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Google 2000 vs. Google 2011

mattcutts.com

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Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011

#51

Post by epi0Bauqu »

citricsquid wrote: post #45
epi0Bauqu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I'm required to divulge information to stop you from spreading false claims? You said " they're just a prettier bing. " I have ~100K lines of code in front of me right now that has nothing to do with UI, although I think UI is tremendously important and has been a primary focus as well. Nevertheless, I've talked about all of this at length numerous times -- in videos, on HN, my blog, etc. Bottom line though is you…

False claims? It's what you've said[1][2], albeit a long time ago, but because I can't find any up to date information that you've published (care to link to it?) I can't suddenly know something else. You're not required to do anything, you can tell me to piss off if you like, but if you want people to claim things and for them to be factually accurate you should publish this information, and if you have then please…

Yes, false claims. You claimed that "DDG just uses the bing API" to get results. That is false, and I don't remember ever saying that anywhere because it is false.

Those two posts do not say otherwise. They mention that we use BOSS, which is of course true. The distinction is that we do not just use BOSS by any means.

I actually started out crawling the Web before BOSS even existed, and still crawl quite a lot. As for recent info, look no farther than the DDG FAQ, or my HN comments. This is from just 3 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2184873

Note: no one was requiring you to make any claims, false or otherwise. So I still don't get why I need to divulge information to stop you from making false claims.

Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011

#52

Post by Matt_Cutts »

eitland wrote: post #18
tibbon wrote: post #12

I don't get people who say Google is getting worse myself. If any of you know search engine building so well and aren't working for another search engine (like DuckDuckGo) why not take your expertise to Google and help fix the problem?

Please take a look in earlier threads. Google doesn't even listen to patio11 before he writes a blog post that reaches #1 on HN.

Actually, I passed patio11's blog post around widely within Google. Feedback like that is welcome because it prompts us to think about what we need to do better.

Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011

#53

Post by WalterGR »

barista wrote: post #50
bad_user wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bing is almost as good as Google It's easier to be a follower (or ahem, copy search results). Also if I'm going to switch away from Google it must be something truly better (like the difference I experienced when trying out Google after using Altavista). and have a better way to handle spam by avoiding it completely I like Blekko, but avoiding spam is an impossible dream. If there are search engines (or any filtering…

Re: bing copying Google, it has already been profusely discussed all over the internet and has been shown as nothing more than a PR stunt by Google folks to avoid discussing spam Re: fighting spam, its a tough problem indeed but so was indexing the ever expanding web. Both Bing and Google seem to have solved the indexing problem fairly well by now. The issue with the the spam problem is not so much of how difficult i…

Re: bing copying Google, it has already been profusely discussed all over the internet and has been shown as nothing more than a PR stunt by Google folks to avoid discussing spam

I'm assuming the downvotes are because of that part.

I keep seeing the argument that "Microsoft didn't answer all of Google's claims," but no supporting evidence. If anyone has some, I'd be curious to see it. (This is a legitimate request: I haven't been keeping score.)

Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011

#54

Post by Matt_Cutts »

ilamont wrote: post #41

There weren't any content farms in 2000, and SEO wasn't as sophisticated. Now both are quite pervasive, and having a marked impact on the qualitative assessments of Google search results. On the quantitative side, Cutts has recently claimed: ... according to the evaluation metrics that we’ve refined over more than a decade, Google’s search quality is better than it has ever been in terms of relevance, freshness and c…

Good question. We've talked about evaluation a little bit before, e.g. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/search-evaluation-at-...

When we evaluate our quality or a new algorithmic change, URLs can be rated as useful, navigational, etc. They can also be rated as spam. Useful/navigational sites URLs have higher scores, while a spam rating subtracts from the score. If an algorithm change tends to rank higher-rated URLs higher, that's good. If spam tends to rise in the rankings, that's bad.

What our metrics tell us is that Google has gotten better in overall search quality in the last few months, despite also seeing an increase in spam. It's safe to say that now we're putting a lot of effort into the spam side of things to get that back down to the levels we want.

Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011

#55

Post by Matt_Cutts »

WalterGR wrote: post #53
barista wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: bing copying Google, it has already been profusely discussed all over the internet and has been shown as nothing more than a PR stunt by Google folks to avoid discussing spam Re: fighting spam, its a tough problem indeed but so was indexing the ever expanding web. Both Bing and Google seem to have solved the indexing problem fairly well by now. The issue with the the spam problem is not so much of how difficult i…

Re: bing copying Google, it has already been profusely discussed all over the internet and has been shown as nothing more than a PR stunt by Google folks to avoid discussing spam I'm assuming the downvotes are because of that part. I keep seeing the argument that "Microsoft didn't answer all of Google's claims," but no supporting evidence. If anyone has some, I'd be curious to see it. (This is a legitimate request: I…

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll try to summarize. Google believed that queries and clicks on Google search results were being used in Bing's ranking, so we ran an experiment. The experiment confirmed that clicks on Google search results are used by Microsoft in Bing's search rankings.

Things we don't know include:

- the degree to which those clicks are used in Bing's rankings.

- whether MSFT does Google-specific processing of the clickstream data they get, or whether clicks on Google are treated the same as some-random-website.com.

- how long clicks on Google search results have been used in Bing's ranking (months, years, etc.).

Those are open questions that Microsoft could best answer.

Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011

#56

Post by WalterGR »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #55
WalterGR wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: bing copying Google, it has already been profusely discussed all over the internet and has been shown as nothing more than a PR stunt by Google folks to avoid discussing spam I'm assuming the downvotes are because of that part. I keep seeing the argument that "Microsoft didn't answer all of Google's claims," but no supporting evidence. If anyone has some, I'd be curious to see it. (This is a legitimate request: I…

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll try to summarize. Google believed that queries and clicks on Google search results were being used in Bing's ranking, so we ran an experiment. The experiment confirmed that clicks on Google search results are used by Microsoft in Bing's search rankings. Things we don't know include: - the degree to which those clicks are used in Bing's rankings. - whether MSFT does Google-spe…

Thanks for the reply, Matt.

Google believed that queries and clicks on Google search results were being used in Bing's ranking

I thought it was the search results that Google accused Microsoft of stealing. I guess I need to go refresh my memory.

Things we don't know include...

Good summary, thanks. I don't guess anyone is very surprised that Microsoft isn't quick to offer up how it treats a single data stream.

Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011

#57

Post by Matt_Cutts »

WalterGR wrote: post #56
Matt_Cutts wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll try to summarize. Google believed that queries and clicks on Google search results were being used in Bing's ranking, so we ran an experiment. The experiment confirmed that clicks on Google search results are used by Microsoft in Bing's search rankings. Things we don't know include: - the degree to which those clicks are used in Bing's rankings. - whether MSFT does Google-spe…

Thanks for the reply, Matt. Google believed that queries and clicks on Google search results were being used in Bing's ranking I thought it was the search results that Google accused Microsoft of stealing. I guess I need to go refresh my memory. Things we don't know include... Good summary, thanks. I don't guess anyone is very surprised that Microsoft isn't quick to offer up how it treats a single data stream.

"I thought it was the search results that Google accused Microsoft of stealing."

I'm trying to use very precise/neutral language to avoid the "copying/cheating" brouhaha. The crux of the issue is that clicks on Google search results are used in Bing's search rankings.

Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011

#58

Post by barista »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #55
WalterGR wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: bing copying Google, it has already been profusely discussed all over the internet and has been shown as nothing more than a PR stunt by Google folks to avoid discussing spam I'm assuming the downvotes are because of that part. I keep seeing the argument that "Microsoft didn't answer all of Google's claims," but no supporting evidence. If anyone has some, I'd be curious to see it. (This is a legitimate request: I…

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I'll try to summarize. Google believed that queries and clicks on Google search results were being used in Bing's ranking, so we ran an experiment. The experiment confirmed that clicks on Google search results are used by Microsoft in Bing's search rankings. Things we don't know include: - the degree to which those clicks are used in Bing's rankings. - whether MSFT does Google-spe…

Really glad to see you reply here Matt. Never expected it. Kudos!

I think Microsoft did acknowledge using clickstream data as one of the 1000 signals for their relevance ranking. Now regarding the degree to which they are used, I don't have any internal knowledge of either MSFT or GOOG but from my understanding of how search works, words like "hiybbprqag" couldn't have existed in MSFT's index to return any results. So the only signal that could possibly contribute to the ranking of "hiybbprqag" was the clickstreamm data that was generated by GOOG sting operation. So at least for that query term it must have been a big deciding factor. For the popular query terms, I doubt it's that high. I use both bing and google fairly regulalrly and I can tell that for most typical queries, bing results are comparable to Google but for the tail queries, google does a better job. If they were giving any special weight to google click data then they would have done it for tail queries (which they apparently cannot do as well as google) to improve their relevance there.

Regarding Google specific processing, again bulk of the search activity in US happens in GOOG, so I can imagine a lot of search click data is generated on google.

As for the time, I am not sure why that even matters. From my usage of bing and google over past few months, bing has been consistent in the behaviour. If this was a sudden change, I'd have seen a jusp in bing quality overnight. Don't remember seeing that.

Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011

#59

Post by polymind »

citricsquid wrote: post #29
tibbon wrote: post #12

I don't get people who say Google is getting worse myself. If any of you know search engine building so well and aren't working for another search engine (like DuckDuckGo) why not take your expertise to Google and help fix the problem?

FYI DDG just uses the bing API and then does some fancy stuff on top of it, so technically they're not a "better search engine" they're just a prettier bing.

Your claim that DDG uses bing API is like claiming how perfectly you know the back of your hand. You can only talk when you know some facts. And that facts can be acquired only when you work in that company.And please distinguish between fact and opinion. And your claim doesn't make any sense when the founder himself is claiming thats not true.

Re: Google 2000 vs. Google 2011

#60

Post by bad_user »

barista wrote: post #50
bad_user wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bing is almost as good as Google It's easier to be a follower (or ahem, copy search results). Also if I'm going to switch away from Google it must be something truly better (like the difference I experienced when trying out Google after using Altavista). and have a better way to handle spam by avoiding it completely I like Blekko, but avoiding spam is an impossible dream. If there are search engines (or any filtering…

Re: bing copying Google, it has already been profusely discussed all over the internet and has been shown as nothing more than a PR stunt by Google folks to avoid discussing spam Re: fighting spam, its a tough problem indeed but so was indexing the ever expanding web. Both Bing and Google seem to have solved the indexing problem fairly well by now. The issue with the the spam problem is not so much of how difficult i…

       Smartest of the minds are at work at Google 
       so I find it hard to believe that they cannot solve it
It is true that they may have an incentive to not solve it.

On the other hand, this is not the same as fighting email spam. If Google were to ban content farms, since they are so popular they could be hit with a lawsuit faster than you could say "ehow".

Sure, Blekko can do it, but "Blekko what?" if you know what I mean.

Also, since I'm speaking about content farms: lots of people read junk like that, including me from time to time when I can't find something better for my search. So "spam" lately is kind of relative to each demographic.

As I said: spammers are very creative and innovate a lot ;)

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