The TouchGraph Google Browser reveals the network of connectivity between websites, as reported by Google’s database of related sites.
12 Comments
12 Comments
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I’ve been using TouchGraph for quite a few years now. I’m finding it to be a very useful tool in tracking Social Media Influencers. TouchGraph allows you to do all sorts of neat stuff like see which Nodes are being powered by a particular user profile. You can then follow those Nodes to see more. In some instances, you could spend hours, even days, backtracking various relationships between networks. Has anyone else been using TouchGraph for this type of research? Just take the profile URI and enter it here...TouchGraph Google Browserhttp://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.htmlYes, many of you will have questions. I’ll try to answer what I can. You’ll need to study how Google handles relationships between websites to understand what TouchGraph is showing you. It is surely an eye opener when you can see all the Nodes being powered by various Social Media Influencers.You can also use TouchGraph for your clients. Enter their URI and see how Google is possibly associating your website with others. Is it good or bad?
if there was only such tool for backlinks :)
Tool for backlinks? No need to see those, not from my perspective anyway. I can easily take one of the nodes from the first search and place my focus there to uncover backlinks if I wanted to. That is where all the time comes in. Once you start traversing the TouchGraph cascade, you’ll find things you didn’t know existed. :)
weeeeellll of course you can uncover backlinks of one node. However, having a whole map of who is linking to whom is a whole different thing. Think about 3-4 money sites being supported by links from a network of sattelite sites. Think fingerprinting linking patterns for heavily promoted sites in competitive niches. I can think of at least 4-5 occasions in the last year where i would pay good money to have that information presented to me in a graphical way. touchgraph is a great tool, don’t get me wrong, I have been using it for quite a while and am learning new things from it all the time, but the problem with it is the fuzzyness of the way Google lists websites as related. What does it mean ? what significance does Google’s definition of "related" bear on value that related sites could potentially transfer through links ? are related sites related onry through linking patterns or is there a semantic factor in play as well ? Lots of questions, not many answers and a situation where i find myself playing with pretty graphs until my whole screen is filled with bobbing spheres and lines and i cannot find my feet in it anymore...
"the problem with it is the fuzzyness of the way Google lists websites as related. What does it mean ?"I assumed "related" to imply co-citation: if site C links to site A and site B, A and B are related.
"If site C links to site A and site B, A and B are related." And thus become nodes in the network or at least that is what I’ve figured out from using TouchGraph. Ya, it would be great if it spelled it out for us but it doesn’t. You have do some serious digging to really see the roots of the nodes that are powering the Networks. What is interesting is when you find a central network, like a Social Media Player, and you find that they have established a Power Profile that sits off on its own, it is a node in itself. That is when I really start digging to see how they managed to separate that node from the others. It gets deep and my freakin brain starts to hurt if I travel too far down the nodal cascade. :)
"I assumed "related" to imply co-citation: if site C links to site A and site B, A and B are related."yeah that is the common knowledge but i have seen far too many examples where this was not the case. I think that there is more to just linking. Even if this is the case, the premise behind it would be based in an assumption according to which sites link only to sites on the same topic and we all know that never happens. So if it is according to link patterns, then the data in TouchGraph is meaningless and if it is according to some other parameter(s) then it is uncomprehensible. It definitely is interesting but very soon it starts being frustrating seeing all those graphs without being able to say something empyrical about the connections...
Without giving up too much of my Tin Hat Theory, this is what I’ve found using Google TouchGraph over the years. It is not only links that Google is looking at with relationships. I’ve found unlinked URI references in some instances, company name mentions with no link, specific phrases that only appear in certain nodes, etc. There is quite a bit there to theorize about and the information I’ve gathered over the years has been fairly accurate. I mean, I’ve been able to trace SEO work back to certain people through TouchGraph relationships. They snitch on themselves by doing certain things that create a "relationship" that Google can see through some sort of algorithm. And because Google is somewhat secretive about that whole related: thing, I’ve found TouchGraph has helped me fill the some of the gaps in regards to how Google treats relationships. You don’t see much discussion surrounding the related: queries. :)
I have tested it on some sites of a news network. It seems (though I’m not very sure) it realtes sites according to themes and not according to their interconnections (linking, ownership ....).
I don’t think you can really say that it does one thing and not the other. You can maybe say that it doesn’t do only one thing.
It does different things for different people. And no, it doesn’t do just one thing. It responds to your input. The interface provides a few more tools to dive deeper. Depending on how far you dive, determines what you get out of it. Also keep in mind that TouchGraph is dynamic so you are getting Google’s related: searches real time. You’ll see nodes close to the URI you entered that are usually representative of the most recent relationships. I should point out, that the relationships you may see initially could be very broad in scope, more of an overall picture, depends on the size of the initial network e.g. Twitter.com. When you start drilling down, the relationships become a little more refined. If you enter a URI that you own and you know what the perceived relationships should be, how does your perception compare to TouchGraph? Does the network you’ve developed show a close knit relationship to your industry? If not, why not?
I was using TouchGraph this weekend and doing some research into a particular Node and what did I find? A negative SEO campaign. It stuck out like a sore thumb amongst all the other relationships and after digging deeper into the Node, I found what I was looking for. I’ve also been using TouchGraph to determine the network influence of certain Social Media Mavens. Just enter their profile URI and off ya go. I know, this stuff is a bit too much for most and I completely understand. This is not something the average SEO/SEM is going to investigate as it goes beyond the surface stuff. Are you using TouchGraph? In what way? How has it helped you with your understanding of nodes, networks, and the relationships between those?