Tuesday, May 18, 2004
A couple of interesting (to me) Q/A's from: Google's man behind the curtain
Some computer scientists suspect that PageRank is dead, because Internet marketers have managed to exploit it by creating false popularity for their sites. Is that true? Has it been altered, or is it playing less of a role?
The point of view that PageRank is dead is kind of a very static view of the world. It will always continue to be a part of our ranking scheme but, over time, as we develop new ideas on how to do ranking, as we tweak existing ideas, as we think about new ways to have them play together--the role of any one of the techniques that we use will obviously change.
Are there any other algorithm techniques that you are using that are playing a bigger role?
Well, there are certainly other techniques that we are using. Talking about it is the trickier part. In broad terms, techniques we use fall into, like, two or three categories, and one is we try to understand and leverage human intelligence. We look for signals that people put in to indicate intelligence, like deciding to link from one page to another or annotating text with the description of what the text is about.
There are some personalization tools emerging. Amazon's A9.com and MSN are using different techniques. Google's tool is a little bit more like, "Give us information, and we will help you out," and the others take the approach, "We will learn from you, and then we will help you out." Tell me why your approach is superior. In the latter scenario, where first you learn, and then you help the visitor out, you have two places where the computer has to make intelligent judgments. I am not saying that is not an interesting or promising approach, but it does put more strain on the computer. When you tell it what your interests are, then the computer only has to be intelligent to use that information to try to help you out. They are both part of the same goal of trying to help people out with personal information--it is just a matter of how you get there. We will be seeing more of this in the future.
Some computer scientists suspect that PageRank is dead, because Internet marketers have managed to exploit it by creating false popularity for their sites. Is that true? Has it been altered, or is it playing less of a role?
The point of view that PageRank is dead is kind of a very static view of the world. It will always continue to be a part of our ranking scheme but, over time, as we develop new ideas on how to do ranking, as we tweak existing ideas, as we think about new ways to have them play together--the role of any one of the techniques that we use will obviously change.
Are there any other algorithm techniques that you are using that are playing a bigger role?
Well, there are certainly other techniques that we are using. Talking about it is the trickier part. In broad terms, techniques we use fall into, like, two or three categories, and one is we try to understand and leverage human intelligence. We look for signals that people put in to indicate intelligence, like deciding to link from one page to another or annotating text with the description of what the text is about.
There are some personalization tools emerging. Amazon's A9.com and MSN are using different techniques. Google's tool is a little bit more like, "Give us information, and we will help you out," and the others take the approach, "We will learn from you, and then we will help you out." Tell me why your approach is superior. In the latter scenario, where first you learn, and then you help the visitor out, you have two places where the computer has to make intelligent judgments. I am not saying that is not an interesting or promising approach, but it does put more strain on the computer. When you tell it what your interests are, then the computer only has to be intelligent to use that information to try to help you out. They are both part of the same goal of trying to help people out with personal information--it is just a matter of how you get there. We will be seeing more of this in the future.
Comments:
Post a Comment
