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Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

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

#131

Post by ricardo81 »

foobarian wrote: post #93
hubraumhugo wrote: post #78

Google won because they started early and had the right algorithm. Back in 1998, Google's PageRank was an innovative algorithm that calculated relevance based on counting backlinks instead of parsing the word counts in embedded HTML text like other search engines. This made Google way better than any other available search engine back then (Lycos, Yahoo, AltaVista, etc.), and within weeks, everyone was switching to G…

> way better than what’s currently available Hand-curated walled garden sub-web that bans SEO spam with an iron hand.

wikipedia? Beyond their remit for some queries for sure, but they fit the mold.

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

#132

Post by kmeisthax »

aneil wrote: post #15

How did they even get that patent? It's a well known 70s era bibliometric algorithm.

The patent doesn't cover just ranking documents based on their citations; it also covers various ways to extract "citations" from a webpage, weighting the pages to determine their importance, and doing all of this efficiently enough that you can process millions of queries per second.

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

#133

Post by vikingerik »

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...

Your search results were a lot better in 2006 when there wasn't yet a huge population of sites cranking out SEOed garbage.

Google is trying, they're just losing the arms race of detecting crap content vs generating it.

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

#134

Post by FinalBriefing »

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.

Blog farms are way too popular now, too. People have figured out how Google recognizes "meaningful content", and they generate blog posts and pages with AI and ghost writers to pump out vaguely helpful articles.

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

#135

Post by kmeisthax »

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 office could have just missed the prior art, or more likely is that the claims are more narrow than and represent an improvement upon said prior art.

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

#136

Post by stjohnswarts »

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 think advanced SEO tactics would destroy the results in 2006 though.

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

#137

Post by stjohnswarts »

bogwog wrote: post #73
scroot wrote: post #17

Cool. Now let's get the Library of Congress or NARA -- which are natural homes for this kind of thing -- to implement the public option free of profit-driven cruft.

That would actually be pretty cool. Too bad government software has a tendency to come out shitty and expensive.

That's mostly because the bar for entry is very low and the bid goes either 1) guaranteed company because of congressional lobbying or 2) the company bidding the lowest price who has even a -bit- of a change to complete it rather than companies with proven track records to produce at scale.

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

#138

Post by rvz »

hubraumhugo wrote: post #78

Google won because they started early and had the right algorithm. Back in 1998, Google's PageRank was an innovative algorithm that calculated relevance based on counting backlinks instead of parsing the word counts in embedded HTML text like other search engines. This made Google way better than any other available search engine back then (Lycos, Yahoo, AltaVista, etc.), and within weeks, everyone was switching to G…

> A successful Google competitor just needs to be way better than what’s currently available. Nobody seems to have the next big idea for a better search engine yet.

I would speculate that Apple could roll their own search engine using Siri.

We'll see what happens in either WWDC or in a few years, but it seems to be quite early for that and certainly have a long way to go.

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

#139

Post by marcosdumay »

blowski wrote: post #118
b112 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you target the spam business model, it won't route around it.

But yeah, a healthy set of search engines will get us better results.

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

#140

Post by AlbertCory »

mynameisash wrote: post #74
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.

This was my experience last year when I wanted to find a locksmith. EVERY result on GMaps that was shown as being in my city was, in fact, some centralized company that seemed to contract out to guys working out of their cars. Every one took my name and said they'd get back to me (which they did). This is certainly a problem with the locksmith companies, but I think there's also a Maps problem, too: Google enables th…

This is funny for me since I was in Maps in 2010-2011, and "fake locksmith addresses" were a problem even then.
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