72 replies to this topic

[projectphp]

...PageRank is used to measure importance and that it is used in conjunction with other ranking factors... Google doesn't use (PageRank) to rank search results...

Huh? Now, I know I have terrible hayfever at the moment, that I just woke up and I am not a Monday person by any stretch, nor indeed a moining person, but can you run that by me again?

PageRank is used to measure importance, but isn't used to rank search results. Ok, getting more confused. So, they use PageRank to measure importance, but importance is not part of how they rank search results? Nope, still not working! Or is it that the ranking of search results isn't an issue of importance? Worse!

So why do they measure importance then?

Still not getting it.

Can you perhaps explain to me what you meant by that? Seems to me that you are using absolutes when you mean to using comparitives. Seems to me a bit like saying "Milk isn't a part of a Pizza. It is used in cheese. Milk has no role in pizza". But without milk, no, as wallace says, cheeeeeeeeeeese, ergo no pizza. Good for the lactose intolerant, bad for flavour

Please explain this to me, as I am truly confused, and in danger of sufferring a metaphysical breakdown of Red Dwarf proportions. What do you mean there is no silicon heaven? Where do all the calculators go?

Edited by projectphp, 06 November 2005 - 08:52 PM.

[chompy]

projectphp: I'm not sure, but I think what he meant was the results aren't SORTED according to PR, like what they do in Google Directory..

[cheethebee]

Hi,

Running a link building strategy really needs to run like a campaign. Where you assess ROI, measure direct traffic, and improvement in ranking due to link building over a set period of time. Assess trends in rankings, traffic and sales and try to isolate the results where possible.

For my industry - travel, that proposition for a link at $120/month would be profitable, but we would only incorporate part of an overall linking building campaign of both unpaid and paid links.

It is worthing test ideas out, but you must be prepared to measure and track the results.

Cheers,

Chee.

[Michael Martinez]

Huh? Now, I know I have terrible hayfever at the moment, that I just woke up and I am not a Monday person by any stretch, nor indeed a moining person, but can you run that by me again?

http://www.google.co...bmasters/4.html

Google's order of results is automatically determined by more than 100 factors, including our PageRank algorithm. Please check out our Technology Overview page for more details. Due to the nature of our business and our interest in protecting the integrity of our search results, we limit the information we make available to the public about our ranking system.

Emphasis is mine. PageRank is one of "more than 100 factors". It is not the only factor. Nor do they say it is the most important factor. The third question on that page looks at it from another angle:

3. My pages don't return for certain keywords.

Google does not manually assign keywords to sites, nor do we manually "boost" the rankings of any site. The ranking process is completely automated and takes into account more than 100 factors to determine the relevance of each result.

Again, emphasis is mine. Here, they specifically talk about "relevance".

Hence, Google ranks by "relevance", and not by "importance".

So why do they measure importance then?

Because they feel it is worth measuring in itself.

[Robert813]

http://www.google.co...bmasters/4.html
Emphasis is mine.  PageRank is one of "more than 100 factors".  It is not the only factor.  Nor do they say it is the most important factor. 

Nor do they specify Michael, that all factors are equal. Nor do they specify that PR is one of the least weighted factors. We all recognize that there are 100 factors but there is the chance that it could be more heavily weighted than you give it credit for especially since they state that it is the heart of their software and that it remains the basis for all of their search results. Are we to assume that they are deceitful in that statement? Deliberately running a campaign of mis-information to throw all SEO's of track? I think not!

Edited by Robert813, 07 November 2005 - 11:37 AM.

[torka]

Are we to assume that they are deceitful in that statement? Deliberately running a campaign of mis-information to throw all SEO's of track? I think not!

Why not?

--Torka

[Robert813]

Why not?

--Torka

Because this multi-billion dollar, hugely successful, publicly traded company, was founded around the idea of PageRank. I find it hard to believe that a premier idea, that an entire company was founded on, simply diminished in importance so quickly. I would find it highly improbable that PR was not more heavily weighted than many SEO's on this forum give it credit for. I'm not saying PR is the end all, be all factor though.

Because I find it hard to believe that a that a responsible. "publicly traded" company, would put anything in writing that was deliberately deceitful or part of a mis-information campaign Torka...that is for the conspiracy theorist of which I am not and never have been one.

[torka]

You're saying that publicly traded companies have never said one thing and done another?

