http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,959151,00.html The blog clog myth The row over whether webloggers are distorting Google search results is a storm in a teacup, writes Neil McIntosh Monday May 19, 2003 [...] ...some people have noticed that, for certain kinds of Google search the top references dug up by Google often come from weblogs. "Gah!" cry the searchers. "Those bloody weblogs are clogging up Google!" Among those who consider weblogs to be a mindless recycling of links and idle chatter by a vanishingly small number of net users, this is seen as a Bad Thing. Chief among those articulating this fear is Andrew Orlowski, San Francisco-based reporter for the Register, a UK-based tech news website. Recently, Orlowski has written a series of pieces accusing webloggers of distorting Google search results. A key exhibit in his case is the alleged "Googlewashing", or demotion down the Google results ranks, of one of his own stories. That story had - in turn - accused Google's search results of being heavily influenced by a tiny cabal of "big name" webloggers. It was an intriguing claim. But it was quite quickly undermined by some search engine experts, who called into question Orlowski's understanding of Google's admittedly complex technology, which works out which pages should be ranked highest in search results. Weblogs, by their nature (simple web pages with content that often relies, for context and richness, on numerous links, updated regularly) are bound to attract the attention of Google - a search that works partly by freshness, party by analysing page structure (the simpler the better) and mainly by looking at the links within those pages. Orlowski didn't let this deter him, however. Ten days ago, he wrote another story suggesting that Google was ready to fix its "blog noise problem" by removing weblogs from its main index and placing them in a specialised weblogs search. Unsurprisingly, this story sparked a huge online row, with bloggers horrified that their pages might be removed from Google proper. Others were left questioning the right of Google to decide what should be in the net's mainstream. But slowly, it is dawning that this claim is implausible too. The first big problem with the Register's claims? Google has not done anything to suggest it is going to strain out weblogs from its main index. What sparked Orlowski's second set of claims was a report from Reuters. In passing, the wire service story paraphrased Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, saying the company would soon unveil a specific weblog search. This has been expected for a couple of months. Nowhere did Schmidt, or the Reuters report, say weblogs would be removed from the main Google index. Nevertheless, this was the theme of the rest of the Register story, which was long on opinions from an unknown US undergraduate student and the chief technology officer of a Google rival, but remarkably short on comment from Google itself. It was essentially a thesis from Orlowski, based on the bald assertion that "it isn't clear if weblogs will be removed from the main search results, but precedent suggests they will be". [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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