Chatter blizzard! There is a flurry of commentary about Google’s change to cope with outfits that generate content to attract traffic, get a high Google ranking, and deliver information to users! You can read the Google explanation in “Finding More High-Quality Sites in Search” and learn about the tweaks. I found this passage interesting:
We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.
Google faces increasing scrutiny for its display of content from some European Web sites. In fact, one of the companies affected has filed an anti trust complain against Google. You can read about the 1PlusV matter and the legal information site EJustice at this link (at least for a while. News has a tendency to disappear these days.)
Source: http://www.mentalamusement.com/our%20store/poker/casino_accessories.htm
Why did I find this passage interesting?
Well, it seems that when Google makes a fix, some sites go up or down in the results list. Interesting because as I understand the 1PlusV issue, the site arbitrarily disappeared and then reappeared. On one hand, human intervention doesn’t work very well. And, if 1PlusV is correct, human intervention does work pretty well.
Which is it? Algorithm that adapts or a human or two doing their thing independently or as the fingers of a committee.
I don’t know. My interest in how Google indexed Web sites diminished when I realized that Google results were deteriorating over the last few years. Now my queries are fairly specialized, and most of the information I need appears in third party sources. Google’s index, for me, is useful, but it is now just another click on a series of services I must use to locate information.
via arnoldit.com