I'm not talking "conspiracy theory" stuff here. I've spent over a quarter of a century in business, mostly working with major corporations -- including some of the largest in the world -- almost all publicly traded, and including quite a few in highly regulated industries. It is certainly not outside the realm of possibility that a company will make certain public statements that do not in every respect conform with their current mode of operation, or their plans and intentions, in order to gain some business advantage over the competition. I have witnessed it first hand.

If Google can send the algo-chasing SEOs off on the wrong tack, why would they not? They've never particularly been shy about saying that they'd rather not have people trying to "game" the results. If even a few people get distracted into focusing over there on the nice, shiny PR -- while the real action is happening over here (where-ever "here" might be) -- then I would bet they'd think that was all to the good.

It's called strategic misdirection, and it's part of the stock in trade of sleight-of-hand artists and corporate spokespersons the world over.

And from what I've seen, the tactic has worked like gangbusters for Google.

This is a far cry from Enron-style lying about financial results or business affiliations, and has no implications of which I am aware from a legal standpoint, so I'm not sure why you would think that Google being "publicly traded" would make any difference. Publicly-traded corporations are under no more obligation to give away their business secrets than any other company.

If people want to read more into what Google has said, and make assumptions (one way or the other) beyond the actual physical words on the page) that's their business, and certainly nothing over which Google has any control.

In this case, we're talking about a proprietary algorithm that's probably guarded more closely than the forumula for Coca-Cola. Google is under no obligation to reveal anything about how they calculate rankings to anybody, much less the general public, and any "revelations" they give to the SEO community -- or any "revelations" that members of the SEO community believe they have managed to discern between the lines of what Google has actually said -- must be taken with a grain of salt, IMHO.

If people want to believe that PR is highly important, or if they want to believe that PR is irrelevant, either way it's simply an assumption that they've made and should be treated as such. They may have very good reasons for making that assumption, but it's no less an assumption -- and not necessarily any more useful or valuable an assumption -- than anything else any other person outside a handful of folks in the Googleplex can say about Google's algo.

--Torka

[Robert813]

Good response Torka.

If I could rephrase a sentence from my previous post it would be
" Because I find it hard to believe that a that a responsible, publicly traded" company, would put anything in writing that was deliberately deceitful or part of a mis-information campaign IF IT DIDN'T ABSOLUTELY NEED TO." It just seems that such an elaborate attempt just to throw SEO's off track is unnecessary when all Google had to do was remain silent on the issue or turn the green bar grey permanently.

Misidrection or mis-information is always used to masks the truth, to "throw" one of the real trail.
SEO's for years have been able to manipulate PR...we know that for certain, from elaborate mini-nets to link farms and it worked! So we know at one point PR had a lot of weight.

Here is a link to the original paper that larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote while at Stanford http://www-db.stanfo...rub/google.html
It bears repeating I think that PageRank is a huge part of this paper that the company was founded on. Hard to believe the concept diminsihed so greatly so fast.

in section 4.5.1 The Ranking System, they do state "We designed our ranking function so that no particular factor can have too much influence."

[Michael Martinez]

Nor do they specify Michael, that all factors are equal. Nor do they specify that PR is one of the least weighted factors.

Robert, no one at Google ever made as much about PageRank as people in the SEO industry have made it.

They never presented it as crucial to their relevance ranking algorithm.

PageRank has always, going back to the original paper (which was about the search engine, not about PageRank itself), been only one of many components, and really not a very vital one.

There are very competent, knowledgable search engineers who openly proclaim that Google never got PageRank to work in the first place. Maybe they are wrong, but if so, it's not because people in the SEO community disagree with them.

PageRank has been blown out of proportion.

[Jill]

Deliberately running a campaign of mis-information to throw all SEO's of track?

They do that all the time.

Have no idea if they've done it in regards to PageRank, but I've certainly heard them say all kinds of things at conferences that I know to be more wishful thinking than actual Google practice.

White Hat Supremist SEOs do it even more than Google!

[Robert813]

They never presented it as crucial to their relevance ranking algorithm.

What would that have to do with the seperate PR algo?

Edited by Robert813, 07 November 2005 - 03:54 PM.

[Robert813]

PageRank has always, going back to the original paper (which was about the search engine, not about PageRank itself), been only one of many components, and really not a very vital one.

Not true Michael...

