March 24, 2003
Adaptable google?

Dave Winer says:

Here's an idea. Should Google take who's doing the search into account when doing its page rank work?

Considering that google already filters results based on location this isn't a particularly big step to take.. of course the difference here being that current filtering is done based on the domain the uh, searcher (is that a word?) used (ie: google.fr, google.de) not his origin. The same database is used to generate the results so it is very much related.

Now, the simplest solution would be to use some sort of database which geographically maps IP addresses, right? Wrong. Last time I checked one of those it located my San Jose-based server somewhere in Honduras. (No, it's an American ISP, really).

So given that IPs are not reliable for location verification (we all knew that anyway) how about a cookie? Great, more cookies... then of course everyone forever forgets to set one before performing the search.. so I can just imagine myself being frustrate enough to say "screw it" instead of doing the search again..

Hm, then again, doesn't pretty much anyone have an amazon cookie? Maybe google could just use that.. given that 90% (probably more) Internet users use IE and it's a given a new security hole will show up sooner or later it shouldn't be hard for google engineers to exploit that and read Amazon's cookie.

So yah, good idea, but will it be implemented? Given that it would require additional action from the user.. probably not as part of original google but rather as a google service (google restaurants! google movies!.. whatever).

Posted March 24, 2003 09:27 AM in Geek Stuff
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Comments
On March 24, 2003 09:48 AM Josh Woodward added:

I like the idea of a "personalized" Google. It should be fairly easy, since Google is already setting a unique cookie for you. Beyond this idea, I like the idea of clustering groups of similar matches for a search term. For instance, let's say a doctor and a guitar builder both search for "neck". The first time, both will get results from everything containing "neck". The doctor will click on a link talking about the human neck anatomy, and the guitar builder will click on a link dealing with how to straighten a crooked guitar neck.

Now, the next time the guitar builder searches for "neck", it will remember that he chose from the guitar neck cluster, and give those hits increased priority (with a mention that it had been done, and a toggle to remove the filter).

Almost every search term has multiple meanings, and it'd be fairly easy to cluster them. Currently, a guitarist or a guitar builder searching for "neck" will 99% of the time click on a page in this cluster. They'll also search for things like "fret", "bridge", "strings", etc - so these terms can be used to add weight to a given cluster.

Now, come on all you Google PhD hackers. Get working! :)

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On March 24, 2003 12:50 PM Chris added:

I think the idea about clustered search terms would be great, frankly its a wonder why it hasn't been done before. I'm sick of searching for something relating to internet security and turning up "elite" hacker-wannabe sites. It would also help quite a bit at schools, where they wouldn't have to use filtering software which doesn't work 90% of the time anyways.

As to the location based pageranks, where exactly would the users benefit from this?

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On March 24, 2003 01:26 PM Mike Short added:

> searcher (is that a word?)

Well, the beauty of the English language is that you can take any noun and employ it as a verb or an adjective. This is also true in reverse. This, of course, assumes that you wish to communicate effectively rather than in the (out-of-date) manner laid down in grammar texts.

On the search clustering, great idea though why Google shouldn't simply employ cookies themselves was a leap I couldn't understand your reluctance to make. After all, it only needs to store a GUID and they can keep the datya locally themselves.

I'd question the utility of locale-specific data as many users are pretty mobile. For example, I use my own machine from London and Kent in the UK and Bergerac in France every week, plus the use of airport/hotel hotspots and random travel. Where will Google try to place me???

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Adaptable google? Kasia has an entry on her blog about Dave Winer's idea of an adaptive page rank for google.
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March 24, 2003 12:56 PM