PageRank to Blame for the Lousy Web? Nope
March 14, 2016
I read “RIP Google PageRank Score: A Retrospective on How It Ruined the Web.” You can work through the romp yourself. I want to highlight one very, small, almost insignificant point. The death of the relevant Web was a direct consequence of several factors. PageRank was little more than a more usable version of what AltaVista and Jon Kleinberg developed. Here are these very small issues:
- Those responsible for Web sites wanted traffic. The shortest route was finding ways to fool Mother Google.
- Conference organizers and other whiz kid marketers crafted search engine optimization as a business.
Put one and two together and we have the findability problem. Google is not the cause. Google provided a escalator. Humans seeking traffic rode it until the escalator stopped working.
So walk up to the nifty new systems and see if you can get precise, on point, objective results. Those pesky humans have invented content spam.
Stephen E Arnold, March 14, 2016
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