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Google Previews New Search Infrastructure
Google has announced a "developer preview" of a new search infrastructure, though one wouldn't have to be a developer to try it out. Google is asking for feedback on how the search results in the new regime stack up against the old. Matt Cutts has posted a mini FAQ. Some early testing indicates that the new search may be faster in some cases, and return more relevant results, than the old one. Those who attempt to game Google search for a living will be scrambling henceforth. Has anyone identified the new crawler bot in log files?
Maybe this will stop Slashdot from giving me mod points :|
signature is pants
Really? This is google's new search engine? Wow.
I've been waiting for them to launch something like sig.ma, but way better. Looks like they're falling behind. Which is not to say that Bing is catching up --- I don't even consider that competition.
Why would there be a new crawler?? How many more copies of the Interwebs does Google need?
G.
The more relevant results may be just because the algorithm is new, so the SEOs couldn't yet optimize for it. If it really gives more relevant results will be seen after it is the main search algorithm for some time.
Remember, in the beginning the old algorithm used to be very good in finding relevant results.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
beautiful
http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ - google without the ads!
Thank you, Bing!
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
Gotta love these random dipshits hanging out in forums desperately trying to bring Microsoft's latest failed search fiasco some tiny and pathetic bit of publicity.
Actually, I'm mostly fine with the speed and typical results I'm getting at the moment. What annoys me the most about searching is when the first several pages of results are full of links to places that require you to have an account before you can access the answer or download the file. If I could define a blacklist that automatically excludes some of the worst offenders from my queries, that would be worth far more to me than shaving a few milliseconds of each search.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
I entered "search engine" on the old infrastructure as well as the new. On the old engine, two of the hits on the first page were for bing.com and msn.com. On Google's new infrastructure neither of those sites shows up on the first page.
Maybe they are taking a page out of Microsoft's book?
Turns out I'm much more relevant according to the new search than in the older one.
I have a long name (first name + 3 names). Previously, I would need to include at least my first name and two other names so I would be the first result. Now, a search for first name + second name already shows me at the top (even though there was a famous soccer player in Brazil, before I was born, with the same name).
So, it is more relevant *for me*, but it's likely anyone who's isn't related to software development, would be searching for that soccer player and not me.
Either way, the results do seem more relevant overall (or at least more "modern"). And also it *feels* so much faster. I wonder if this is just because not many people are using it yet, when compared to the main site.
I don't know about anyone else, but I used to get much more search-contextual information on fringe information from Google, even when compared to a highly-tailored search. I don't know if Google does its indexing differently now, or if it's indexing/crawling different subsets of data, but the results are not only different, but often less useful in an academic/info-junkie sense.
For instance, searing for "hammurabi" now results in Wikipedia being the first link. This is true for most searches where there's a wiki page, and for many where the search phrase is simply mentioned in the wp page (yet there is no individual wp page for the topic). A lot of the sites I've got bookmarked when researching superstitions and myth surrounding his code (giants, atlantis, etc.) which are still present do not show up in the search results today - but did around 2003.
Likewise, search for anything which might have current cultural significance ('bush war crimes') and then compare it to something that had cultural significance just a couple years ago ('saddam war crimes'). The results are drastically different and (in the case of the former) cater to lazy people; they also make actually finding a -site- (as opposed to just a 'current event' article) on the topic somewhat more frustrating. (This is just an example, though there are plenty of other similar situations - forgive my 3am brain.)
Now, it might be that Google has actually gotten a lot better at returning pertinent results: so good that those little things I see and go "ohhh interesting! *click*" don't occur nearly as often, and as an info junkie, I view google as having degraded.
Who knows. Still head over heels better than Bing or anything else out there, as far as I'm concerned. I'm glad more progress on 'searching better' is being made. I just wish they'd not clog the works making -cultural- assumptions about what I'm after and stick to the semantics of my search phrases.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
If you don't want to use them, I can do that for you. For some reason, I seem to never get mod points. So... Please PM me your password.
-Yours, Anonymous " Coward
I see that name searches for unimportant people (like myself) don't put the Facebook, Netlog, Myspace, ... results on top anymore.
Progress!
I'll look.
