The other day, I was reading this blog post written by Oliver Amar, a SEO/Google Adwords expert (apparently) who was taking Google to task for it’s inconsistent indexing practices. According to the post, Amar was looking for images that related to the keyword "air" and included the Italian "aria" into his search based on a suggestion from a keyword tool. He seemed surprised when the results included images of glamour model Aria Giovanni in the mix in the Google image results, but excluded her in the top Google web results.
I’m hardly an expert on the Google algorithm and I’m not really privy to Google’s index practices. I didn’t get the memo and I’m not on the mailing list. So why am I not surprised by Amar’s results? That’s because what I do understand about Google’s search engine is that websites are indexed based on what keywords people search for and not on what information they are searching for. Regular readers of this blog may recall a previous post where I suggested that another critic of Google’s indexing simply didn’t know how to use a search engine.
Here’s the thing: If you’re are going to search for "Aria Giovanni" chances are you are not going to search for her primarily in web site results, but in Google images, right? Why? Because a guy looking up her pics on Google is looking to crank one out so he’s probably looking for the most direct route available to him. As such, her ranking and positioning would be much higher in Google images than in the web search and wouldn’t be indexed the same exact way. You wouldn’t get the same results if you were not specifically keying in "Aria Giovanni." Also, if you were looking for images related to "air" you wouldn’t find them keying in "air" and certainly not "aria." Air is invisible, so there wouldn’t be any specific images of air. There’d be images of the sky, of clouds. So a smart person would input "sky" or "clouds" to return more results related to "air." "Air" would only be useful as a keyword if you were searching in Google’s web search and were seeking information about air and air currents.
It all depends on what you are specifically looking for and how you go about asking for that information. For example "flat panel tv" will turn up different results than "flat panel mount". Google admits that it’s indexing is imperfect, but that’s because there’s no way to anticipate how humans will go about searching for information. All Google can do is collect information that is keyed into its search engine. What that means is that if you are keying in "X" but are actually seeking information about "Y" then you may well get "X" and maybe a little bit of "Y" if you are lucky. The point is, it’s not really Google’s fault if you don’t know how to ask for "Y". You’d think an SEO expert would understand that. As for myself, I’ve never had much problem finding things on Google.
Olivier | 26-Dec-08 at 4:16 pm | Permalink
Hi John. Actually my main issue was that Google was being inconsistent. If something was consistent in 3 of it’s indexes (iamges, blogs and groups) then why not in the main web one. You should be able to apply one standard across the indexes. The reason Google will not give porn results in it’s web search is that it wants to know you’re really looking for porn. The algorithm is very good and mature in that respect. Even more than that, Google wants to keep the web results vanilla (or else why would would they give you adults filters in images and not have them in the web index). That being said, the image search is in diapers and so are most of the other indexes. Google needs to step up the algorithm work on the rest of its indexes is all. The only problem with that I guess is that if porn didn’t dominate image search, I don’t think people would use Google images (and Google knows that porn is major player in image search), they’d probably use MSN image search which is so much ahead.
Dana | 28-Dec-08 at 5:00 am | Permalink
Hi John. After reading your post I have to say that I assume you don’t have any children.
I know for certain that children are researching Google for their homework (those that still do homework) and not all of them “know how to ask for “Y” “. This is the reason for the adults filter in the image search results, and as more and more people will use the google suggest tool consistency in the search results will have to improve, and fast.
John Erianne | 28-Dec-08 at 12:21 pm | Permalink
Well, no… I don’t have children of my own. But I do have a niece I’m quite fond of and she’s actually used my computer from time to time to do her homework. Also, I’ve worked as an educator in the past, so I’m not completely inexperienced when it comes to kids and their Google habits and what I know about them is that the vast majority of them are better at “searching for Y” on Google than many adults.
Consistency? Huh? Here’s a thought: don’t waste your time with keyword suggestion tools — those tools are for chimps. My advice: If you don’t know how to ask for “Y” ask a librarian. Never fails.
Malreaux | 29-Apr-09 at 6:54 pm | Permalink
To sum it up shortly: LOLWUT. Har. Har. STFU Dana.
Seriously, what does this article, Google and kids have to do anything with each other.
Sure, it should be all-age user-friendly, but half the snot-faced brats I come across couldn’t use Google to learn how to whipe their asses unless you tell ‘m step-by-step how to use it.
Hell, what sensible parent lets their 13- kids on the net?
And what sensible parent doesn’t monitor their kids behind the net?
Sure, privacy is one thing, but you’d be surprised how dumb kids can be, unless it might work in their favour of looking cool/popular TeH HaXx0R.
BTW: Copypasta-ing content from websites isn’t allowed. Copyright and all, y’know <3