BoydCreative

Recently people have been asking whether the approach that Google has taken to PageRank hurts the Google brand. Some people have made the parallel between the manual adjustments to PageRank and the adding of epicycles to a scientific theory to deal with anamolies. So the interesting question is whether these PageRank epicycles are chinks in the Google armor.

Personally, I think that it would take a lot more than the webmaster community to bring down Google. However, I do think that this reveals a weakness in Google’s typical philosophy that everything can be solved by algorithmically. And, I also think that it’s a shame that some important sites online aren’t being accurately represented by PageRank. So while it might be a chink in the Google armor, it’s going to take another search engine coming in and offering a stronger, more accurate measurement of a page’s overall value.

Yahoo, Ask and MSN have the infrastructure in place to offer a better alternative. But the only thing that could ultimately beat Google is a company that came along with a truly semantic search that was more fully human. And it wouldn’t hurt if they also offered a better way to evaluate the relationships between websites on the web.

Earlier today I was chatting about the can of whoopass Google just opened. So basically, the situation is as follows:

• A few popular blogs get spanked for selling links or heavy network interlinking.
• TechCrunch and Andy Beard weigh in with their thoughts and lists.
• The interweb explodes in a fury of canceled PayPal subscriptions.

Is it just me or are we not getting sucked into the Google FUD machine? As of posting, what has Aaron Wall said? Nothing, cares more about YouTube subscribers. Did Andy Hagans have much to say on the matter? No, he can’t care less. What about senor Naylor? In true style he decides to remove nofollow tags from all links on his blog. Graywolf doesn’t really say much either, other than linking to a good but slightly irate post over at Technosailor. I think the reason these guys and many others haven’t got swept up in all this is the fact that they’ve been through Florida and Jagger. They’ve seen it all before, which is pretty much my thinking on this.

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Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few days you couldn’t miss the furore over the booting some popular blogs were dealt at the hands of Google because they were either a) selling links or b) interlinking too heavily. Anyway, I’m fed up with being fed the same FUD from Google, which is why I found this so funny, even though it calls into question Google’s (lack) of editorial control.

A word of advice for Google: get your own house in shape before pushing more of your propaganda down our throats. <sarcasm>Those look like high quality text link ads, don’t they. But it’s ok, they don’t pass any juice.</sarcasm>

You’d need to be living in a cage not to know who Madeline McCann is. Having been missing now for quite some time, Madeline’s parents have now been declared as suspects in the case.

Today I was searching Google for Gerry McCann’s blog for a statement on recent events and found these unscrupulous advertisers (click image to enlarge).

I don’t know about you, but I find this distasteful in the extreme. I put this question straight to Google; you don’t allow people to advertise guns, violence or illegal drugs but you will let scum like this take advantage of the frenzy around the tragic disappearance and possible death of a little girl?

I am a heavy user of the Yahoo! SiteExplorer tool. So when I headed over there this morning to check out backlinks I was surprised to see a new design being trialled across Yahoo! Search, excluding image, video search etc.

Be prepared; it’s rather ‘different’.
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