Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Question for Rick Archer

[I am the eternal]

On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 4:44 AM, Richard M  wrote:
> It IS a huge seismic shift really. If true, (big "if" maybe) this is
> as big a shock to us geeks as is the collapse of the banks. Both
> represent the end of hubris: On the hand that the days of borrowing
> and boom will never end, and on the other that the computer wizards of
> Google can achieve near perfect "search" given a big enough server
> farm and a clever algorithm.
>

To try to give perspective to those who think of Google as just a
software company, let's try to put the scale of Google's server farms
into perspective.  Google's server farms in the US use more
electricity than all of the TVs in the US.

RE: [FairfieldLife] Re: Question for Rick Archer

[Rick Archer]

From: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com [mailto:fairfieldl...@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of Richard M
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2008 4:45 AM
To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Question for Rick Archer

 

It may not be widely publicised - but behind the scenes Google has
been waging a vicious and bloody war against "Black Hat SEO". This
term refers to those very clever and inventive Search Engine Optimizer
experts who are forever trying to trick Google so as to get their
sites to appear high in the "organic" listings. (Rick of course is
"White hat SEO"!). They are to search engines what spammers are to email.

If it's indeed true that Google are planning to plug the weaknesses in
the algorithm with human review, then this suggests that Google could
be raising the white flag and giving in, overwhelmed by the bad guys.
A great shame. (But then the evidence for this in the article seems a
bit weak?)

My understanding is that Google's very smart and well-paid Ph.D.'s are
always doing searches, seeing what comes up, and then tweaking the algorithm
if those results don't effectively fulfill the search queries. But there are
so many web sites and so many search terms that they can't possibly manually
manipulate a significant percentage of search results. Of course, if they
can fairly block a black hat technique, that may sweep many sites off the
SERPS (search engine results pages) in one fell swoop. And they have done
this many times over the years. That's why it's good to stick with white hat
techniques. Go for long-term results, unless you're working with a
throw-away domain.