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Google United – Google Patent Examined
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc.
April 6, 2005
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Thoughts on Google’s patent… “Information
retrieval based on historical data.”
Google’s newest patent application is lengthy. It is interesting
in some places and enigmatic in others. Less colourful than most end user
license agreements, the patent covers an enormous range of ranking analysis
techniques Google wants to ensure are kept under their control. Some of
the ideas and concepts covered in the document are almost certainly worked
into the current algorithm running Google. Some are being worked in as this
article is being written. Some may never see the blue-light of electrons
but are pretty good ideas so it might have been considered wise to patent
them. Google’s not saying which is which. While not exactly War and
Peace, it’s a pretty complex document that gives readers a glimpse
inside the minds of Google engineers. What it doesn’t give is a 100%
clear overview of how Google operates now and how the various ideas covered
in the patent application will be integrated into Google’s algorithms.
One interesting section seems to confirm what SEOs have been saying for
almost a year, Google does have a “sandbox” where it stores
new links or sites for about a month before evaluation.
Google is in the midst of sweeping changes to the way it operates as a
search engine. As a matter of fact, it isn’t really a search engine
in the fine sense of the word anymore. It isn’t really a portal either.
It is more of an institution, the ultimate private-public partnership. Calling
itself a media-company, Google is now a multi-faceted information and multi-media
delivery system that is accessed primarily through its well-known interface
found at www.google.com.
Google is known for its from-the-hip style of innovation. While the face
is familiar, the brains behind it are growing and changing rapidly. Four
major factors (technology, revenue, user demand and competition) influence
and drive these changes. Where Microsoft dithers and .dll’s over its
software for years before introduction, Google encourages its staff to spend
up to 20% of their time tripping their way up the stairs of invention. Sometimes
they produce ideas that didn’t work out as they expected, as was the
case with Orkut, and sometimes they produce spectacular results as with
Google News. The sum total of what works and what doesn’t work has
served to inform Google what its users want in a search engine. After all,
where the users go, the advertising dollars must follow. Such is the way
of the Internet.
In its recent SEC filing, the first it has produced since going public
in August 2004, Google said it was going to spend a lot of money to continue
outpacing its rivals. This year they figure they will spend about $500 million
to develop or enhance newer technologies. In 2004 and 2003, Google spent
$319 million and $177 million respectively. The increase in innovation-spending
corresponds with a doubling of Google’s staff headcount which has
jumped from 1628 employees in 2003 to 3021 by the end of 2004.
Over the past five years Google has produced a number of features that
have proven popular enough to be included among its public-search offerings.
On their front page, these features include Image Search, Google Groups,
Google News, Froogle, Google Local, and Google Desktop. There are dozens
of other features which can be accessed by clicking on the “more” button
near the upper right of the screen. We believe that Google is working to
tie all these features together to present its users with search options
that are, for want of a better phrase, more relevant than those offered
by its competitors. As the Internet and technologies available for users
advances, different types of files become searchable and therefore relevant
to users. Take Google Video as an example. Now Google (and some of its competitors)
can find and read text from closed captioning scripts. As well quotes from
recent episodes of virtually any TV show are searchable and can be served
back to users along side the clip where the quote originated. Now, imagine
a merging of video, textual, graphical and audio files in organic search
results. This is, in our opinion, the true intent of the ideas contained
in the patent document.
The patent document relates primarily to sorting and cataloging organic
search results. As we know them today, organic search results at Google
are influenced by a number of factors, many of which involve an evaluation
of incoming links. Google needs to ensure its users and advertisers that
it is capable of taking action against the darker facets of the search engine
optimization sector. Recent stories in the mainstream press have left many
with the impression that dark-art SEO and link-spamming is the surest way
to get top placements. Google engineers take pride in their work and the
popularity of their organic search results is the bedrock on which their
profitable business models are built. They can’t afford to allow link-spam
and deceptive SEO techniques to dominate their organic listings, especially
as these listings are about to address and catalog a much more robust and
complicated Internet.
