MyBlogLog - William Slawski : New with me

William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:34:13 -0800

How a Search Engine Might Distinguish Between Queries from Bots and from Humans
Hi RG, There is value to having APIs, not only for people interested in the data, but also for the search engines themselves. Yahoo Boss is definitely a good example of how an API can spur innovation, and provide tools that make search better. The...
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William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:28:37 -0800

How a Search Engine Might Distinguish Between Queries from Bots and from Humans
Hi Chris, I've seen CAPTCHA tests after doing a number of manual queries for thins like "allintitle:" searches, but haven't been blocked. I also understand the desire to try to understand why some results are shown where they are, and when and why...
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William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:23:28 -0800

How a Search Engine Might Distinguish Between Queries from Bots and from Humans
Hi Polly, There is a lot of information worth looking at in analytics that can produce some interesting ideas for topics to write about, content to change, and so on. Also, some of the search data that we see just by looking at search results (whether...
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William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:19:27 -0800

How Search Engines May Rank User Generated Content
Hi Frank, It's interesting that this patent filing broke ranking down into multiple components - document goodness, author rank, and location rank. Your questions raise some very interesting questions - how much value should be given to documents...
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William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:09:52 -0800

How Search Engines May Rank User Generated Content
Hi HP, I've seen some very useful User Generated Content in some places - for instance, reviews of books at Amazon have often been helpful to me. I think one of the things this patent filing mentions that is useful to keep in mind is that the process...
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William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:05:54 -0800

How Search Engines May Rank User Generated Content
Hi RG, Microformats are interesting when it comes to User Generated Content. We have heard from some of the search engines that they are interested in exploring how those can be used in places like reviews - Google mentioned that during their...
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William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:02:52 -0800

How Search Engines May Rank User Generated Content
Hi Abhijit, Thank you. I'll have to spend some time with TipTop. It does look interesting.
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 21:01:00 -0800

How Search Engines May Rank User Generated Content
Hi Dan, Thank you. I thought it was interesting seeing this approach from Yahoo, which does involve a different way of thinking about and ranking user generated content. I do believe that an element of quality will play a role in rankings, rather...
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William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:37:45 -0800

Microsoft Bing, with Powerset Inside
Hi Dave, It doesn't hurt paying attention to what the different search engines are doing, and whether they are delivering visitors to your pages who are interested in what you have to offer. I'm not convinced that spending $100 million on TV ads is...
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:32:20 -0800

Duplicate Content Issues and Search Engines
Hi Jeremy, A couple of things to keep in mind regarding a home page is that: 1) Search engines can pretty much deliver a visitor to any page on a site, so I think there's value in providing something important to visitors on any page they might...
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:23:44 -0800

Google’s New Review Search Option and Sentiment Analysis
Hi Peter, I do like the review approach - it does give us a different view of pages that we might find on the Web. I'm not completely convinced that the other search engines are standing still, but it is fun looking for the changes, and comparing...
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William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:21:21 -0800

Search Experiment Papers from Google’s Mad Scientists
Hi SJL Web Design, It always pays to keep your eyes open when you search. You never know when you might see something that one of the search engines is doing something different.
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:19:27 -0800

10 SEO Questions
Hi Adrian, I think that sometimes people disvalued the importance of using the right words on their yellow page ads in the past, but I do agree with you that there is some confusion moving from the world of telephone directories to online...
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:16:25 -0800

Google Trust Rank Patent Granted
Hi Rhys, You're welcome. I think that's a good approach. What else seems to be important here is to be seen as a reputable expert on the topics that you write about, whether you are the author of a post or page or article or annotation.
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:21:34 -0800

10 SEO Questions
Hi Michael, I know a few designers who understand how to make a site search engine friendly and who recognize that SEO is a form of marketing. But if you look around the web for a while, I think it's easy to see that those designers are a minority. ...
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William Slawski posted a comment

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:33:40 -0800

How Search Engines May Rank User Generated Content
Hi John, The attributes that the patent filing tells us about look like they would probably work best with message boards, forums, and news groups, but usually a patent application provides enough detail to give a sense of what it does, without...
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William Slawski posted a comment

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:23:32 -0800

How Search Engines May Rank User Generated Content
Hi Michael, I agree with you that it may be possible for people to generate user-content that might impact rankings, but that there are likely filters set in place to try to stop that kind of activity. We aren't given too much detail in this patent...
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:21:04 -0800

How Search Engines May Rank User Generated Content
Hi Mike, Thanks. There's an incredible amount of UCG on the Web, and I would guess that only a very small percentage of it could be attributed to marketers. There are so many forums that have so little to do with marketing, and so much to do with...
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:12:45 -0800

How Search Engines May Rank User Generated Content
Hi Michael, Good point. These are a slightly different set of signals than we are used to seeing when it comes to ranking content. I'm not sure that all of the attributes are appropriate to some of the different types of UGC that we see online, or...
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:09:26 -0800

Google Trust Rank Patent Granted
Hi Clayton, I think the search engines have no choice but to change with the evolution of the Web. There are more sites than ever that offer user reviews and annotations and other interactions with web sites, and with social networks.
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William Slawski posted a comment

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:06:45 -0800

Test your Blog
Hi Mark, You're welcome. I think sites that have been working on preparing their sites for mobile devices are a step ahead of the crowd. It's a good place to be. I agree with you on broken links, especially on old blog posts. It's worth spending...
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:07:08 -0800

How a Search Engine might Adjust Rankings based upon Patterns in Query and Click Logs
Hi Answer Blip, I do like that this process looks beyond what it finds on pages upon the Web to data it collects about how people use the search engine, and the pages that they choose. You're right that sites that are optimized better may end up...
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:01:36 -0800

How a Search Engine might Adjust Rankings based upon Patterns in Query and Click Logs
Hi Clay, I don't think that this process is aimed at adjusting search results to limit traffic to certain specific sites, but rather to try to understand the context of searches based upon patterns that might be perceived in large numbers of search...
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:59:27 -0800

How a Search Engine might Adjust Rankings based upon Patterns in Query and Click Logs
Hi Arnie, Yes, I agree. This isn't a ranking method by itself, but rather an adjusting of rankings for some pages when Google might find some kind of search pattern involving query sessions and decisions to click on pages during those sessions. We...
submitted by William Slawski

William Slawski posted a comment

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:55:06 -0800

How a Search Engine might Adjust Rankings based upon Patterns in Query and Click Logs
Hi Fabio, Both of the theories in the icrossing article do mention the search engine considering information found in query refinements and in which pages people click in response to theories, so there definitely appears to be some overlap. What...
submitted by William Slawski