2nd place goes to Google for ‘Race You There’
Google found it 7 days later.? Not nearly as fast as MSN.? Yahoo! is still searching for both.
Spammy BMWs
Well, Matt Cutts, has announced to the SEM/SEO world that Google is going to start cracking down on foreign language spam.
He announced in his blog that www.bmw.de has been removed from their index for serving up different content to the spider from the content that is served up to the surfer. There is a screen shot of this in his posting.
This is fairly significant and really speaks to how Google views the world. You see it is OK to hate Google and tell the world about it. Google will be happy to put you in their index providing you don’t spam. Think I’m joking - no, I am not - check out this post from Matt. Look for the ‘f’ word.
Don’t get me wrong I understand why Google de-listed bmw.de - but who will this look worse for? BMW or Google. Well, I can guarantee there are some people over at BMW saying “I told you so.” You see, image is hugely important companies like BMW. So every piece of screen real estate goes towards that image. They don’t want to give any of that space to SEO. Yet, the higher ups will get annoyed they don’t show up for some KWs… so they put the pressure on the lower downs… and presto you’ve got the spam Matt pointed out. BTW - you could serve up the home page in flash and redirect anything without a flash browser to a non-flash version of the page. AFAIK this is safe thing to do.
So the question - who does this affect? Google or BMW? Would a user of Google looking for car information from BMW in Germany be seriously confused if Google didn’t return any results from bmw.de? Likely they would. You see - there is a certain expectation of all sites to be in the index. And it is 100% expected for important large sites to be in. Take the whitehouse.gov. Could you imagine if they spammed and Google delisted them? What would happen if someone arrived at whitehouse.gov and then did a site search for George Bush from the tool bar? Would the user go “ah, naughty whitehouse, they must’ve been spamming and got the boot!” Um, not likely unless they are an SEO. They would assume Google was messed up.
And so too might someone think Google was messed up if someone does a site search for BMW at bmw.de (right now there are no results).
Um, Google are you messed up?
Smart Viruses
There is a new virus spreading that stands out on two points:
1) The e-mail is well written
2) And for any website owner/operator it kind of makes sense
Hello,
I noticed whilst browsing your site that there were problems with some of your links, when I tried again with Internet Explorer the problems were not there so I assume that they were caused by me using the Mozilla browser.
As more people are turning to alternative browsers now it may be of help for you to know this. I have enclosed a screen capture of the problem so your team can get it fixed if you deem it an issue.
Kind regards,
David Adams
Dept. ResearchThis communication contains information which is confidential and may also be privileged. It is for the exclusive use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient(s) please note that any form of distribution, copying or use of this communication or the information in it is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error please return it to the sende
2nd place goes to MSN
MSN found the Costa Rica plant 4 days later (96 hours)
Yahoo! is still looking.
So Yahoo! and MSN are still looking… lets start another race
I’ve created a page on this blog called - race you there - same concept as my Costa Rica race.
The difference is the string is not on the home page. So I do expect it to take longer for each of the engines to find it.
This will be interesting. I still predict Google in 1st place.
The Island
I watched The Island last night.? In the film the duo had to use an information booth.? The booth was powered by MSN Search!
Gee, MSN, are you the future?
I find this interesting because Microsoft is still trying to buy market share.? Would they do better if they had spent those dollars on product development?? This is the striking difference between Google and MSN.? Google earns it.? MSN buys it.
BTW ? MSN is still searching for my plant. So is Yahoo!
First place goes to Google
I noticed Google returning my obsucre KW phrase in 48 hours and 31 mins after I posted it.
Wow!
Think about it. I run an obsurce blog that has no PR… how did Google pull that off?
It will be interesting to see how long it takes MSN and Yahoo! to catch it.
I had an idea - lets see who is first to find…
In this mornings post I planted costa rica 849-674-2415 to see how long it would take Google to find it.
Why not let Yahoo! and MSN play along too?
Here’s the links:
This is going to be a race. Lets see who gets to it first. I’ll check frequently and will post updates.
The Perfect Search
As I fell asleep last night I started to dream what the perfect search might be like. I also envisioned sitting in front of Sergey, Larry, and Eric with my laptop which contained the perfect search tool.
My dream went like this.
In my presentation I told the trio that I had the perfect search ability in my laptop. My search was in fact a search personality that was equivalent to a PHD with substantial experience in any field I happened to be searching about. My ??searcher? could also answer my question in 0.001 seconds. The answer he would give me would be equivalent as if I had hired a real life researcher with a PHD in that field to spend any amount of time to get that answer for me. The answer might be the work of 10 years worth of research. Yet, my ??searcher? on my laptop could churn out the same answer within 0.001 seconds.
My searcher could also understand natural language. And customize the results to my query. For example I might ask a question like this:
Query: ??Show me all flights inbound for LAX?
Results: Opens a digital globe of the earth with plane icons scatter around showing me the real time position.
Reality ? this is possible with Google Earth and a layer.
Query: ??What is the size of my lot??
Result: Your lot measures 120 meters on the north side, 115 meters on the west side, 80 meters on the east side, and 90 meters on the south side. The lot is .5 acres in size. Would you like to know more about your lot?
The above example assumes a lot of things. One ? when you say lot, the searcher has to know you are talking about the lot your house sits on. Two ? it has to have access to dimensional information. Three ? it has to be able to draw conclusions from things that are not already given.
Lets try another:
Query: ??When do my parents go on their trip??
Result: They leave tomorrow from LAX at 10:45 AM on American Airlines flight #141 scheduled to arrive in Liberia, Costa Rica at 5:55 PM local time. They have seat assignments 14 F and 14 E. Do you want to know more about their holiday?
Um, is that too much information? My parents would want me to know these things regardless. Every trip they go on I get a complete itinerary of what where and who. So, it is clearly OK for me to know this. Would they be OK if I could get that information from a few key strokes?
In a sense, if my parents maintained a travel blog, I probably could get all of that information today if they posted it on their blog and Google knew how to get that information for me. If that information was available though, currently I would have to ask my question in a very different way. I might know they are going to Costa Rica but little else. So I could search my mom?s phone number, because that is on the blog, and Costa Rica. I know from experience if Google has crawled the page Google should return it as the first result.
As an experiment. Lets put a made up cell phone number here. Then we will search Google daily until this blog is returned for ??Costa Rica? plus the cell phone number. Ok ? the cell is 849-674-2415. I just Googled that and there are no results for 849-674-2415.? This is the search term: [costa rica 849-674-2415] currently no results.
To sum it up. A perfect search would be made up several things, but to me the most key are:
1) Understand my questions as I intended it to be understood
2) Be able to find any and all information
3) Be able to draw conclusions based on the information available.
Does all of this seem far fetched? Maybe today. But Google is seeking engineers interested in AI.