Search engine optimization (SEO)

Discussion of techniques in search engine optimization (SEO). Related subjects include:

April 30, 2007

Wise Crowds of Long-Tailed Ants, or something like that

Baynote sells a recommendation engine whose motto appears to be “popularity implies accuracy.” While that leads to some interesting technological ideas (below), Baynote carries that principle to an unfortunate extreme in its marketing, which is jam-packed with inaccurate buzzspeak. While most of that is focused on a few trendy meme-oriented books, the low point of my briefing today was the probably the insistence against pushback that “95%” of Google’s results depend on “PageRank.” (I think what Baynote really meant is “all off-page factors combined,” but anyhow I sure didn’t get the sense that accuracy was an important metric for them in setting their briefing strategy. And by the way, one reason I repeat the company’s name rather than referring to Baynote by a pronoun is that on-page factors DO matter in search engine rankings.)

That said, here’s the essence of Baynote’s story, as best I could figure it out. Read more

February 6, 2007

Fact and Fiction: DMOZ and the ODP

I shall explain. Read more

January 30, 2007

A great new (to me) phrase – “Adversarial Information Retrieval”

I’ve just discovered a great new phrase – adversarial information retrieval. It’s not really new, since papers are now being accepted for what will be the third annual conference on the subject. But it seems to have gained currency over the past few months.

Edit: The term seems to have been coined in 2000.

I think this area is really where the bulk of the research into public search engine algorithms goes. And that’s another way of saying that web and enterprise search are very different things.

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