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This shows two things:
1. GetClicky's sites are very tech biased.
2. There was an initial surge of interest as is always the case with high profile releases.
Real stats will come only in a few weeks time.
Haven't you heard? Questioning Google is a conspiracy punished by all your links being demoted in value.
Emperor Googs said so,
@ChrisOD:
"You don't need to ask Google why they've designed it in such a manner."Well there was a lot of fuss about how wonderful the UI is and I'm talking about a very specific problem with it. I've never ever seen a program that used the window's border as a GUI widget, namely a tab list in this case. It doesn't seem logical to do that, and I called it out.
The omnibox: why send URL data to anyone? There is a difference between search queries where suggestions are helpful and URL suggestions - just search my history and be done with it. Here is another thing: how do we know that the returned suggestions are not ads? In the SERPs at least you can tell the difference between organic results and ads.
And don't worry about the bears. Lyra will get them to come on our side.
That's marketing for you. We're talking about them. Remind me again, is there such a thing as bad publicity?
The sad part is that the initial email is most likely an automated mail-out at a set time after the last campaign has finished. I've gotten many times before.
The sadder part is the response from *human beings* sounds as automated as the inital mail out.
The saddest part is we still think Google employs people instead of just running off the back of a huge algo.
So which bit is upsetting you? It would be interesting to have that discussion because it may be that you misunderstood something in the article or you didn't know something that Li does and actually you're the one who's wrong.
OK, let me try again because clearly you getting defensive is not the intended outcome I wanted from my question. And I don't think you're weak: I just want you to point out exactly what's wrong with the post and not say "Did you come away with the feeling that something wasn't right? I did." Tell me what that something that made you feel it wasn't right is.
So: Which bit in the article and video contain misinformation?
Pierre
Here you go again making statements without backing them up. I read the post before I sphunn and before my first comment.
I'm just waiting for you to actually back up your words. Only then will I be happy to have a discussion with you about whether the post is right or wrong. Until you come up with a specific complaint or set of complaints, you're simply making unsubstantiated statements.
Finally! How hard was it to point out exactly what you're talking about, namely the meta descrption? See, now we can talk about it instead of waving our hands in a fluffy way saying "something doesn't feel right". Saying things are off is not good SEO.
And I know about the story of meta descriptions and their uses. A good reference is http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/11/anatomy-of-search-result.html from Matt Cutts. The way he describes the meta description is about the user. I can't dig out the reference that says the meta description doesn't have much weight in the algo. That's consistent with what Li said.
What's your bone to pick?
pageoneresults get some sleep... and a new keyboard. You need both apparently.
And next time you think you have something big and important to say, say up straight without dancing and pretending you know best. You're not better than any of us.
pageoneresults (using divine intervention no doubt): Let me tell you something, and I'll be as clear as possible. As things stand, in July 2008, the meta description does not have much weight (effectively no weight) in the ranking algos. A few years ago it did have weight in the algo.
Some references to back up my statements:
1. Jill Whalen published test results in 2004: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/search-engines-and-the-meta-description-tag/953/ . Key quote: "I also recently discovered that when I tested a nonsense word in the Meta description tag of a page (with the word not appearing elsewhere on the page), Google did not find it. But when I added the word to the visible text copy on the page, Google would bring up the test page when the nonsense word was searched for. Not only that, but it displayed that part of the Meta description tag where the nonsense word appeared."
2. In Dec 2007, a Google employee, Susan_Moskwa, posted on WMW http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3527699.htm the following: "it's still true that meta descriptions don't affect your ranking in search results"
3. In Sep 2007, from Google itself at http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-description.html : "And it's worth noting that while accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won't affect your ranking within search results"
As for title element vs tag vs attribute. You're nitpicking the wrong way. The title tag is correct language, just like there is a body tag and a head tag. A title attribute is correct for tags that allow title attributes like the anchor tag. A tag is an element.
So please, again, PLEASE, back up your statements when you make them. I call "Bullshit!" on your statements.
Pierre
p1r: Again, you are not backing up your statements. For example, you say:
"Take away your meta descriptions since they do not have any kind of weight with the search engines. Come back and tell us how things turned out. Give it about a week or two."
