I don't think Google uses this anymore, this is just not relevant these days
Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
61–70 of 173 posts
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, they don't seem to teach the next generation about search operators. I've found just using quotes, OR/AND, and some other basic stuff can often get me what I need. The place where Google does well is that they're a monopoly, so things like image search that require a lot of resources, they are better at, especially paired with their geographic location. (USA! USA! USA!) Edit: I hit enter and the post went…
Quotes aren't what they once were. They don't guarantee that the term you quoted will be in the results.
>They don't guarantee that the term you quoted will be in the results.
They do guarantee it. Sometimes Google is buggy and messes up in determining what's page is actually visible on the page compared to just being somewhere in the HTML.
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yeah, their "local search" stuff seems to use yet a different set of criteria. You'll see similar complaints for other niches like locksmiths. Some set of SEO spammers has figured out how to use services like UPS-Store virtual addresses to fool Google.
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#64Earlier 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.
Doubt it. Even today, obvious spammy content aggregators show up for many keywords with stuff taken directly from Reddit/Stackoverflow/Superuser/etc.
All of Google's fancy ML could've been replaced with a simple report button - enough people report a site and either trigger a manual review (best option) or just ban them (could be used against competitors... but negative SEO was already a thing and is still widely used).
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#65I'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 doesn’t mean with present day’s internet content and the terms you search for in present day would have returned better results using google from 2006
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#66Can 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 a…
> 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.
> 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.
I'm not sure how HITS is any more "easy to game" than PageRank? As far as I understand it, the differences are almost entirely limited to performance characteristics, not semantics. The example you give doesn't seem to be specific to HITS (as opposed to PageRank) in any way.
(I'm also not sure how "game theory" is relevant here, unless by "game theory" you just mean "the idea that people will try to game it".)
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The same is true for me for contractors of any sort. Top links are frequently referral farms.
For local search, I almost always use google maps instead. Maps search isn't perfect, but it beats web search hands down.
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#68I'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…
I have not used PageRank to rank search results but to detect monitoring sensors in P2P botnets as part of my master thesis and it worked pretty well. It is quite effective in detecting sensors and the only way to prevent detection is to reduce incoming edges, thereby requiring many sensors to monitor a large botnet.
So the algorithm is still useful not only for search results.
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#6921e8 replaces pagerank https://youtu.be/6HYdTtIoyts
I'm not sure if it's a joke or if he's for real... It's basically replacing google with "serach engine" where every place is bought.
Coming from SEO world this looks like a joke.
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's really annoying - you have to dig around, and many business do not have a web presence at all so unless you can find something local with ads, you find nothing.
Some tricks I've used in the past include local church bulletins (most parishes have some sort of a website and a weekly bulletin with advertising on the back), or local sport team sponsors, or local bars.
For towing, you can also try calling a local dealership or auto repair.