Diary of a Mad Editor

Archive for the ‘research’ Category

It’s a Google Thang, Baby Pt. 2

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 them.  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. 

Lie Down With Dogs, Wake Up With Fleas

dear mr. erianne,

u seem like yr smart can u tell me what is the meaning of lie down with dogs wake up with fleas? my grandmother is always saying that to me.

thanks,

pete

Dear Pete:

Hmm . . . what do flea bites look like, anyway? If you have to ask, I guess you’ve never had fleas (or you’re really dumb). Seriously, though . . .

Unless you are actually sleeping with your flea-bitten dog and are quite literally waking-up with fleas, your grandmother isn’t referring to either dogs or fleas.

I don’t know the exact etymology of the phrase. All I know is that it’s an English proverb, but I’m not sure when it came into the common English language (I’d actually like to know that myself). Were I to guess, I’d say somewhere between the 17th and 18th century (it reminds me of another English proverb from that period: “Spend a night with Venus and a lifetime with mercury”), but I’m probably wrong. Anyway, when your grandmother says that to you she means that when you do bad, risky dumb things with the wrong kind of people, you should be prepared for a bad result. So if you’re hanging around with the wrong kind of people, screwing the wrong woman, etc. then sooner or later, unfortunate, bad things will likely happen to you that could’ve been avoided if you showed better sense.

Hope this helps.

It’s a Google Thang, Baby

Using Google is something we’ve come to take for granted — so much so that I don’t think we give props to just how useful Google is as a research tool. What used to take hours or even days rifling through various reference books at a library can often be done in seconds or minutes with Google.

Let’s say you’re writing an article about the impact of the recent economic crisis on the real estate market in Seattle and you want to talk to a number of realtors in that city to get the scoop. Back in the day, you’d probably look in the yellow pages. If you didn’t happen to live in the area, that meant going to your local library and hoping that they had a copy of a phone directory for the Seattle, WA area in their reference collection. Now all you have to do is key in Seattle Realtors into Google and your immediately giving a ready index of several real estate websites with contact information.

I love Google. I’d marry Google if it were legal.