Google’s Measure of Relevance Growing Less Relevant?
I googled Jeremiah Owyang this morning, only to discover that his old blogspot blog still comes up first in the Google search results. It only took me one extra click to find his new, self-hosted blog, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.
But then I remembered a weird problem in Google with fellow PodTech geek Robert Scoble’s blog. A quick search for Robert still brings up his ancient blog rather than his current one.
Now, I know this is nothing new. But it’s telling that more than a year after Scoble’s move from weblogs.om to wordpress.com, Google can’t bring up the most relevant result first. Inbound links are a great measure of influence and relevance, but it’s obvious that Google’s special sauce needs some further adjustments. Perhaps recency of inbound links could be weighted more heavily towards current relevance.
PS: Jeremiah, break a leg on your first day at PodTech. I know Silicon Valley isn’t Hollywood, but close enough ;-).
Technorati Tags: search engine optimization, robert scoble, jeremiah owyang, google, inbound links, relevance
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Yes, I find that quite interesting. I suspect Google is very, very friendly to Blogspot blogs (being a Google property)
My current blog has way more links to it than my previous one. Seems pretty fishy huh?
I realized on my first day of work that I have a bad case of corporatitus. (been at large corps for too long)
Don’t worry, I’m seeing a Dr, it should clear up soon. Hopefully this corporate style will be helpful to clients that I’ll be helping out!
Jeremiah: We here at the BBS are all praying for a swift and speedy recovery from your corporateitis.
“Google can’t bring up the most relevant result first.”
Aren’t you making a huge assumption about Google’s users when you suggest that the new site is the most relevant result? In fact, aren’t you allowing your own preferences to stand in for the average Google user? What if I’m writing an article aobut Scoble? Would I not be interested in a source that contains the largest amount of his writing, even if it is old? What if I want to know about Scoble and Microsoft? What if I want to know about Scoble and Dave Winer? What if I want to know what other people think of Scoble? For all of those searches, his old site would likely be the most relavant starting point.
“Google’s special sauce needs some further adjustments. Perhaps recency of inbound links could be weighted more heavily towards current relevance.”
Google started giving weight to recency 2 or 3 years ago. However, any favoring of receny increases the amount of spam in the results. Spam limits how much any company can weight toward recency. The single most effective filter against spam is time. Time allows us to know what is good and what is bad, whether we are talking about rock bands from the 1960s or weblogs from the recent past.
Lawrence: Good point about the recency. I knew that was a factor, but obviously not enough of one.
As for relevance, I’d say that a person’s most relevant blog is the place they currently write. Yes, his former blog should be top 10, but his current blog should be number 1.
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