__/ [ Doc O'Leary ] on Friday 12 May 2006 20:54 \__
> In article <2763555.9OSNo8546l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> To select keywords you will be better off using:
>>
>> http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
>
> You clearly haven't done any sampling/comparison between the two. In
> truth, what Suggest offers doesn't make any real sense. For example, if
> you start with "mac " you get a number of Macintosh related completions,
> but if you chart them on Trends you see:
>
> http://www.google.com/trends?q=mac+mini%2C+mac+games%2C+mac+tools%2C+mac+
> os+x
>
> Notice that I added "mac os x" myself, and it completely dwarfs the
> things Suggest was feeding up. I have no idea what algorithm Suggest
> uses, but it clearly isn't based directly on what people are searching
> for. ... [par broken]
No, it is based on the number of results. Judging by a rather extensive
use of Google Suggest, they seem to have not updated the numbers for about
a year. These were snatched off-line at some stage and they potentially
motivated this 'sequel' from "Google Labs" (whetever this truly refers
to), which they called Google Trends. Many predicted such a service -- an
insight into Google logs with a national information breakdown (will
become controversial IMHO).
Maybe the features in Google Suggest just merely 'fell asleep', going into
hibernation and serving as a nice prototype for Google News
auto-compeltion. GoogleBar incorporates this as an experimental (thus
fragile) feature and maybe Google Toolbat likewise. I can recall something
in the press of the Google Blog about it...
[par resumed]
> ... Suggest might help you find a keyword or two you might not thought
> of (if you're willing to run through the alphabet!), but when it comes
> to actually paying for one, you'd be a fool not to plug them into Trends
> first to compare the results.
It's something I mentioned in the search engine groups yesterday. These
can easily be tweaked, SPAM'med, manipulated, subverted, SEO'd... call it
what you will, but it gives people a grip on statistics. And what about
tools that automatically query the datacentres? Like Perl scripts,
front-ends for SEO purposes and the like. This raises more questions than
it answers. Other points to ponder: are figures and chart normalised by
overall use of Google as a search engine? City's population size? National
figures? Are all (wo)men count equally?
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Computers are useless. They only solve problems"
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