Online Search Quality- Changes in google web ranking algorithm

A step to correct Google search result, bits further has been taken. For some time, there have been criticism on the way Google search engine has been providing search result. Still, some set of Google users think that search result provided by Google Search Engine is biased to certain extent; attributed to the market maker i.e. the advertisers.

Last week Google fellow - Amit Singhal & Matt Cutts announced changes in its ranking algorithm which provides web search result & that it has impact on 11.8% of queries. The changes in consideration have been done to rectify those website which do not bring value to user.

Now these low-value-websites are loosely defined. Google considers them based on the extent of copying of content done from from other websites & few other things. The real valued/good quality sites are those which holds original contents, research materials, in-depth & thorough analysis, etc.

But isn't it something, which was expected in default from search engine?

Let's say there is a pharma company which has published research papers, in depth analysis, etc share on its websites. But the normal users of search engine may not want to see these complex or complicated research. Rather they would look for somebody's website (Say JeeV), who in turn would have inherited contents from this pharma company website (of course, I expect it to be done with proper references) but he would have published the same data but in a easy-to-understand way. I wouldn't wonder if JeeV's website gets higher ranks through search algorithm.

In such case, (given search keyword match) I would expect that the pharma company to get listed at the top of the search result but next ranked result would be by those who would have made it simpler & appealing.

Reading further in the google announcement, I sensed google has done 'pat self on the back' with the concurrence of results obtained from Personal Blocklist Chrome extension.

The Mask of Zoho

Last week, one of my friends told me about Zoho.com. Apparently he informed me that Zoho is Chennai (India) based company; which is partly untrue as Zoho is Peasanton, CA based company & probably, Zoho would have been carrying out significant delivery work from Chennai office; he had got such impression.

So, my impression after trying out few of Zoho's offerings - This company is going to change the way incumbents have been doing business for years. It has got so many products, solutions to offer and all of those are SaaS (available in cloud). As the statistics are gathered about zoho.com, it has touched multi million users base & growing.

I am sure, guys at Microsoft, Google, Salesforce.com have well taken note of things happening at Zoho.com.

Google Public Data Explorer

Recently I came across another significant feature made available by Google. Google Public Data Explorer. Apparently, as per googleblog, this feature has been made available or googleblog has been making public data available to user since last couple of years :-) Nevertheless, now researchers, students even naive users will have one single place where data like...
1. Country-wise GDP
2. Statewise Unemployment rate in US
3. Various data released by autonomous bodies, international bodies like IMF, etc
etc

• Even more to feature is; These data can be visualized in various forms like charts, etc
• One can add his own data conforming to open standard like Dataset Publishing Language (DSPL) which is in a xml form (I guess, publishing of such submitted data would ultimately subject to satisfaction/approval of google team)

I am yet to explore it further. But somehow I feel, though with this feature google has made available users; an utility to access publicly avaiable data; to me, it can also be seen as an encirculment attempt

where, the facilitator will store data & will get it growing over the period. And once data grows over the period, it becomes an asset to organization on which it can easily capitalize. And Google is well known for this :-)

Facebook to launch messaging service

The Facebook co-founder & CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Facebook would launch messaging services for internet users in an event organized in SF, CA.



Apparently, I came across some news, blog posts, twitter updates where people claimed that facebook messaging service is an alternative to gmail. But as clarified by Mark Z, such is not the case:: "Facebook messaging service is not gmail killer". He has proposed a different propositions for users. For Facebook, the target user group is the one who want to use email for personal, informal, seamless access. It has a concept of Social Inbox Prima facie, it looks similar to Google Buzz integrated with gmail but of course with Facebook touch.

No sooner did Mark Z, announced about Facebook messaging service than people started posting messages like "Can't wait for facebook email", "I want it first", etc in literally hundreds, thousands in nubmers. It gives the kind of craze users of facebook have, about the facebook products.

Going beyond the announcement and if I can read between the lines (:-)) I feel, this is an attempt to get into the online advertisement business in aggressive manner.

• Looking at the trend in last few years, the extent of User Generated Content (UGC) made available online has multi-fold (e.g. videos uploaded in youtube, photos on Facebook, picasa, etc)
  
• Such user generated content and people accessing these UGC are going to be the huge, huge market for electronic publisher, online advertisers to help companies reach to their target customers (and good part of online publishing is it's relatively more & reasonably measurable than prevailing mainstream media)
  
• Now with the messaging services in its kitty, Facebook will have even more user data with it to make it a revenue generating proposition in longer run
• Recently, I came across a study where it claimed that in North America, the average time spend by a user is as good as spent on Facebook, as it is on google search. Earlier, google search used to have more share of average time spent by user in online surfing
• Look at it this way, even google is aware of the fact that out of the online traffic hitting youtube has single largest source originating from facebook
• This make a good reason for Facebook to unlock avenues to generate revenue through its online product offerings to user

I think, Facebook Management is well aware about their user groups/customers. Facebook user wants to have communication which is informal, easy, quick and a fun experience. If this is true then which all corporations can think of using Facebook as a medium | as a serious medium | to promote their products, services:: value propositions to user is reasonably understood. Can every other corporation, company expect to get similar outcome on money spent on online advertisement: specifically on Facebook? I guess, not!

:Dhan

Title to the post

Some times, when I really don't have specific to scribble in the blog and want to write at least 'something', I find it very difficult to give a name to the post. And that's where the story gets delayed.

Couple of things I have been watching:-
- Recently whenever I look at news papers, online reports, and news channels; all of them are reporting losses that corporates are facing or dip in their profits, sales, etc.

- Probable, colleges like mine are few of the first in India to feel the heat of the global turmoil.

- Sometime in next week, I want to write marathi post about this article I read online. I am finding some relevance to what is happening around and what worse in business scenario can be expected with it. Basically the author, in this article talks about how the financial collapse are unavoidable and government actions in supporting the banks can lead to worsening the situation.

- Google has been finding it difficult to see promising competitor in its online streaming business i.e. the famous youtube.com. The name is HULU. It's a formed with a joint venture of NBC and Fox and it is becoming popular with TV shows and movies. More importantly, it's gaining commercial support unlike youtube because corporates (like MGM, etc) are skeptical about youtube's position in respecting copyright informations. Just because HULU is more focused on TV shows and movies, it's likely to be successful in the targetted video streaming business

- Crude oil prices have plummeted below $60 to $59.39 - 20 weeks low price despite cut in production by OPEC. It's interesting to know that OPEC countries haven't cut the production by the declared number of barrels i.e. 1.5 million barrel cut was expected. But it is heard that they have cut the production byt 800,000 barrels a day. Why haven't they cut it by more 700,000 barrels? Probably, it will greatly impact their economies of scale operation (shall I call it as reverse of economies of scale ?)

- Mr. Prime Minister, Doesn't want to reduce prices of oil products in India? Indian o companies are making profit of more than Rs. 4 on sale of one liter of petrol and bearing loss of less than Rs. 1 on sale of diesel. The argument proposed for the same is, sale of diesel is far more than that of petrol.