WebProNews

Google Aims to Square Away Relevancy

At Google's Searchology event today, the company discussed a new feature coming soon to Google Labs. It's called Google Squared and will apparently pull unstructured data right from the web and put it into spreadsheets. From the sound of it, you can search for something and receive a list of info that relates to that query.

New Google SERP Features

Google recently announced 2 new improvements to Google Search. The first is an expanded list of related searches, and the second is the addition of longer search result descriptions. The company says it's deploying a new technology that better understands associations and concepts related to searches. Google explains:

Are Brands Really the Solution to the Internet "Cesspool?"

In 2008, Eric Schmidt called the Internet a cesspool and said that brands were the way to sort it out. Popular blogger Michael Gray aka Graywolf says that big brand media sites are "the real cesspool of the Internet."

Relevancy by Race?

Murray Dick and Mark Ward have an article up at BBC News looking at Rushmore Drive and minority-based web searching. They look specifically at a search engine called RushmoreDrive, which we pointed to back in April upon its launch.

This Cesspool We Call the Internet

What Better Relevancy Can Google Come up With?

Google, already has a near infinite number of data points to compute relevancy for the active parts of the web, and is looking to gather even more user data information. The WSJ has background on the story:

Relevancy Chagnes at MSN, Yahoo, & Maybe Google

MSN Search Update MSN announced they are upgrading relevancy and coverage. The increased coverage likely means that more inbound link sources are getting indexed. From looking at rankings of a few of my sites it looks like:

Is Link Authority Dead (Dying)?

After extensive gaming, Google's algorithm (it is assumed) shifted from using the quantity of links as an indicator of source authority, to measuring the quality (reputation) of the linker in order to determine relevancy. Gamers are still there though, this time with bigger budgets, and things may be about to change again – most likely to a much more complicated game.

Google: From Direct Marketing to Branded Ads

Ad Relevancy & Quality Scores Google has again and again touted the value of their targeted marketing, but most of the fortune 500 ad dollars are not spent on targeted marketing. A couple weeks ago in a WebmasterWorld thread many advertisers complained about getting killed by another quality score update.

Confusing Search Engine Bots?

There are two primary factors to getting a page ranked - discovery and relevancy. By and large, search engines are clever creatures, but the very best webmasters will always send out the right signals to gently guide the search engines, and in return receive great rankings for their content. Search engines discover content using their bots (or ‘crawlers’), and determine relevancy (and by extension ranking) using advanced algorithms.