9 years old! Big day… next year it’s double digits!

Posted: September 27th, 2007 under Google.
Comments: 3

I spent a few hours in Google Book Search, searching, observing, trying to lay waste to the claim that there was no rhyme or reason to the ranking of book pages. Well, I found that of course they appear to rank this according to title tags and number of editions printed, but there seemed to be some missing ingredient, something affecting the ranking that was not apparent.

Now, I see that Google introduces My Library on Google Book Search. Users can add books to their personal Google Library, recommending the books so to say. Perhaps this is the missing factor to the ranking of books in Google Book Search?

I addition to this, you can share it with your friends, and people can subscribe to your My Library RSS feed, helping to promote the books that you are recommending. In Seth’s Godin’s Unleashing the Ideavirus, he says that it would be hard to engage in a viral marketing campaign for a book. But now we see that Google has found a way around this. Users can send these to their friends and family, and recommend these books for online purchase. They can even have them subscribe to the RSS feed? And Amazon and Barnes and Noble and the rest of them reap the rewards. Google must have made a lot of money from this. ;)

Posted: September 9th, 2007 under Google.
Comments: 2

The landing page for Google’s Webmaster Central has been updated, and in my opinion, the most notable and positive change is the addition of Analytics. There are a few more additions, but none is as important as the ease with which webmasters will now be able to navigate from Webmaster Tools to Analytics.

See for yourself: http://www.google.com/webmasters/

Posted: September 7th, 2007 under Google.
Comments: none

I have been reading lately about the addition of comments on Google News. News so often presents only one side of the story, and despite the fact that it should by nature be unbiased, we all know this is rarely the case.The addition of comments to Google News has started an interesting discussion that I wanted to continue here.

First off, it should be clear, not everyone can comment on Google News items - they must be “part of the news” being reported. To comment, they must email Google with their comment and verification that they are who they say they are. What is Google’s mission?

… we’re hoping that by adding this feature, we can help enhance the news experience for readers, testing the hypothesis that — whether they’re penguin researchers or presidential candidates– a personal view can sometimes add a whole new dimension to the story.

There however is some concern about Google News getting comments because of the usual suspects: Google is now human edited? and What about Propaganda? And there is a lot of doubt that comments on Google News can offer value considering they will be likely flooded with comments and people will no doubt look to market and promote themselves and their companies. Some say that this will prove that journalism is not just the aggregation of information, and Google News will fail in its “journalistic” efforts, while still others welcome the added conversation and discussion in Google News.

So here is a link to a news item, and here is a comment on that news item. To clarify, I don’t usually read the health section of Google News. I imagine that perhaps doctors do, health professionals of all kinds I suppose. Perhaps also people interested in health issues. Which leads me to the main question: Does including comments degrade or enhance the user experience? I would have to say it enhances the user experience to a great degree, and one would be hard pressed to deny this. The user can easily identify it as a comment, and are told of the author and their affiliations. It increases the amount of information and reliable opinion related to the news.

In the above criticisms linked, the question was asked: Will Google let people know how to process the information in the comments? Separate fact from fiction, undervalue propaganda, and summarily coddle its users? For example a news item speaks of a negative aspect of a Product X owned by Company A. The news item is then commented on by the CEO of company A. But first - they cannot flat-out lie, for this lie will be recorded for all time and immortalized. But they can sugar-coat the truth and say that nothing has been proven about Product X and that their researchers are looking into it. But next to his name will be the name Company A and the user will understand that this comment is being made by the CEO of Company A. Can’t make it any clearer, can you?

Now, what about the criticisms that it is not journalism? Of course it’s not journalism. It’s Google, which means it is links to news and journalistic works. Now with comments. I don’t think Google is aspiring to contribute to the annals of journalism here, they are looking to contribute to the user experience, to “enhance the news experience for readers”. And I think adding comments to Google News will do just that.

Personally, I don’t see what people are fussing about. Google does not charge me to read these comments. It does not charge me to access the links to the news. In fact on Google News there are not even any ads. Furthermore it does not charge newspapers for being included in Google News. It is an absolutely free news aggregation service online. Now with rebuttal. :) And I need I discuss all the “propaganda” in the news itself. Perhaps adding comments like this will help separate fact from fiction.

Posted: August 22nd, 2007 under Google.
Comments: 3

In Google Experimental Search Labs you search for something using view:timeline command. Here, inclusion is based not only on the relevancy of the content but also by placing that content in the time line by including dates in the content. With the unrolling of Google’s Universal Search and many new search features in Labs such as Google Timeline, search engine marketers must exercise a great level of adaptability.

At first glance, it is a lot of fun. I think that Google should work on excluding blogs somehow… I found my own blog listed for post dates and that seems counterproductive and will work to clog the results.

As this feature moves from experimental to possibly becoming a regular command in Google search, I wonder what will be the importance of “owning” dates in Google search. I imagine this will be a widely used feature, in any case and no doubt getting some years for very important keywords might be worthwhile.

Read more »

Posted: August 20th, 2007 under Google.
Comments: 2