Revolutionary at the time - but have there have been any new breakthrough strategies/algorithms for search in the last decade?
Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
21–30 of 173 posts
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#22I'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've always thought their main intentions would be topical pagerank and author pagerank. Obviously Google have made many leaps with natural language, but measuring 'intent' and inherent trust is still an unsolved one. Google+ may have solved it. I remember hearing about an "author rank" type patent.
All the same, the link graph has been truly bastardised because of it being such a prominent facet of ranking for an audience.
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#23I'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 never thought about "brand power" being a metric but that definitely makes sense. I'd be very curious to see what search results would look like if that weight was inverted (more "brand power" the lower the rank). I don't think it would be _better_ but it might make exploring lesser known bits of the internet more accessible.
Google was more cagey about Vince and brand power than they were about other updates. The popular theory was that there was some hand-picked set of "popular brand urls" and that pagerank flowing from those had more weight (beyond the already heavy weight they would have because of their link graph).
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#24Google search has gotten so bad compared to how it used to be that this might actually be useful.
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet, the results are worse and worse.
But does it make them less money?
"The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users."
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet, the results are worse and worse.
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…
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 searching for; you get what most people making a similar query would get.
It's made it harder to search for bits of poetry, quotations, or song lyrics, especially.
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#27I though PageRank rated pages based on their rank smell.
Now that the patent's expired, somebody can create a free open source implementation called PageStink.
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet, the results are worse and worse.
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…
I increasingly find that formulating queries as a proper question gives the best results. Often even in the summary on the top.
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#29They should have copyrighted it. They could have received new protections each time it was tweaked. If it's good for the Big E Mouse Corp, it should be good for the DontBeEvil types as well. Protection in perpetuity.
Re: Google's PageRank patent has expired (2019)
#30Revolutionary at the time - but have there have been any new breakthrough strategies/algorithms for search in the last decade?
yes https://youtu.be/6HYdTtIoyts
This is a video about the "21e8 index". I have never heard about that. There seem to be one scientific paper about it, by Provides Ng, "21E8: Coupling Generative Adversarial Neural Networks (GANS) with Blockchain Applications in Building Information Modelling (BIM) Systems" from 2021 which does not have any other citation. Also Google does not really provide any information on 21e8.
How is this a representative example?