I’ve been testing two new ideas in search: Yahoo Answers and Squidoo.com.

Yahoo Answers shows a lot of promise – it allows users to post questions, answer questions, and score points and eventually perhaps payment for participation. However I’ve been disappointed in the low quality of many of the answers to my test questions and other questions I’ve reviewed. Projects like this need people to take the project very seriously or it won’t have quality.

SQUIDOO is a very interesting idea – basically a variation on the ABOUT.com concept where experts offer high quality articles about all sorts of topics and are ranked and paid as users interact with the information.

I’ve been testing it a bit and developed a “lens”, or Squidoo web page, for Las Vegas. The system is easy to use, but I kept getting the feeling I was just setting up Squidoo to make most of the money from work better put to use on my own websites. Their total claimed revenue share payout is a pitiful few hundred dollars to what must be hundreds and hundreds of “lensmasters”.

Unless Squidoo has some great way to optimize for search engines (and I doubt they do), the articles there are probably no more likely to get good ranks than, for example, a blog at Google’s blogger.com on which the publisher can run adsense.

Since Squidoo has financing by a major VC firm with a bunch of heavy hitters like Marc Andreesen, a large percentage of the value will flow to them and not publishers.

Verdict so far: Squidoo doo is a no do.

Time’s choice of Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Bono as persons of the year could not have been more on the mark. While concern in the mostly mindless newsrooms of national TV swirls around celebrity crime, sex, party girls, politics, drugs and glamour (did I get the order right?), Time’s reporting some real news about people making huge positive change in a challenged world.

Newsweek, for example, had a good Gates article but relegated it to the “Society” pages and wasted too much ink about their “royal treatment” rather than what may eventually rank as the accomplishment of the century – the Gates foundation which has already saved over a MILLION lives! In the modern death math since 9/11 that’s THREE HUNDRED Trade Centers filled with people…saved!

Bravo Time – you got this exactly right – though I do fear this story, and the thousands of other stories about how those who have almost everything are working for those with little in extremely effective ways, remains lost on the many seriously math-impaired journalists and fine fellow Americans.

This helps me retain my respect for at least some aspects of modern, market driven journalism. Seeking catchy hooks and entertainment value has trumped story significance, but not …. this …. TIME.

Mahalo, Kilauea!


Recently Kilauea on the island of Hawaii created a spectacular (Dec 2005) lava fall …. cool, and I was there in April. I’d wanted to see lava up close since Geology classes at UW Madison but this was my first trip to Hawaii.

Lucky because they closed the area I was walking around in June due to the danger of … what wound up happening.

I’m pretty sure I was standing just south of the massive fall shown here, on

the very cliff that fell away in early December: My picture (below) of the area is far less dramatic but I did get to see a “small” but still awesome lava fall in the distance – you can make it out as a tiny stream off the cliff to left in my picture (below) though it was probably about 1-2 feet in diameter. The new falls is about 6 feet in diameter and already busy extending the Hawaiian shoreline.

For more of my lava pix click here.

I’m skeptical of the information pouring in about the AOL Google deal.
If the NYT version is true, however, this is very alarming indeed.

If Google’s effectively taking on search optimization for AOL, as the article suggests, then Google has begun to sell their soul, which was purity of search results. This seems unlikely though stranger things have happened in the wild web west, always changing at the speed of cash.

From NYT:
….Google will also provide technical assistance so AOL can create Web pages that will appear more prominently in the search results list. But this assistance will not change computer formulas …

This sounds tame at first but anybody who knows Search Engine Optimization (SEO), knows that insider knowledge about the algorithmic ranking formula is everything. Ranking formulas are complex, fickle, often wrong, and always subject to manipulation. Google has always insisted they cannot reveal specifics about the formula to preserve it’s integrity.

Having Google insiders who could even get basic answers to questions about key ranking factors like keyword density, link values, filters, penalties, and thresholds would effectively give AOL the key to the Google search vault.

Also conspicuous was this quote from the NYT article, suggesting MSN refused to offer the same treatment.
Time Warner asked Microsoft to give AOL similar preferred placement in advertising and in its Web index and that Microsoft refused, calling the request unethical.

Earlier in the year I spoke with an MSN search engineer about this very aspect of search (stacking the results to favor paying clients), and he insisted that it was against the interests of search because the engines credibilility is at stake and thus the almost priceless aspect in the equation – market share – would suffer.

I agree with MSN. So will everybody else. Except maybe AOL.

OK, I think I’ve been too critical of Google lately.

Here’s why I think Google is indeed a superb company:

* Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s profoundly elegant approach to ranking the web using the linking structure. These insights led to “pagerank” (named after Larry not web “pages”). The Google Algorithm remains the best ranking mechanism on the web. Caveated thusly – Yahoo has pretty much caught up with the help of a lot of human editing and IBM’s “webfountain” is probably stronger at answering specific questions but isn’t even remotely scalable to Google traffic levels.

* Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. I had the pleasure of meeting him very briefly at the Google Dance 2005 and he was gracious and friendly. In his Charlie Rose interview I found him to be clearly the sharpest technology leader among a very distinguished group. Having the brilliant triumverate of Page, Brin, Schmidt leading the Google juggernaut with loads of cash in the bank is already one of the great stories in global business, and probably has only to get more interesting as competition with Microsoft, Yahoo, and innovative companies yet to hit the scene heats up.

* Matt Cutts, the gatekeeper of Google search. With the power to kill even the some of the largest web projects on earth with a mouseclick, Matt is among the most feared and respected players in search. However, ask *anybody* who’s had the pleasure of meeting him and you’ll hear that he’s a great guy. I’ve enjoyed talking with Matt at the last two WebmasterWorld conferences and he’s always extremely helpful and very interesting. Google could not have picked a better public relations person if they’d …. picked a public relations person. Matt’s a top Engineer but makes complexity accessible and has done a huge service in keeping the web community informed via his blog and conferences.

* Google Parties. Man, Google knows how to throw a party. At the Google Dance 2005, a tradition for the past 5? years, they entertain a LOT of the attendees of Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Strategies Conference at the GooglePlex in Mountain View. Ice Cream Stations, Shrimp and other munchables, beer and wine were great, but most important is the chance to talk to the excellent Google search engineers who are always courteous and friendly. In New Orleans they also had a great bash and also had stations to talk to Engineers – very helpful stuff to those of us who roam the online wild west.

* Google Engineers. What a fine group indeed. PhDs and wealth seem to have made many of these fellows more friendly, gracious, and hard working. You can’t complain about that.

Two of my very favorite techno blogger all-around-great guys, Matt Cutts and Jeremy Zawodny, have created a very spirited online debate about a recent paid linking experiment at Jeremy’s blog. Thanks in large part to Matt’s efforts over the past few years paid linking has become a very controversial topic and tactic for SEOs. Most I’ve talked to still employ the tactic and feel it works, but try to keep it “under the radar screen” of Google.

Search engines, especially Google, see paid linking as a serious manipulation of the ranking algorithm. Matt indicates they have many ways to detect this type of linking algorithmically and I’d guess they have a pretty robust database of sites that offer and resell paid links.

Generally Google recommends adding the “nofollow” tag for paid links, or using alternative forms of advertising. In fairness to some criticism adsense and adwords are effectively “nofollow” forms of ads, not counting in the pagerank calculations for pages at a site.

HOWEVER and importantly, it seems to me the debate is not really about linking, but about *excessive penalties* for things seen as hurting the indexing process.

Matt’s posts imply that in the war on spam, Google may be following the very controversial notions espoused by uber conservative Barry Goldwater some time ago talking about Viet Nam War. Goldwater said “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”.

Matt – are you saying: “Extremism in the defense of the Google Algorithm is no vice?” I hope not.

Sure you can execute people for running a stop light, and this will reduce traffic violations, but it’s not a prudent social change mechanism for obvious reasons. And it’s evil. Google, please don’t be evil.

Holy destabilization of the search landscape Batmen and Batwomen!

Amazon’s ALEXA.com has been ranking and archiving the web for some time, creating what may be the web’s largest archive of old site info plus a ton of current info. Google guards their algorithm and data stores as trade secrets, as does Yahoo.

NOT SO ALEXA who has announced they are opening up the data store, adding advanced programming routines for the grabbing, and opening up to anybody with a .com and a prayer.

I’ll test the beta soon hopefully, but this could be big. REALLY BIG if the routines are powerful. Some have suggested this will be a sort of IBM Webfountain for the masses. Webfountain is arguably the world’s most powerful and best search, so if Alexa can scale that power to mass information retrieval some really interesting stuff may happen in search.

This is yet another step to users ruling the roost as they rightly should.

Yahoo is collecting a “database of wisdom”. I wonder what they’ll do with it?

In his book “The Search”, John Battelle talks about the “database of intentions” that Google has collected and can now mine to get a sort of “human interest model” and use it to hone services, predict outcomes, serve advertising, and much more.

Yet in addition to analysis of regular search results, Yahoo is certainly going to integrate information pouring in via the new Yahoo Answers plus the new Yahoo del.icio.us tag farm. Taken together these create more than a database of intentions, they create a database of collective wisdom. Yahoo is getting it big time, thanks in no small part to the very clever Jeremy Zawodny and his fellow team members.

What is the critical mass of participants for such information to be useful and relevant?
I’m guessing they are past that point already. Analysis and reporting could be a challenge, however.

Yahoo Answers is a very clever concept:

1) Engage Yahoo’s very large search community in the answers without much Yahoo editing needed.

2) Let that large community value the info.

3) Reward very helpful people.

Wondir’s mechanics are similar to this model, but this concept had to be embraced by one of the big players with their millions of potential participants.

I have a feeling the Yahoo combination of search and wisdom will be a success. I count a new question approximately every 6-10 seconds. The geek buzz around del.ici.ous has been increasing for some time.

Google will copy this soon and that’s a great thing about good ideas – they proliferate fast.