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Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

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

#111

Post by elliekelly »

bombcar wrote: post #70
ge96 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dea…

Or their only web presence at all is a facebook page. I don't have a facebook account so this used to be mildly annoying but lately I've noticed it won't let me see at the page at all. I click the link to visit the business's "website" and I'm greeted with a full-page prompt to sign in to facebook.

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

#112

Post by gfd »

b112 wrote: post #107
tyingq wrote: post #36

Earlier 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.

There's a tonne of low hanging fruit google completely ignores, for example any page with an amazon referral link is almost certainly spam. "But wait!", you say, "there are some legit reviewers out there." Yes, there sure are, by my starement is accurate, because for every legit review site with aws referrals, there are tens of thousands of ml created spam referral sites. And so the real review sites are often lost i…

I put Amazon referral links on my technical blog whenever it's a hardware project. So far I have made < $5 on it so I should probably remove them. But for others I think it helps justify the time I spent writing up the blog and doing the project.

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

#113

Post by DANK_YACHT »

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #109
photochemsyn wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The patent was actually assigned to Stanford University, and Google then licensed it (this is also how most pharmaceutical discovery is patented and licensed). A fundamental problem is that these patents all rely on federal funds from US taxpayers to one extent or the other, and while it may make sense for Stanford to hold the patent, there's a strong argument that any US entity should be able to license it (not just…

Doesn’t answer the question. Rephrased: Why was the patent granted if prior art existed from the 70s?

The patent approval process isn't perfect. Had you violated the patent, and had Google sued you, you could always argue prior art. What would your evidence be?

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

#114

Post by soco »

5evOX5hTZ9mYa9E wrote: post #10
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…

And yet, the results are worse and worse.

The results seem to bring them enough income so I'd say "worse" depends a lot on the point of view.

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

#115

Post by peoplefromibiza »

photochemsyn wrote: post #83
losvedir wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

I find that Google search results are still the best of any search engine for specific computer science and other specific tech-related topics, as long as you construct a fairly complex search string. However, for general information on things like world events, local news, national politics, etc. it's become little more than a mirror for corporate and state propaganda outlets. This is likely due to those very ML pip…

> I find that Google search results are still the best of any search engine for specific computer science and other specific tech-related topics

even without Google account?

This is my Google experience from my temporary workplace in Barcelona

https://i.imgur.com/X2Avw2v.png

Then I click on "I agree" and whatever thing I search I receive Spanish results because I am in Spain.

Not my idea of "the best of any search engine", but ok...

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

#116

Post by soco »

dontbenebby wrote: post #104
NoGravitas wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found search operators and quotes are less and less effective — especially on Google, but on other search engines as well — as time goes on. I think OR/AND were removed a long time ago, and things like + and quotes aren't effective, because they're still subjected to the same processing (stemming, synonym substitution, whatever ML nonsense Google does) as plain queries. So in general, you don't get what you're s…

>I've found search operators and quotes are less and less effective — especially on Google On Google, I treat my search terms like a Venn diagram if I want good results. Eg: want an article about the texas blackouts, but not the ones a decade ago? Type "texas blackout npr 2022" minus quotes. But if you do that on other engines, it may be MUCH more literal, the literal intersection of those terms, and I need to do the…

I had the same idea but the "2022" seems to be the bit which gets nearly always ignored (in my subjective opinion)

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

#117

Post by tyingq »

ivanbakel wrote: post #89
raunak wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search is objectively worse today than it used to be, it's not just that "it's harder to use for old people", it's just worse.

>Search is objectively worse today than it used to be How would you demonstrate that search is objectively worse? And how would you then show that it's a result of Google's algorithms, and not a consequence of the content of the Internet changing significantly?

>How would you demonstrate that search is objectively worse?

There's a few ways to do that. The easiest is to point out that almost any lucrative search query has -0- organic results above the page fold on a typical monitor today. It's all ads unless you scroll down.

Then, it's not proof, but how much time do you think Google spends on things that sit below the fold and aren't clicked on much? What would the financial incentive be?

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

#118

Post by blowski »

b112 wrote: post #107
tyingq wrote: post #36

Earlier 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.

There's a tonne of low hanging fruit google completely ignores, for example any page with an amazon referral link is almost certainly spam. "But wait!", you say, "there are some legit reviewers out there." Yes, there sure are, by my starement is accurate, because for every legit review site with aws referrals, there are tens of thousands of ml created spam referral sites. And so the real review sites are often lost i…

> There's a tonne of low hanging fruit google completely ignores, for example any page with an amazon referral link is almost certainly spam.

This is the root of the problem. If Google targets the low-hanging fruit, the spammers will very quickly find a workaround. Google is trying - and failing - to use more sophisticated signals.

Spam is a virus. Google beneffited from the network effect, eradicating all opposition. But, like a European medieval monarch, it now has a poor immune system because of its lack of genetic diversity. The many, many SEO spammers are constantly experimenting, and they only have to find one flaw in Google's algorithm for it to win and spread quickly.

Google's monoculture cannot save us, however hard they try.

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

#119

Post by magicalist »

PaulHoule wrote: post #50
shockeychap wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wholeheartedly agree, but with an important caveat - Google is no longer fighting for the best interest of it's users, it's fighting for the best interests of it's advertisers. How useful the results are is now secondary to "how much can this search be monetized". The former was important in the early days when Google needed to be competitive on search.

Most directly, if the search results were perfect you would never need to click on an ad. The most evil thing Google is doing now is pushing brands to buy ads on their own name so that they appear above the organic #1 search result. It's like the time Facebook decided it wouldn't send messages to followers who like you unless you paid up.

> The most evil thing Google is doing now is pushing brands to buy ads on their own name

It's not like this is a new thing. The court cases about it are almost 20 years old: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_v._Louis_Vuitton

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

#120

Post by micromacrofoot »

ivanbakel wrote: post #89
raunak wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search is objectively worse today than it used to be, it's not just that "it's harder to use for old people", it's just worse.

>Search is objectively worse today than it used to be How would you demonstrate that search is objectively worse? And how would you then show that it's a result of Google's algorithms, and not a consequence of the content of the Internet changing significantly?

It's a result of people generating content solely to cater to Google's algorithms and accumulate ad and referral revenue. The internet changed significantly because of how Google indexes and ranks content. The proof is in the pudding... results for product searches are dominated by SEO referral link blogspam. Entire careers and businesses that didn't exist in 2006 have been built around this.
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