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Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

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Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

#51

Post by losvedir »

creamynebula wrote: post #32
tyingq wrote: post #5

I'm not sure how useful this might be to anyone anymore. Google still uses it for the base ranking. But, the results are then run through a variety of add-on ML pipelines, like Vince (authority/brand power), Panda (inbound link quality), Penguin (content quality), and many others that target other attributes (page layout, ad placement, etc). Then there's also more granular weightings for things like "power within a n…

My search results were a lot better in 2006 when, I assume, they didn't have all these ML pipelines...

> My search results were a lot better in 2006 when, I assume, they didn't have all these ML pipelines...

That's like an old person complaining that their body felt a lot better back in 2006 when, I assume, they didn't have to use their walker and glasses all the time...

Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

#52

Post by ricardo81 »

tyingq wrote: post #36
creamynebula wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My search results were a lot better in 2006 when, I assume, they didn't have all these ML pipelines...

My view of it is that they basically lost the SEO spam wars. Without the ML pipelines, the top results would all be dominated by the smaller, highly skilled, SEO manipulators. They didn't find a way to cleanly excise that spam, so they resorted to a very imperfect hammer...giving a lot of SEO weight to large corporate entities. So basically, a different kind of spam dominates now.

>smaller

Perhaps in other words, market forces (I'm thinking ROI) and economies of scale will win.

Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

#53

Post by ge96 »

tyingq wrote: post #36
creamynebula wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My search results were a lot better in 2006 when, I assume, they didn't have all these ML pipelines...

My view of it is that they basically lost the SEO spam wars. Without the ML pipelines, the top results would all be dominated by the smaller, highly skilled, SEO manipulators. They didn't find a way to cleanly excise that spam, so they resorted to a very imperfect hammer...giving a lot of SEO weight to large corporate entities. So basically, a different kind of spam dominates now.

Minor rant: I can't seem to contact an actual towing company directly, it's usually some external entity that ranks top in Google then they charge you more to find the actual local towing company. It says "Towing company in city name" but it's not local.

Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

#54

Post by Retric »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #35
creamynebula wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My search results were a lot better in 2006 when, I assume, they didn't have all these ML pipelines...

There was way less SEO back then. If they continued to use the old algorithm, your results would be worse than what you have now.

Page rank wasn’t a pure algorithmic solution in 2006 either.

So, while the problem changed I am not sure if it got harder or Google’s priorities shifted.

Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

#55

Post by subsubzero »

creamynebula wrote: post #32
tyingq wrote: post #5

I'm not sure how useful this might be to anyone anymore. Google still uses it for the base ranking. But, the results are then run through a variety of add-on ML pipelines, like Vince (authority/brand power), Panda (inbound link quality), Penguin (content quality), and many others that target other attributes (page layout, ad placement, etc). Then there's also more granular weightings for things like "power within a n…

My search results were a lot better in 2006 when, I assume, they didn't have all these ML pipelines...

I feel the same way, I think one of the biggest startup opportunities now is to create a decent search engine. Google is absolute rubbish and a new player needs to step in and take away that market share that google is throwing away by means of a terrible user experience.

Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

#56

Post by srean »

TuringNYC wrote: post #6

Can anyone explain why the PageRank patent was valuable when an alternative (Prof Jon Kleinberg's Hypertext Induced Topic Search or HITS algo) was published at the same time and available for use? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HITS_algorithm

The HITS algorithm has one drawback that it is super easy to game it. PageRank is not entirely resistant, but its a little more robust. For an algorithm that is used in the real world where commercial interests rules, sensitivity to adversarial attacks is very important -- Game Theory inspired algorithms will not be out of place. Note, one can definitely adopt 'hardening' strategies for both HITS and PageRank. Even around 2004 a naive, as presented in the tech-report, version of the PageRank algorithm was unusable without tweaks. Had you tried the unmodified version, you would have found that the top tier pages were mostly porn.

There's also the fact that PageRank was presented as a query independent computation that could be done ahead of time and HITS as a query dependent computation. A resourceful enough person could however modify HITS into topic-wise precomputed HITS scores to be combined at run time based on the query.

Ok so here is how one can game HITS. Create a harvester page that points to lots and lots of popular, high traffic pages on the internet. By virtue of doing this it can accumulate a lot of Hubs score which it can redirect as an Authority score to an intended page.

Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

#58

Post by thayne »

tyingq wrote: post #5

I'm not sure how useful this might be to anyone anymore. Google still uses it for the base ranking. But, the results are then run through a variety of add-on ML pipelines, like Vince (authority/brand power), Panda (inbound link quality), Penguin (content quality), and many others that target other attributes (page layout, ad placement, etc). Then there's also more granular weightings for things like "power within a n…

That doesn't mean it isn't useful, for example for a search engine for an internal wiki where you don't have to worry about SEO or spam. And you said yourself google still uses it, so it would probably still be useful to other search engines, including niche search engines, just not as the only ranking mechanism.

Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

#59

Post by account42 »

tyingq wrote: post #5

I'm not sure how useful this might be to anyone anymore. Google still uses it for the base ranking. But, the results are then run through a variety of add-on ML pipelines, like Vince (authority/brand power), Panda (inbound link quality), Penguin (content quality), and many others that target other attributes (page layout, ad placement, etc). Then there's also more granular weightings for things like "power within a n…

Does Google still even use page rank for individual pages? Seem to me that domains are way more important to the base rank.

Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

#60

Post by s17n »

creamynebula wrote: post #32
tyingq wrote: post #5

I'm not sure how useful this might be to anyone anymore. Google still uses it for the base ranking. But, the results are then run through a variety of add-on ML pipelines, like Vince (authority/brand power), Panda (inbound link quality), Penguin (content quality), and many others that target other attributes (page layout, ad placement, etc). Then there's also more granular weightings for things like "power within a n…

My search results were a lot better in 2006 when, I assume, they didn't have all these ML pipelines...

That's because the web was better in 2006.

I think Google has made one change for the worse, though, which is strongly favoring more recent content. Increasingly, I think that change has been a big contributor to the decay of the web since.

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