of America Online’s purchase of the Huffington Post blog and information service or of the Google employee embroiled or at least caught in the turmoil in Egypt. You can get information about the AOL deal from “You’ve Got Arianna” and about the Googler-Egypt story from “Egyptian PM Says Missing Google Marketing Executive Wael Ghonim to Be Released Tomorrow.”
We don’t know if these two events are cut from the same bolt of fustian or completely unrelated events. If these are related, have search and content processing companies shifted from serving the needs of customers to a larger stage? And if on a larger stage, is the object generating value for stakeholders or some other goal; for example, implementing a “vision” of how the world should work.
If the events are unrelated, then the question becomes, “What next?” Will other companies knowingly or unknowingly allow employees to pursue political agendas under the colors of the corporation?
We liked the good old days when companies created products and met the needs of customers. The merging of technology and politics may be as complex a mixture as religion and politics. We have nothing against giving individuals and corporations some scope of operation. But when the actions play out on a global stage, we wonder if technology has worked its way into society in a new way.
What are the consequences of breaking a nation’s embargo against certain types of information? What are the consequences of using content as a weapon? What are the consequences of co-mingling corporate and personal goals with an online service? Is this stuff content, marketing, or something else entirely?
We don’t know. Fascinating for certain. And far from the mundane work in Harrod’s Creek.
Stephen E Arnold, February 8, 2011
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