Links can lose their value and
get rusty, even with Google

was innocently browsing the Internet this morning. By serendipity, I then arrived at a page where Google boast their contributions to Open Source software through funding (Summer of Code). It is only one example among others. But then, upon immediate inspection, merely all links turned out to be rel="nofollow"ed. SearchStatus made it evident by highlighting those links with red shades.

I have always adamantly believed that the purpose of this new class for links was different. I thought it was introduced in order to prevent and deter spam, among other things such as accommodation for microsformats (e.g. XFN). Here is the snag: If Google themselves are using rel="nofollow" to obstruct dynamicity into relevant, on-topic links, why should anyone else be hesitant to do so? rel="nofollow", a concept that was put in place by Google, is confirmed to have become something that can be misused. Its use has gone beyond the so-called ‘link condom’ (for spam) utility. Otherwise, Google demonstrate hypocrisy herein.

A9 is a fairly bloated search engine that I mentioned at least a couple of times in the past. It just struck me in the newsgroups that A9 had shifted to search results from Microsoft. For quite some time they used to be happily harvesting purely from Google, but at present, with MSN/Live.com, the results are definitely poorer, as most would expect. As a matter of fact, as an important nugget of information, Microsoft’s share among search engines sank from 14% to just 11% in the last quarter alone.

Why would A9 ever consider a change? One possibility among many is that A9′s incentive was financially motivated. Microsoft have just thrown vast amounts of money, most probably in the war against Google who promote Open Source software in their search engine results. The come to consider their highly successful use of GNU/Linux, let alone their sponsorships of Open Source projects (one example among many).

Microsoft have recently begun using the same strategy to elbow IBM, who in turn migrate businesses away from Microsoft.

number of links that reach a given site can be probed (or estimated based on crawlers) using some special syntax in queries. The universally-accepted form for the query has become link:http://example.org, where the string http://example.org can be either a domain name or an individual page that resides deeper inside the site.

Altavista seems to report the highest number of inbound links, yet not all of them are visible. In general, the overall number of results, as estimated at the very start, is always misleading. Not all results are reachable from the search engines, so a false illusion is given. In terms of saturation of results (number of links reported), then comes Yahoo and only later comes Google. MSN does not support this query syntax, yet it appears to lose popularity anyway (“MSN’s search market share dropped from 14 percent to 11 percent”).

Technorati is a good tool for finding fresh links to a given site very quickly. Links are tracked almost in real time, owing to feeds and pinging services. In that respect, Technorati is Web 2.0-oriented.

Yahoo search results for “roy” with
thumbnails (previews) added ‘on the fly’

AST year (July 2005 to be precise), I conceived a hypermedia system/Web browser wherein page previews get put adjacent to incoming/outgoing links. Such previews should serve as somewhat of a screenshot that rids the need to explore deeper. They give the surfer a shallow preview, making arrival at pages more rhetoric or unneeded. The surfer can become selective based on the appearance of the destination page.

Screenshot-type extensions turn out to exist in Opera and even in Mozilla Firefox. In fact, there are several such extensions for Firefox. One of these extensions is BetterSearch, which manipulates search engine results pages directly. Thumbnail zooming is possible too and thumbnails rely on Alexa’s thumbnails database with the caveat that only front pages are displayed, rather than the actual pages delivered to the SERP. In BetterSearch, almost a dozen search engines are supported. One has to remember and constantly bear in mind that a fast connection is required for pragmatic use. It can otherwise become an obstruction — a time-consuming obstacle

OMMERCIAL effects of search engines can no longer be ignored. Now that Google Finance has gone live, even economy is managed and supervised by major search engines (Yahoo Finance, MSN Money and Google Finance).

Various agencies and freelancers are finally offering services which promise manipulation of search results while businesses perceive search engines as a vital source of revenue. The
following recent article provides somewhat of a decent primer with special reference to the current industrial state-of-affairs.

Part science, part art, search-engine marketing is perhaps the fastest-evolving segment of the Internet. A cottage industry of search-marketing techies labors to adjust keywords to a search engine’s algorithm, the set of rules used to rank search results. The algorithm used by Google, the market leader, has hundreds to thousands of components that determine the results.

NE part of me truly loves Google — loving Google like nobody else! Google gives me plenty of referrals: about 500 for text search and over 400 for image search every day; and that’s for my main Web site alone. So how could I ever complain? It seems to respect me and treat me so well. Then again, it is akin to having an evil spouse, whose living is made in some dishonest ways. Allow me to elaborate if I may.

As many others, I sure have my Google ‘pet peeves’. I love them and dislike them at the same time, for a whole variety of reasons. Some of the more recent controversial moves, such as censorship in China and paid-for competitive ads (leading to manipulation the search results), had me think twice. I have mixed feelings, which makes me no exception. I feel betrayed sometimes. I feel as though I have been cheated on since Google is not the woman whom I married — the one who vowed to “do no evil”.

However, and despite it all, Google seems to hurt others the most. It rarely if ever punishes myself. So should I respect that ‘wife’ of mine? Or should I sympathise with others and demonstrate whenever I get the chance? I was once approached by Google regarding a job (during controversial times too), but nowadays, I do not believe like I could ever accept it. I continue to respect the Google search engine, which is doing a splendid job, technically-speaking. I am not going to embrace too stern a principle. I am about to ‘Googlefast’, as Chris Pirillo recently called it, but I just try to remain objective and fair (thus come my outbursts of criticism).

My ‘wife’ has committed her sins. One day she may face the consequences, but I will probably abide by my commitments to her and remain passive while she justifiably suffers in court. Each crime has got to bring its bitter consequences and I just hope that the mantra was not disposed of , yet.

Google can still improve. And I am not talking about their search results.

S previously mentioned, the American government seeks to invade the privacy of Internet citizens worldwide. The purpose of the subpoenas in question seems genuine, but effectivity is futile. Moreover, this boggles the mind as it serves as a precedent to privacy invasion. The only search engines to have opposed this was Google and they are facing the court nowadays, due to their resistance to violate trust with their customers.

Google was fighting a subpoena from the US Department of Justice as part of its defence of an anti child-pornography act subsequently deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The probe had originally asked for a month’s worth of search queries in anonymized form, and the URL of every website that robots from MSN Search, Yahoo!, AOL and Google trawled.

The word through the grapawine is that Google’s stance has weakened and some limited data may find its way ‘outside’.