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Rank Cruelty

Good Morning Silicon Valley should be announcing the winner of the GMSV Tagline Contest soon. My personal favorite entry is, "GMSV: To ignorance as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone,"¹ but I have a feeling the reference is a bit too obscure. And maybe too violent. Ah, well.

In Other News: Google has changed their ranking algorithm again, and some people have slipped a few notches. This has stirred up some trouble. (After all, if this particular gentleman isn't the number one "Dave" on Google, clearly the new algorithm is broken, QED!²)

Mark Pilgrim suggests that Google is now cross-referencing link text with text on the actual page. This change would defeat some of the more popular manipulations of Google rankings, such as Google Bombing. I'm not sure right now whether this is merely a plausible explanation, or if there is any more concrete evidence. To his credit, Pilgrim doesn't seem particularly bent out of shape that his page rank has dropped. And he does cite some examples of Google returning bad results (blank pages, broken links). If he's right, that's somewhat disconcerting. On the other hand, does anyone have a large, non-anecdotal collection of data from "before" and "after"? Oh sure, there's a lot of gnashing of teeth on the Webmasterworld forums... but I hardly think those people count as unbiased observers.³ Personally, I've run into my share of "bad" pages on Google over the years, and I can't say for certain whether the frequency has increased or decreased recently. Anyway, Pilgrim's theory about how the new algorithm works is certainly interesting, at the very least.

Before closing, I should note that I really dig Pilgrim's site. First of all, he has a really excellent web accessibility site. Second, he is that rare beast -- a web designer with a swanky all-CSS website that A) degrades naturally in older browsers and B) doesn't give you a snotty message about how you should upgrade. (Man, that last one just kills me. Who started that gawdawful trend, anyway?)

1. My second favorite: "GMSV: like a group hug without the inappropriate touching."

2. It is indeed a cold, cruel world that ranks Dave Winer lower than Dave Barry.

3. After all, those folks make their living trying to defeat Google's algorithms, and naturally they get annoyed when Google changes the rules on them. Methinks the flurry of newly-found Google errors is the result of observer bias, but what do I know?

Posted by Evan Goer on Oct. 10, 2002 at 11:19 PM