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Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)

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

#151

Post by gnramires »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #45
Workaccount2 wrote: post #24

Google search has gotten so bad compared to how it used to be that this might actually be useful.

PageRank performs fairly poorly on the web as a whole these days, because the nature of linking has changed since 1998. If you constrain it to the parts of the web that is still basically hypertext documents, it's as good as ever. That's largely what I've been doing with my search engine.

Have you considered widening the definition of 'hyperlink'? For example, using references in text as well. Or also (lightweight) sentiment analysis. For example, I'm sure many people refer to wikipedia all the time, without giving a link. Or Hacker News. This seems like it should represent a "weak link" between those pages. It would probably be worthwhile to use some kind of normalization on pages/domains to avoid spamming to game this system.

I also think it's worth exploring a simple reputation system. Why not have reputable users evaluate results? (approve/disapprove buttons) I think almost any reputation-free system will eventually fail to bots or cost a huge amount to win the tug of war against SEO. Reputation mostly solves the issue.

Speaking of reputation, I think the great insight would be to apply a ranking algorithms to reputations themselves -- if you can't trust your users, you fall back on the same problem.

To rank reputations, clearly PageRank doesn't work because it values all users equally, which is unfortunately not sybil-resistant. I think one approach is to have an "invite system", where your reputation is associated to who invited you, with earlier users having greater weight somehow (also the administrator can manually assign trustworthy users).

This also suggests a way to formulate distributed trust. You can join a "trust network" by trusting a certain user(s), and then you import users who they trust as well. (I believe this is the rough idea behind Web of Trust, although I believe WoT is not algorithmic -- it should have been!) The problem with this approach for a practical search engine is that you can't aggregate results (you would need to store each user's vote and compute a personal ranking every time) -- so I think in practice a useful compromise is to give the user a choice of a few "trust sets". You trust here? Join this trust set. You trust ? Join this other trust set. (Combining a small number of trust sets should be trivial)

As for an algorithm, something like:

-- By trusting other users, up to 100*(1-sqrt(N)/N)% [note] of your trust points will be redistributed (diminishing the impact of your choices).

[note] Obs: Formula arbitrary, chosen to approach 100%

-- The total trust conserves, and phenomena like cyclic trust are not a problem due to conservation.

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

#152

Post by ALittleLight »

NateEag wrote: post #80
subsubzero wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I strongly disagree that there's a startup opportunity in Google's relatively poor search performance. Obsessive programmers like myself really want a search engine that does better and helps us find the weird corners of the web. Most people do not care. They can type a question into Google and get an answer, and that's all they're looking for.

I think your startup plan should not be: "Step one: Displace Google Search." Instead, you find the underserved niche, people who care about quality search results (maybe in a specific domain), and you address that. As you conquer the small market you expand.

Google really does seem to be frustratingly bad these days.

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

#153

Post by rightbyte »

hajile wrote: post #143
vikingerik wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not crowd-source it? All Google needs is an obvious, one-click "spam" button for logged-in users. Clicking should add a site to the user's spam blacklist (which they should be able to review). They know about what users search for and how those searches overlap and separate users into groups (not to mention all the individual details they have access to). When sites are marked as spam by enough different types of…

It is great effort to make a high ranking spam site and trivial to destroy it for Google. It would be a winning battle.

I think that Google just don't care and are happy to be a search motor for Reddit and Wikipedia and to answer questions like "How old is Lady Gaga?".

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

#154

Post by morelisp »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #45
Workaccount2 wrote: post #24

Google search has gotten so bad compared to how it used to be that this might actually be useful.

PageRank performs fairly poorly on the web as a whole these days, because the nature of linking has changed since 1998. If you constrain it to the parts of the web that is still basically hypertext documents, it's as good as ever. That's largely what I've been doing with my search engine.

Does PageRank perform poorly because the nature of linking has changed, or has the nature of linking changed because PageRank is no longer the main arbiter of search results?

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

#155

Post by marginalia_nu »

morelisp wrote: post #154
marginalia_nu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PageRank performs fairly poorly on the web as a whole these days, because the nature of linking has changed since 1998. If you constrain it to the parts of the web that is still basically hypertext documents, it's as good as ever. That's largely what I've been doing with my search engine.

Does PageRank perform poorly because the nature of linking has changed, or has the nature of linking changed because PageRank is no longer the main arbiter of search results?

From its inception, PageRank performed well even on documents linked without PR in mind, so the latter seems unlikely.

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

#156

Post by alar44 »

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…

Not sure what the problem is here? You require that a locksmith sits in a brick and mortar store waiting for phone calls? Their tools fit in a backpack, there's literally no need for a physical location. I guess unless you're getting keys copied but any hardware store can do that.

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

#157

Post by IshKebab »

DANK_YACHT wrote: post #113
tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As I understand it it's much harder and more expensive to win a prior art claim after a patent has been granted.

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

#158

Post by LeonTheremin »

Eric Schmidt: However, our report says that it's really important for us to find a way to maintain two generations of semiconductor leadership ahead of China. Now, the history here is important. In the 1980s, we created a group called SEMATECH. We had a bunch of semiconductor manufacturing in America. Eventually that all moved to East Asia, primarily Singapore, and then South Korea and now Taiwan through TSMC. The most important chips are made in Samsung and TSMC, South Korea, and Taiwan. China has had over 30 years to plan to try to catch up. It's really difficult.

Eric Schmidt: We don't want them to catch up. We want to stay ahead. We call for all sorts of techniques to try to make sure that we rebuild a domestic semiconductor and semiconductor manufacturing facility within the United States. This is important, by the way, for our commercial industry as well as for national security for obvious reasons. By the way, chips, I'm not just referring to CPU chips, there's a whole new generation, I'll give you an example, of sensor chips that sense things. It's really important that those be built in America.

https://www.hoover.org/research/pacific-century-eric-schmidt...

What are the chips that "sense things" and that Schmidt wants so much to prevent from being available to China and any other country?

Short answer: electromagnetic sensors used to spy on everybody so Google can show them "relevant ads" and profit. You will find them embedded on your CPU, on the nearest cellphone tower's transmitter and on Starlink satellites.

Slightly longer answer: since the 1980s, Silicon Valley has used semiconductor radars to collect data about what you think (your inner speech) by means of machine learning with data extract from wireless imaging of your face and body. It has proved very convenient for them, as this enables blackmail, extortion, theft, sabotage and murder like nothing else. They can do this because they design the semiconductor used on your phone, computer, TV, car and for your telecom supplier's network equipment, which makes possible to embed silicon trojans everywhere.

Don't underestimate what machine learning can do. e.g. Study shows AI can identify self-reported race from medical images that contain no indications of race detectable by human experts.

https://news.mit.edu/2022/artificial-intelligence-predicts-p...

Also, don't underestimate the number of people Silicon Valley is willing to kill to maintain a monopoly, as you may be the next victim.

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

#159

Post by IshKebab »

b112 wrote: post #110
KptMarchewa wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What are you saying?! There was loads of SEO back in 2000 even! It brought alta vista to its knees, the number one search engine of the day. Google got started, grew, because it filtered all that SEO spammy junk. Do you have specific stats to back this up? Number of SEO pages vs good ones? Or are you just presuming?

You're both right. There was loads back then but there was also way less than now.
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