Well for 10 years I think the search results have only marginally gotten better. Besides, 10 years ago, what google was doing was revolutionary. No other search engine had such vast coverage or better intent determination. Now the competitionn is intense, Bing is almost as good as Google if not better in some scenarios, other guys are blekko are coming up with different approach (and have a better way to handle spam by avoiding it completely).
I think Google is spreading itself too thin. Search is what they do the best and its their bread and butter. They should stay focused on it.
Google is too engrossed in thinking about generating more ad dollars rather than making their core technology better.
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 method, automatic or based on peer reviews) out there with less spam, that's because right now only Google matters. The only way to fight it is to be a moving target, which is what Google is doing.
Unfortunately spammers are also very creative, so it's a tough battle.
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 it is to solve but the motivation. Clearly the spam generates a lot of cash for Google (and some for bing too) so they are less likely to be motivated to solve it.
Smartest of the minds are at work at Google so I find it hard to believe that they cannot solve it (or even make a very good attempt at it). It's their intent to not solve it and that's the reason I think they are trying to avoid discussing it.
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.)
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.
"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.
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.
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 ;)
I think Google is spreading itself too thin. Search is what they do the best and its their bread and butter. They should stay focused on it.
Google is too engrossed in thinking about generating more ad dollars rather than making their core technology better.