change in Google algorithm
Official Google Blog: Finding more high-quality sites in search: "Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.
We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does."
This should keep the higher valued websites at the top of the power curve and keep those lower valued websites at the bottom. But what is Google's criteria for value: usefulness to the user. I do not think it will value personal blogs or websites worthy of its utopian web ecosystem. This is quite dictatorial of google, do you agree?. Perhaps in their view it is democratic because it knows tracks its users and it is just giving them what they want. Therefore it is locking its users into their own same pattern and making it harder for them to break out if it. In this way homeostasis is breed. A common place where inbreeding will decrease quality.
ReplyDeleteI do not understand how Google has any understanding of the quality of another site. How is quality made valid on the internet?
ReplyDeleteOr is it better that Google pins down these sites?
ReplyDeleteI'm suspicious when corporations tell us their interest is in democracy--it's a weird conception of democracy that requires a secret algorithm and tracking users.
ReplyDeleteThe way you talk about lock in here is really good--a nice extension of Lanier.
Google has an algorithm for assessing quality.
I think this may be a bit more nuanced then it seems, Google has been having big -quiet- problems with other corporations gaming the system--it seems the secret algorithm isn't so secret anymore the linked article is about JC penny, Overstock and others gaming the results. Looks like the capitalist money leeches are feeding on each other! --side note google's also been spinning a lot of counter press about how much money it's about to rake in on adds in the coming years, boy oh boy, I can't wait!
ReplyDeletehttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704150604576166390281747136.html