Who said that I don't do this on some of my sites? Traffic is just fine thank you very much. Actually, when I removed my description tags, my traffic skyrocketed. My theory about that is Google does a much better job at picking a snippet that's tailored to the query than me. See, if I enter a description tag, Google would feel like using it most of the time (as they state). If I gave them free reign, their snippet generating algo will do much better. It's been about a year now.
Again, I'm talking from experience, not from reading between the lines. People like you give our industry a bad name. Please stop and think next time you want to make a claim.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go feed myself, not a troll. I'm done here.
Thanks for your comments. It may not have come across well in the article but I'm a big fan of all these SEs and use them regularly.
Re Cognition searching other databases: yes I know but ony the Wikipedia search makes for accurate comparisons with the other engines. An interesting comparison would be Medline/Pubmed searches on Cognition, Hakia, Go Pubmed, and others. However, that would delve into example queries that are not mainstream. BTW, from my experience, the Cognition Medline search is the best out there with eerily accurate results.
The capitalization issue: it's a problem. My feeling is that if a search engine requires case-sensitive queries, people will not use it as often. Searchers are now set in the habit of typing in lower case. Yes a small fraction of queries is properly capitalized, but the vast majority are not. Honestly, I hate that bit about Cognition!
Re testing a search engine properly: absolutely agree. I said this in my post that the objective is to get people to start thinking about these new search engines. No one can do justice to any SE unless they use it every day for weeks. I only pointed out some examples just to show the differences and similarities.
Pierre
So let me get this right. If I create an experiment, get some results, but then destroy the experiment (in this case removing the links) and then write up about it, and in the write up flame someone, that's OK.
But if I don't hide my flame behind an experiment that cannot be confirmed or refuted because it's gone now, then that's not OK?
Flame wars are not usually a community's problem, but in this case the Sphinn community made a flame go popular. That makes it Sphinn's problem and so doesn't deserve a desphinn.
I say: if they're eating what we feed them, we should feed them some delicious cooking.
Spam on toast anyone?
Story: The Value of Ideas
Do you honestly suffer from a shortage of good ideas in your life?
Absolutely. I get plenty of stupid ideas.
Is this Dewey as in Microsoft's Mrs Dewey search engine that showcases their wonderful technology? I'm sure there is a subliminal hint in there somewhere...
How is it sensible to compare a hardly-just-entered-beta product with a years old very mature product? Of course GA will win.
I've been thinking about this too! I find that being offline even for just one day is bad enough in terms of catching up with the online world.
One experiment I'm trying is to re-rank the feeds I read (over 150 of them!) based on priority. This way if I have to catch up with little time, I start at the top and read down. Never should I have an unread feed if I'm reading a lower-priority feed. This has been going on for a week or so and it's doing great. My stress levels after being offline are lower than they've ever been
Pierre
I did spend about an hour on it. What made if easier was that if there were unread posts in the feed, it meant that I didn't care that much about the feed.
That's very interesting and impressive. But I have to ask, is WP the best general purpose CMS? People are using it as such and hacking it to bits. Surely there are better solutions out there? Drupal comes to mind.
The only main differentiators of WP are its easy installation and intuitive way to add content. Drupal's thinking in nodes is just plain wrong, especially for newbies.
I made a big fuss about it a few months ago. They backed down. Then I started seeing it again. My next move is to ban their damn bot and see if I care. I'm sure they don't care.
If enough webmasters ban their bot, maybe they'll actually listen for a change. But it is Microsoft we're talking about. Listening and doing sensible things are not exactly core competencies.
Pierre
DoshDosh,
Thanks for the comments. There are two things:
1. I forgot to include information about the data. I updated the post with the date spans. Apologies for the oversight.
2. I make the same point as you do about the outrage. I say it was justified as the power users foresaw a significant change, and the numbers say that yes there was a significant change. Whether the power users were right or wrong, or whether Digg is any better after this change is another question completely, and my numbers cannot answer that. These questions and this conclusion are made in the last paragraph in my post.
Pierre
Story: With 2.618 % Marketshare Google Chrome is at Fourth position: Count on it