Category Archives: seo

dear Google, I need an historical index

- simone
1

why Search engines and Google should stop following business models around people and get back to show the world as a data source with a transparent history.

Let me see a wiki-like index for each search result, let me see the sources quoted in the content on each snippet!

Google was built with data in mind, and since the algorithm was born our idea of information changed. Today data is what a multitude* says it’s worth. If there was a time yesterday when data was absolute, today it’s relative, mutable, fluid and real time. Do we know the exact people that generate a constant flux of reliable data? Much of what we consider data relies on predictions of futures that may exist only in some niches. The ecology of information should be better known, meanwhile we just give computers to our children without a proper social/emotive training, and they build constant, unverified raw content.

Some years ago we won in our newsletter software niche (when i was a SEO for Sendblaster) because my boss first understood that we had to treat SERPs from the final user perspective, we were monitoring SERP’s clic through rates three years before Google made public their involvement in the results and years before the caffeine official roll-out.

Young generations live the web and the communication medias in a instinctive way, they forget to search what’s inside the people they are speaking with. Their ethics are born on their mistakes since there is no-one that can really speak to the new generations, they grow alone and they are asked to teach what’s technology to their parents. And there is no training to understanding what’s information and what’s advertising.

Now the userbase may be fragmented among Internet trend setters and simple lurkers or even worse… categorized as marketers.

I need a transparent search engine that explains how to re-connect data to reliable data sources, a search engine that admits its responsibility while influencing economy and web development.

Those Facebook messages have some interest for marketers searching for their brand’s success, and for countless other uses, and they also contain useful data on human experiences of the world. Private profile messages may be anonymized for privacy issues, but pretending that the social network still remains private is like living in a world with no maps or pictures of public places.

Thoughts change and they are useful only with the history of those changes.

*multitude: the concept of multitude is easy, it is a person who represents a multitude of people.

Update: seems someone else got puzzled with SERP personalization.

Extended “did you mean…?” or What is wrong to know, Google?

- simone
1

Google, how will you avoid unintentional censorship?

Imagine a search engine capable to predict the real meaning of user’s queries beyond their knowledge gaps, we are not that far.

The spelling auto correction tools could be extended to let users know something that everyone else already knows, beyond the present knowledge of single users.

A search engine used as a knowledge tool, is still a search engine? Can we search something we did not imagine that exist? Google already proved that we can search for something we don’t even know the correct name yet. How deep can you go, Google?

I feel like an elastic rubber band, between my ideas of a free knowledge market and customer’s will to do some business together. Google seems to experience a similar (not yet painful) division between what Google can give for free and its ads.

This month I got more conversions from Facebook Ads than from AdWords. Maybe I’m just a poor marketer, but maybe something is changing.

Update: Maybe a lot of little numbers will give us some answers, just like a lot of lines can draw something similar to a circle, we just have to remember that approximation of reality is not reality, and approximation may change the perception itself of reality (if reality exists, of course).

At the moment the search feature is available with the operator *.
See the full list of Google Features here.

Update: it happened to me on february 7th 2011

Update: apparently i was not the only one concerned about it :-)

Update: but i still want an index history

Social Real time web is not that exciting

- simone
Reply

Dear social Analysts,

feelings are stronger than you think.

Like many others I’m now curious of why I’m spending most of my online time on social networks. Except for what I’m reading in the FeedReader, I’m experiencing a decrease of the quality of my online time. Maybe people is putting all their energy on those super boring Facebook statuses, they are so easy to comment with those useless likes or comments. My trusted friends are living their lives far from me and their need to post those elaborate and meaningful blog posts that I loved seems now ended.

Also casual online gaming is stealing a lot of my time. Plus finally I managed to have a private life and when I’m online I try to get only some stats about current projects, read+answer to emails and a lot of feedreading for my personal interests. All I need from an internet connection is now in my cellphone and I try to focus on work while on the PC.

I’m not happy with my productivity but I’m not in the need for a job so I keep alive only the minimum of my will to focus on my customer’s needs during online consulting sessions.

My offline world now speaks about what is online, the TV news are now mostly empty and distant stuff. I try to keep updated with my few real life friends, but it’s hard to meet in some physical places.

Since I completely detached from my work aspirations, 2 years ago I started focusing on how to achieve a personal life. Now that I’m having some rewarding time with my loving girlfriend, I’m digging in my experience to take out something interesting for my work future.

I know how to be a guide for myself during hard times of sacrifice, and that sacrifice now is invisible.

I’m also getting more and more philosophical during my work-time instead of being technical as I would like to be. Working on this side of the search engines is a matter of trust and it’s more about believing than knowledge.

Another fact about my personal life is that I left much of my need for work satisfaction behind while trying to get in touch with lost parts of my family, and my family is big now, and full of memories about each one of my relatives. While I’m still losing contact with a big part of my family, my online friendships are the same and very rewarding for the latest bunch of years (they are still M., Adam and Alessandro the undead) despite of that useless time on social websites.

finding information between search engines and social networks (philosophy bits)

- simone
Reply

place

where is the info stored? in a collective mind or in your friend’s mind? if you know this, you know where to start your search… but if you don’t know that… what is google doing to get to your eyes a unique place where to search for anything?

first of all google is multiplying the spaces, gmail has its own search engine, wave has its own search engine, google search do not gather info from them yet, google docs cannot search between gmail… etcetera.

is this right?

more questions: what’s special in your friend’s mind? their unique way of tagging and manipulating concepts? their life experience?

for both google has its own copies (ok ok… not identical to the real ones but man… we’re working on that). Even if we wanted a copy of our shared experiences with friends google could gather something nice, depending on our connectivity behavior .

time

it’s one of the greatest shifts between google’s on demand service and our friend’s constant streams (do we go on polling with them? or we get each single message on some kind of popup feature? (the popup feature also fits the “where” paragraph) When i’m writing facebook has the best real time feature. (update: google launches its real time search)

dispassion (neutrality)

google’s knowledge compared to our friend’s knowledge filtered by their life experience: google gives me the info to commit a perfect suicide, would a friend do the same? does google have to censor the info request if there is the proof of a bad intention?

and… when I got the info, do I still want to commit suicide? Giving the whole info could have a potential prevention ratio on bad behaviors? A search engine’s neutrality’s border is close to common people’s privacy, and privacy can be broken only at a precise user’s request or after a signed pact. Would a friend wait to see you dead before breaking into your privacy without your consent?

what?

natural language it’s just a part of the issue. do we search for info? or we search for a guide to do things? a question posted on a social network’s wall can have deep answers, just because our friends can see deeper than our first questions meanings, and they gamble a part of their involvement taking action with their words.

google is (or will be) alive. do we want him/her as a friend? do we trust/fear him/her? anyway what’s the sex of google? (lol)

half lies

our friends have ears, when we speak to them we know that it will be recorded and used somehow even against our will. google does not have ears, but every keyword typed for a search is stored and used to know more about the users. should this be more clear to people? (i mean what’s beneath that “privacy” link at the bottom of the page that only journalists and nerds read. There should be instructional flash games that must be played in order to let people know what they are using?) (update: on search engine learning)

culture

when the search engine will be able to give cross-language results? For the moment, the social network has a little solution to cultural gaps, but largely depends on the quality of each own personal network.

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