I used Yahoo because for a while they did have a couple nice privacy public announcements. I tried Ask, but that feels a little clunky for some uses.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
1. From what I have seen, improved results are not coming from a different algorithm, but from an improved indexing. Long tail keyword searches are more likely to be influenced in these cases (where sites that rank might also be on the verge of falling through the cracks of Google's new indexing patterns)
2. From my experience, there appears to be a marked improvement in speed.
3. Don't under estimate the power of the Top 10. One thing that Google does very well is it only rarely screws with a simple top 10 list of the most relevant pages. Innovation in the search results GUI has rarely yielded success (Ask.com for example)
This is going to mess up the content spinners and the paragraph swappers who are trying to either attract ads or build a link farm. Those who have well-build, informative, content-rich pages can sit back and watch the fun.
"Content Spinning" explained, kinda sorta
That's because quality sources don't sit around making geocities sites devoted to niche topics anymore (heh) -- they submit their work to existing sites as features, articles, and blog posts. The front page for those larger, more frequently updated sites end up getting all the Google juice, so the individual articles don't get so much by comparison.
That's a bad explanation and you already recognize that Google might actually be getting better, but I think most of the cause of this particular problem is changes in the arrangement of information into discrete sites.
Is it just me that sees parallels to Coke and their 'new' recipe? Maybe Google will have two search engines for a while: New Google and Google Classic. I don't know what New Google will taste like, but I bet it'll continue beating the shit out of Pepsi-Bing.
I hope the SEO guys figure out this new regime soon.
I wonder if the new search engine will crawl this page appropriately to get the feedback they're after ;)
Edison Arantes do Nascimento is that you?
No kicking in the groin if it isn't, OK?
Try out the timeline view. It's pretty cool.
Then try to input a search query that makes the timeline go back further than 4500BC.
You can't do it, can you?
We reason thusly:
1. Google knows everything.
2. Google says nothing happened before 4500BC, which is very close to the date calculated for creation in the Bible.
3. Therefore, the universe must have been created by God about 6000 years ago.
QED.
(Did I do better or worse than an ID troll?)
I think you have a point but for some topics the difference in how google ranks results work out worse. For example there are about a dozen sites all archiving as many guitar tabs as possible and any search for guitar tabs will bring up those sites. However, those tab collections are mostly mirroring tabs posted on usenet groups, they don't contain any original information and the tabs are generally of low quality.
Then there are people who write high quality, detailed tabs that they publish in their own small tab collections. On butt ugly pages hosted on geocities with irrelevant gif animations and the whole early 90:s style kit. It is impossible to find those pages these days because all the big sites are much better adapted for seo so the only way to find them is to stumble on them by pure chance.
Football Odds
Stupid wikipedia link is stuck at #1 and has been forever. And it's not because more sites link there (nobody does) or it's the best site to read on the topic (see if you can spot the errors! bonus points if you can spot the times I corrected an error only to have it reverted.) Government website is highly clicked on & linked to, but is actually rather not useful at all. It's crap, actually, and lots of the important info hasn't been updated since 2006. But I suppose Google looks at the domain name and gives it bonus mushroom levels if it matches some developer's idea of what should come first.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
My friends it all about money thru advertising.Google wins and we lose.
I'm been trying out Bing for the past month and prefer their results. I have to wonder if Google timed this new update because of the focus Bing is getting? Google thrives on media attention and this release puts the webmaster focus back on them.
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Google results are not as clean and relevant as they once were...some result pages show video, news (plus it's irrelevant news most of the time), and some domains have sub domain search results. What happened to clean page results?
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Also one of the main reasons I'm switching to Bing is because Google always pushes local results. I'm living in Costa Rica and have no interest in local spanish search results (yes when I type in English in Google some/half of the results come back in Spanish). For 90% of my searches I am after authority world results...not crappy local Costa Rica results. I would like to set my search results to Google International but can not (yes I can type 'Google.com international' in the search bar but why can't I permanently set my Google page to international?. Does anyone know if this is possible?
New View Media - Custom Website Design
MODS: really? This is quite informative and not even close to a troll. Unless experts-exchange is marking this as a troll. Stupid moderators.
br/
comparegoogle.com has been helpful in finding difference in search results for the two algorithms. Just put in some keywords and see what changed. Could be helpful for SEO engineers.