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
FireEye Builds Toward a Bigger, Smarter Future
March 14, 2016
Demand for cybersecurity may exist, but one security firm’s first quarter results do not have much to show for it. People are not spending on security published by MyInforms reports this sharing the story of FireEye. Several explanations are offered for the lack of profitability this quarter and next, including their recent purchase of subscription-based iSight Partners and Invotas. The article contextualizes FireEye’s results,
“Security outfit FireEye released some disappointing results and claim it is because firms are skimping on their security budgets. FireEye forecast a bigger than expected loss for the first quarter and said it expected growth in cyber security spending to slow this year. FireEye Chief Executive Dave DeWalt said sales across the industry were boosted by “emergency spending” last year as major hacking attacks prompted some companies to place massive orders.”
Profitability can be looked at in several ways, but that’s another story. What is important to note here is the security concern many businesses have — and notably acted on last year, according to the article. What kind of player with FireEye be in this market with their newly acquired cyber intelligence offerings? We will keep our sights set on them.
Megan Feil, March 14, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google: The Dutch Do Not Think Much of Fake Reviews
March 13, 2016
I read “Google Ordered to Hand Over Names of Fake Reviewers in Dutch Court Case.” Let’s assume that the story is accurate. For me, the notion of Google providing the names of individuals who created “fake” reviews is interesting. For the affected small business, the victory is not likely to generate a jump to the top 25 sites in traffic. For the Google, the court decision is another indication of the legal hurdles Google may face in the present day European community.
The write up said:
While the case appears to be a landmark ruling — it’s the first time that Google has been required to provide contact details and IP addresses for Google reviewers — it also highlights the challenges for a search platform like Google when navigating questions of freedom of speech and more recent developments that touch on user privacy. The ongoing “right to be forgotten” mandate in Europe, where Google and other search engines are removing links that people request to be removed if “inadequate, irrelevant, no longer relevant or excessive, and not in the public interest,” have proven to be tricky waters for the company amid its default position of making the world a more searchable place.
My thought is that Google is likely to find itself under increasing legal scrutiny to deal with alleged abuses carried out within its content generating functions; for example, people or robots which generate fake reviews.
Sometimes I wonder if the Google we once knew and loved is going to become a much less exciting search and retrieval service.
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2016
Google and a New Approach to Search Relevance
March 11, 2016
We know one cannot search for a topic if the words are not in the index. Should we forget about it? Sure, why not?
Quite a few folks perceive Google search results as the equivalent of an overnight visit to the oracle of Delphi.
Google is trying out a new social approach to search: letting businesses and celebrities post directly to search results. This would obviously increase those posts’ visibility and could turn search into a Twitter-like feed, although not quite.
How would this be handled? According to the write up:
When someone makes such a post, it would turn up in Google search results alongside their name.
Sound good. What about the Google method reported in “Google Experimenting with Local Business Cards in Search Results? I learned:
As with the Candidate Cards, the intent is to allow the business to communicate something directly in search results — content or information highlighting the business’ products or services…
When one thinks about relevance, Google is one thought ahead it seems.
Stephen E Arnold, March 11, 2016
Search Vendors Will Thank Forrester for Its Views on Customer Support
March 11, 2016
I read “Your Customers Don’t Want To Call You For Support.” This is a free marketing write up from the good folks at the mid tier consulting outfit Forrester.
The write up is one answer to the struggle some search vendors have had. As you may know, selling proprietary search and retrieval systems is a slow go these days. Why not use an open source system as plumbing? That’s what IBM and Palantir have done. Shift the costs of the utility function’s maintenance and bug fixing to the “community.” Shift those resources from search to something which sells. For Palantir, Gotham and Metropolitan are moving. For IBM, well, that may be a poor example. The only “moving” at IBM involves the individuals terminated.
Moving on…
The Forrester write up makes clear that “your customers” don’t want to call you on the telephone. No kidding? Has anyone at Forrester tried to call Forrester without a number linked to a specific individual?
The search vendors are struggling to find a market which really needs their search system. The candidate many search firms are chasing is the person in charge of customer support. The reason is that no one in customer support wants to talk to customers.
Put the information on the Web and let the customers “search” for answers. Everyone will be happy. At least, that’s the pitch.
Forrester thinks that self service is the “low friction” way to deal with customers. Right. If there is no human who struggles to speak in an intelligible manner about a subject germane to the called, the support person will not experience some verbal excitement.
Forrester likes the chat thing. That’s a service which opens a box, introduces a delay, and then a message appears, “Hello, I am Ted. How may I help you?” My reaction is to click the close button. Sorry, Ted.
My hunch is that search vendors will print out copies of the Forrester article and use them as proof that a better search engine will create many happy customers.
If only life were that simple.
Stephen E Arnold, March 11, 2016
Open Source Academic Research Hub Resurfaces on the Dark Web
March 11, 2016
Academics are no strangers to the shadowy corners of the Dark Web. In fact, as the The Research Pirates of the Dark Web published by The Atlantic reports, one university student in Kazakhstan populated the Dark Web with free access to academic research after her website, Sci-Hub was shut down in accordance with a legal case brought to court by the publisher Elsevier. Sci-Hub has existed under a few different domain names on the web since then, continuing its service of opening the floodgates to release paywalled papers for free. The article tells us,
“Soon, the service popped up again under a different domain. But even if the new domain gets shut down, too, Sci-Hub will still be accessible on the dark web, a part of the Internet often associated with drugs, weapons, and child porn. Like its seedy dark-web neighbors, the Sci-Hub site is accessible only through Tor, a network of computers that passes web requests through a randomized series of servers in order to preserve visitors’ anonymity.”
