Google PageRank, Yahoo

Link: http://pr.blogflux.com/

This is a cool website to check the page rank of any webpage you choose. For example, the Wikipedia page for "PageRank" will give you a 7/10 (the page rank value is 7 from 10 possible points). Also, clicking on the "More Info" buttons on the page will take you to the Google explanation for their searches, which is a very interesting read.

Here's a link solely for the purpose of explaining PageRank: http://pr.efactory.de/
An interesting note is about how Google might have changed its form of searching over the past.

Within the past few years, Google has become the far most utilized search engine worldwide. A decisive factor therefore was, besides high performance and ease of use, the superior quality of search results compared to other search engines. This quality of search results is substantially based on PageRank, a sophisticated method to rank web documents.

The aim of these pages is to provide a broad survey of all aspects of PageRank. The contents of these pages primarily rest upon papers by Google founders Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin from their time as graduate students at Stanford University.

It is often argued that, especially considering the dynamic of the internet, too much time has passed since the scientific work on PageRank, as that it still could be the basis for the ranking methods of the Google search engine. There is no doubt that within the past years most likely many changes, adjustments and modifications regarding the ranking methods of Google have taken place, but PageRank was absolutely crucial for Google's success, so that at least the fundamental concept behind PageRank should still be constitutive.


Just for an interesting read, there is also a section on Yahoo's impact on search engine optimization.

Many experts in search engine optimization assume that certain websites obtain a special PageRank evaluation from the Google search engine which needs a manual intervention and does not derive from the PageRank algorithm directly. Mostly, the directories Yahoo and Open Directory Project (dmoz.org) are considered to get this special treatment. In the context of search engine optimization, this assumption would have the consequence that an entry into the above mentioned directories had a big impact on a site's PageRank.

Finally, do read the section about Google's PageRank 0 penalty.

A new, better search engine is in the works and is called Wolfram Alpha. Based on it's description, it sounds like it tries to actually answer questions rather than just search for key words. If you were to search "10 flips for 4 heads", then it would predict that you have a question regarding probability and provide an answer to that specific question. Or if you were to ask the question of "How high is the Empire State Building", it would answer that question specifically. Searches with double meanings (like "50 cent") seem to throw a wrench in the algorithm, so it sounds like its early in development. The article doesn't really discuss much about how the search engine works, but the bugs make it sound like it won't be a lot of competition for Google yet.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/an-invention-that-could-change-the-internet-for-ever-1678109.html

It seems that google views wolfram alpha as a sufficient threat that the giant will undermind their press release with a similar, though perhaps more underwhelming announcement

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/28/after-being-upstaged-by-google-wolfram-alpha-fires-back-with-a-leaked-screenshot/

as you said, wolfram alpha takes the search terms and tries to return things you may be interested in.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/08/wolfram-alpha-computes-answers-to-factual-questions-this-is-going-to-be-big/

However, it probably won't replace google either. This second article explains that although wolfram alpha may seem like a smarter system, it can't give us data like google can. For instance, with google, we can type in "best car made in 2008", and we'll get links to a dozen website with their top tens, we can then determine subjectively what we think is the proper best car. Wolfram alpha, however, "computes" answers. Therefore, if you wanted to know something factual, like when neon lights were first used, wolfram alpha could likely give us the answer, while google would return us some results that we would sift through.

Granted, google does give us some direct computations of answers - math. if you type a math problem or a conversion into google, it will give an answer. It just can't compute those facts - yet.

It sounds like Wolfram Alpha will probably be better at doing fewer things. The TechCrunch article talks about the huge database of scientific journals and texts. I had thought it would only be able to answer canned, common questions, but the creators claim that they can break a questions into key pieces, actually analyze the question, and then produce a best answer. The article even says "the knowledge and intelligence it contains are extremely modularized and can be used to synthesize answers to factual questions nobody has asked yet". But I would think that once the questions get too technical or become subjective, the system will fall back to a traditional PageRank type algorithm. If you were to ask it a non-factual question like "What are the best restaurants in Evanston", there is no database of restaurants that it can extrapolate an answer from.

Wolfram Alpha is going to be huge, because it will allow people to ask specific questions and get direct answers without having to waste their time waiting for someone to answer it for them through a forum or something. Even if it is in its early stages, it will only get better as people start asking it more and more questions, and it starts computing answers to these questions. If you read about the development of the technology, it is pretty intense.

http://blog.wolfram.com/2009/03/05/wolframalpha-is-coming/