Over the past ten months, SEOs have complained and questioned the phenomena
known as the Google Sandbox. The sandbox theory explains the time-lag between
link-acquisition for a site and link-recognition and reward by Google. A
few key sections of the patent document fill in the blanks for SEOs on what
Google is examining when a finely crafted link-building campaign falls into
the sandbox. The biggest influencer is links and Google is finding new and
improved ways to evaluate them.
Google’s core algorithm is based on measuring links coming into
a page. Because of this, link-building is part of any good search engine
optimization campaign. In the span of a month, incoming links to one
or more pages of a website might jump by hundreds or thousands. Some
of those links might be useful in Google’s eyes and some might
be useless. The question is, how does it sort which is which?
Google collects a lot of data when it examines a page and the links directed
on to or off of that page. When Google mentions they are using “historic
data” to determine the value of links directed to your page, they
are referring to a number of factors. It knows how long the page has been
online, or at least when it first became aware of said page. It also knows
how long pages linked to have been online. It knows how often links get
clicked and also knows which computer, (and in many cases, exactly who)
is clicking the link and where that clicking is coming from.
For an example, check out the following sections from the patent document:
- A method for scoring a document, comprising: identifying a document;
obtaining one or more types of history data associated with
the document; and generating a score for the document based on the
one or more types
of history data.
- The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more
types of history data includes information relating to an inception
date; and wherein
the generating a score includes: determining an inception date corresponding
to the document,
and scoring the document based, at least in part, on the inception
date corresponding to the document.
- The method of claim 2, wherein
the document includes a plurality of documents; and wherein the
scoring the document includes: determining
an
age of each of the documents based on the inception dates
corresponding to the documents, determining an average age of the
documents based on the ages of the documents, and scoring the documents
based,
at least in part,
on a difference between the ages of the documents and the
average
age.
- The method of claim 2, wherein the generating a score for
the document includes scoring the document based, at least
in part, on an elapsed time
measured from the inception date corresponding to the document.
By the time a reader gets to item 63, the document has covered dozens of
page, site, link and URL related factors that may or may not be included
in the current working algorithm.
Here is a quick breakdown of “history factors” we think are
relevant to Google’s algorithm today. Please note, each item might
refer to a specific page and at the same time, also refer to all other pages
associated with it.
- How long a domain or URL has has been registered.
- Has ownership of a
domain changed after previous registrations expired?
- Has the physical
location of the registrant changed?
- How lengthy is the URL itself? Was
it registered to game the index?
- How many pages are included in the
website? (A one document or page website is not considered a highly
relevant source of information.)
- Freshness and age of document.
- Use of anchor text (both on site and in
links directed to site).
- “Trust Factors” regarding sites or pages outbound links
refer to, and inbound links are found on.
- The “discovery date” of
a particular link and the history of changes involving that link.
- Rate
of growth for new links. A sudden burst of growth likely indicates
some form of link-spam.
- Variations in anchor text used to phrase links
directed to a page being evaluated. If the same anchor text is used
in every inbound link,
are they
phrased that way for branding purposes or spamming purposes?
- Number
of searches for keyword phrase associated with the anchor text used
in links.
- Number of times Google users click on Google results by entering
keyword phrases used in anchor text of incoming links. Does the page
being evaluated
receive visitors for that keyword phrase on Google’s search engine?
- How
do users actually behave while on the page, site or document being
evaluated?
There is a lot more to find in this document. Thus far, the more we explain,
the more questions we have. One thing we are very sure about, the intent
of the ideas covered in the patents extends beyond the search tool we know
now. We expect to publish a white paper on our analysis of the patent and
its implications early next week. Until then, we advise our clients to stay
the course. We have long preached a very conservative approach to Google
based on relevant link building (which can be slow going but very effective),
highly stratified content that is relevant only to the topic addressed by
the site, and clear paths based on multiple keyword phrases for spiders
to follow.
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