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Re: [LUG] EU ruling on Google

 

On 15/05/14 10:58, Philip Hudson wrote:
> 
> Google *should* have added some smarts to PageRank, but that's not in
> their interest because it would slow down the algorithm overall in the
> interest of accuracy for only a tiny minority of results.

Google have added tonnes of "smarts", PageRank is hardly relevant any
more, and the conclusion of those "smarts" is that this was the second
most important item for that search term - probably because it appeared
in a large circulation newspaper, and so was relevant.

You clearly have no idea how complex Google's search engine is. It will
adapt searches depending who you are, what your previous searches were
(if you let it), what results you have clicked, your Google search
preferences. Indeed you can't really say any result is 1st or 2nd for a
term, except under stringent conditions (e.g. in a browser with no
cookies, not logged into Google, from this IP address in Spain, at this
date and time, this search returned X).

The ruling is insane in my view. It is the logical equivalent of letting
readers reorder the library cards in a library, and not letting the
librarian fix them.

Let's say Google apply a manual downgrade to this result. Let's say the
person involved goes bankrupt again, because it turns out he is reckless
with money and not just unlucky in the past, no one will tell Google,
people dealing with him won't now find both results, only the later
bankruptcy.

Just let Google get on with searching and indexing, if you think you can
do better it is (mostly) a free market, and very lucrative.




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