The open source philosophy continues to emerge in various sectors: technology, academia, and beyond. And while the Dark Web appears to be a primed for open source proponents to prosper, it will be interesting to see what takes shape. As the article points out, other avenues exist; scholars may make public requests for paywalled research via Twitter and using the hashtag #icanhazpdf.
Megan Feil, March 11, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Celebros Launches Natural Language Processing Ecommerce Extension with Seven Conversions
March 9, 2016
An e-commerce site search company, Celebros, shared a news release touting their new product. Celebros, First to Launch Natural Language Site Search Extension for Magento 2.0 announces their Semantic Site Search extension for Magento 2.0. Magento 2.0 boasts the largest marketplace of e-commerce extensions in the world. This product, along with other Magento extensions, are designed to help online merchants expand their marketing and e-commerce capabilities. Celebros CMO and President of Global Sales Jeffrey Tower states,
“Celebros is proud to add the new Magento 2 extension to our existing and very successful Magento 1 extension. Celebros will offer the new extension free of charge to our entire Magento client base to ensure an easy, fast and pain-free upgrade while providing free integrations to new Celebros clients world-wide. The new extension encompasses our Natural Language Site Search in seven languages along with eight additional features that include our advanced auto-complete, guided navigation, dynamic landing pages and merchandising engine, product recommendations and more.”
For online retailers, extension products like Celebros may make or break the platforms like Magento 2.0, as these products are what add value and drive e-commerce technologies forward. It is intriguing that the Celebros natural language processing technology offers conversions available in seven languages. We live in an increasingly globalized world.
Megan Feil, March 9, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
A Hefty Guide to Setting up SharePoint 2013 Enterprise Search Center
March 8, 2016
The how-to guide titled Customizing SharePoint 2013 Search Center on Code Project provides a lengthy, detailed explanation (with pictures) of the new features of SharePoint 2013, an integration of the 2010 version and Microsoft FAST search. The article offers insights into certain concepts of the program such as crawled properties and managed properties before introducing step-by-step navigation for customizing the result page and Display template, as well as other areas of Sharepoint. The article includes such tips as this,
“Query rules allow you to modify the users keyword search based on a condition. Let’s say when the user types Developer, we want to retrieve only the books which have BookCategory as Developer and if they type ‘IT Pro’, we only want to retrieve the Administrator related books.”
Nine steps later, you have a neat little result block with the matching items. The article outlines similar processes for Customizing the Search Center, Modifying the Search Center, Adding the Results Page to the Navigation, and Creating the Result Source. This leads us to ask, Shouldn’t this be easier by now? Customizing a program so that it looks and acts the way we expect seems like pretty basic setup, so why does it take 100+ steps to tailor SharePoint 2013?
Chelsea Kerwin, March 8, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Search Dually Conceals and Retrieves for an Audience
March 8, 2016
There are many ways to trace a digital footprint, but Google is expanding European users’ ability to cover their tracks. An article entitled, In Europe, Google will now remove ‘right to be forgotten’ search results from all its sites, from The Verge tells us the story. Basically, European users who request links to be removed protect those links from being crawled by Google.fr in addition to all their other homepages. The write-up explains,
“So, for instance, if someone in France had previously requested that a link be hidden from search results, Google would just remove it from its European homepages, including google.fr. But a savvy searcher could have just used google.com to dig up all those hidden results. Now, however, the company will scrub its US homepage results, too, but only for European users. The company didn’t provide specifics on how it’ll detect that a user is in Europe, but it’s likely going off IP addresses, so in theory, someone could use a VPN to subvert those results.”
As the article mentions, European privacy regulators are happy about this but would still prefer contested links not appear, even if the searcher is in the U.S. or elsewhere. Between the existence of the Dark Web and the “right to be forgotten” protections, more and more links are hidden making search increasingly difficult.
Megan Feil, March 8, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Progress and Obstacles for Microsoft Delve When It Comes to On-Premise Search
March 7, 2016
The article titled Microsoft Delve Faces Challenges in Enterprise Search Role on Search Content Management posits that Microsoft Delve could use some serious enhancements to ensure that it functions as well with on-premises data as it does with data from the cloud. Delve is an exciting step forward, an enterprise-wide search engine that relies on machine learning to deliver relevant results. The article even goes so far as to call it a “digital assistant” that can make decisions based on an analysis of previous requests and preferences. But there is a downside, and the article explains it,
“Microsoft Delve isn’t being used to its full potential. Deployed within the cloud-based Office 365 (O365) environment, it can monitor activity and retrieve information from SharePoint, OneDrive and Outlook in a single pass — and that’s pretty impressive. But few organizations have migrated their entire enterprise to O365, and a majority never will: Hybrid deployments and blending cloud systems with on-premises platforms are the norm… if an organization has mostly on-premises data, its search results will always be incomplete.”
With a new version of Delve in the works at Microsoft, the message has already been received. According to the article, the hybrid Delve will be the first on-premise product based on SharePoint Online. You can almost hear the content management specialists holding their breaths for an integrated cloud and on-premise architecture for search.
Chelsea Kerwin, March 7, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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