"The Google search engine has two important features that help it produce high precision results. First, it makes use of the link structure of the Web to calculate a quality ranking for each web page. This ranking is called PageRank and is described in detail in [Page 98]. Second, Google utilizes link to improve search results. "

taken directly from the research paper and apparently they thought PR was very important for precision results. See section 2 http://www-db.stanfo...rub/google.html

[Michael Martinez]

They never presented it as crucial to their relevance ranking algorithm.

What would that have to do with the seperate PR algo?

PageRank has always, going back to the original paper (which was about the search engine, not about PageRank itself), been only one of many components, and really not a very vital one.

Not true Michael...

"The Google search engine has two important features that help it produce high precision results. First, it makes use of the link structure of the Web to calculate a quality ranking for each web page. This ranking is called PageRank and is described in detail in [Page 98]. Second, Google utilizes link to improve search results. "

Look again. There is nothing in that paragraph which addresses how they determine the final results.

If you look above that section, you'll see where they wrote: "... In particular, link structure [Page 98] and link text provide a lot of information for making relevance judgments and quality filtering. Google makes use of both link structure and anchor text (see Sections 2.1 and 2.2). "

So, they're throwing "anchor text" into the mix right from the start. And then there is section 2.3:

2.3 Other Features
Aside from PageRank and the use of anchor text, Google has several other features. First, it has location information for all hits and so it makes extensive use of proximity in search. Second, Google keeps track of some visual presentation details such as font size of words. Words in a larger or bolder font are weighted higher than other words. Third, full raw HTML of pages is available in a repository.

"Words in a larger or bolder font are weighted higher than other words."

Hm. Where have I pointed that out before?

So, if we are judging the quality of weight by the document's internal numbering system, PageRank is given equal weight with anchor text and bolding/large-size font usage.

They then go into extensive detail about how the search engine database is structured, so PageRank hardly constitutes a major portion of the document. But finally we get down to Section 4.5.1 (RANKING SYSTEM) where they write:

4.5.1 The Ranking System
Google maintains much more information about web documents than typical search engines. Every hitlist includes position, font, and capitalization information. Additionally, we factor in hits from anchor text and the PageRank of the document. Combining all of this information into a rank is difficult. We designed our ranking function so that no particular factor can have too much influence. First, consider the simplest case -- a single word query. In order to rank a document with a single word query, Google looks at that document's hit list for that word. Google considers each hit to be one of several different types (title, anchor, URL, plain text large font, plain text small font, ...), each of which has its own type-weight. The type-weights make up a vector indexed by type. Google counts the number of hits of each type in the hit list. Then every count is converted into a count-weight. Count-weights increase linearly with counts at first but quickly taper off so that more than a certain count will not help. We take the dot product of the vector of count-weights with the vector of type-weights to compute an IR score for the document. Finally, the IR score is combined with PageRank to give a final rank to the document.

So, here they are looking at: position, font, capitalization, anchor text, title, URL, plain text large font, plain text small font, ..., and PageRank.

But then they complicate it for multi-word queries:

For a multi-word search, the situation is more complicated. Now multiple hit lists must be scanned through at once so that hits occurring close together in a document are weighted higher than hits occurring far apart. The hits from the multiple hit lists are matched up so that nearby hits are matched together. For every matched set of hits, a proximity is computed. The proximity is based on how far apart the hits are in the document (or anchor) but is classified into 10 different value "bins" ranging from a phrase match to "not even close". Counts are computed not only for every type of hit but for every type and proximity. Every type and proximity pair has a type-prox-weight. The counts are converted into count-weights and we take the dot product of the count-weights and the type-prox-weights to compute an IR score. All of these numbers and matrices can all be displayed with the search results using a special debug mode. These displays have been very helpful in developing the ranking system.

Now we're into the importance of proximity pairs, count weights, and whatnot.

Oh, sure, PageRank is included somewhere in the mix.


They were proud of PageRank, to be sure, but it doesn't have anything to do with relevance.

[Jill]

First, it makes use of the link structure of the Web to calculate a quality ranking for each web page.

They still do this, and it is still a big factor in their algo.

I think what most of us are disputing is toolbar PageRank. i.e., the greenbar kind you see. It's a whole lot different than actual PR that most likely still does count for something.

Like that propaganda stuff we were talking about before, toolbar PR is exactly that...a nice smokescreen for what is really happening.