Testing Google's New Algorithm: It Really Is Better

theatlantic.com

55 points·domino··5 comments

Why didn't the author test with more queries?

This doesn't sound very professional.

Agree. I've worked on search for about 10 years. One of the most frustrating things is that no matter what your view point you can always find one or two queries to justify it. Individual queries can be a useful debugging tool, but it's no way to try to assess general search quality. That can only be done by looking at user behaviour over a huge sample set (and over time).

I think the best thing about this story is that a Juggernaut like Google can be convinced to review and update their core business as a result of a bunch of hubub in the blogosphere. It's great that they are listening.

Have you not noticed google's market share declining?

It's not the blogosphere, it's their duty to shareholders.

We do indeed see less MFA-like sites with no content value but I find new behaviors annoying.

Google places results attempt to outrank online business directories results who are omnipresent in many local business search phrases but often also prevent legitimate business from ranking well on the first page, sometimes even from ranking on the first page -- now search results can be replaced by Google's content leaving the first page with only few web page URLs.

Amongst other things Google is being more permissive on how they display content and begin to rely on their own data to provide search with informations.

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