Re: Google's site ranking algorithm

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this is great fun! I found another...

http://www.google.com/search?q=canadian+markup+geek&hl=en&safe=off
---4--->
http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~gerald/big-hotlist.html


Haven't stumbled so many DanC pages though -- would've expected same
effect from the old webtech's validator.
http://www.google.com/search?q=dan gives DanC at #4. That'll learn you
to have such a common name Dan.


So Gerald, you should cut yourself a new .sig file:

Gerald Oskoboiny <[email protected]>
http://www.google.com/search?q=Gerald

(though you might want a crontab to keep an eye on what that returns...)

Dan

ps. do you do requests?


On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote:

> Google (http://www.google.com/) is by far the best web search
> engine out there: I almost always find whatever I'm looking for
> within a few seconds. Altavista and the others don't even come
> close.
>
> The main thing they're doing differently is using a site's
> popularity in the ranking of the search results. This seems like
> a fairly obvious thing to do -- I had that idea back in 1995 or
> 1996 or so. (a friend and I started a company intending to build
> an index of Canadian web sites, but it never went anywhere.)
>
> Anyway, I've been noticing from my site's referer logs that
> some of my pages are showing up near the top of all kinds of
> random Google searches; for example, it's the #1 site returned
> for "new york city photos" (or "pics"):
>
>     http://www.google.com/search?q=new+york+city+photos
>     http://www.google.com/search?q=new+york+city+pics
>
> My theory has been that since the W3C HTML validator has so many
> incoming links (tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands),
> and my personal home page is only about three clicks away from
> there, I benefit from the validator's high ranking.
>
> Today's Scripting News has a blurb that seems to confirm my
> theory:
>
>     http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backIssues/2000/08/08#theValueOfLinks
>
> > The value of links
> >
> >     Over on Inessential, they're talking about the value of links
> >     down the left edge of weblogs.
> >
> >     When I spoke with Joel yesterday, he told me that that a link in
> >     the left margin of Scripting News is worth a lot to Google. When
> >     I linked to him there he became the first hit when you search for
> >     Joel on Google. I think Susan Kitchens found the same thing
> >     when she became the authority on Lake George, NY, according
> >     to Google.
> >
> >     Then I remembered that Google rates hits based on how many
> >     places point to you, and I guess it must be recursive in some
> >     way, because Scripting News is pointed to in so many places,
> >     as Doc found out, a link from this site means more than a link
> >     from other sites.
>
> I wonder how much the ranking decays for every degree of separation
> from a highly-ranked site. Individual pages of my site are probably
> 5 or 6 clicks away from the validator, yet still seem to have a
> fairly high overall ranking. Samples:
>
>     #5 on http://www.google.com/search?q=wintv
>     #3 on http://www.google.com/search?q=bashrc
>     #6 on http://www.google.com/search?q=mailing+list+software
>     #1 on http://www.google.com/search?q=minuteman+trail
>     #1 on http://www.google.com/search?q=haircut+photos
>     #9 on http://www.google.com/search?q=olympus+d-450z+digital+camera
>     #2 on http://www.google.com/search?q=photos+of+boston
>
> This puts me in kind of a weird position of power -- I can write a
> page on any obscure topic, and anyone who searches for that word
> using Google (or Yahoo, which uses Google) will find my page.
>
> Hey, I just noticed that I'm the top result for a search for
> "Gerald", too!
>
>     http://www.google.com/search?q=Gerald
>
> | Google results 1-10 of about 937,000 for Gerald. Search took 0.04 seconds.
>
> | Gerald Oskoboiny's Home Page
> | ... Gerald Oskoboiny: International Man of Mystery Photo is me riding El...
> | ...modified: $Date: 2000/06/22 08:15:05 $ Gerald Oskoboiny,...
> | impressive.net/people/gerald/ - 4k - Cached - Similar pages
>
> Number one of 937,000 pages, how cool is that?
>
> --
> Gerald Oskoboiny <[email protected]>
> http://impressive.net/people/gerald/
>
>

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