This day in search marketing history: March 3
Google Panda name revealed, plus: desktop page experience update completes rollout, Interflora gets its Google rankings back and more.
Topic: Peter Norvig
Peter Norvig is stepping back from Google after 20 years
He is joining Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute as a Distinguished Education Fellow.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, February 4, 2014
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google AdWords To Roll Out Flexible Conversion Counting, Says Goodbye To 1 Per-Click, Many-Per-ClickThis morning, Google announced in an email to a number of advertisers that upcoming changes will give advertisers […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, October 17, 2011
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Will Google See $6.25 Billion In Mobile Ad Revenue Next Year? During the earnings call last week after Google announced massive quarterly revenues ($9.72 billion), CEO Larry Page casually dropped the […]
Oh No! What Happened To My PageRank?
There has been a lot of discussion and scare on Twitter and within the SEO forums that Google has disabled the Toolbar PageRank scores from working. The truth is, no they have not. As several sites have reported already, PageRank is still alive in the Toolbar, but Google changed the lookup URL. This change has […]
Google: PageRank Drops Most Likely Because You Sell Links
In a new Matt Cutts video, the Google engineer answers why webmasters are likely to see a toolbar PageRank drop for their site. He mentions three reasons: (1) You simply lose a link from a third party page that had a lot of high PageRank. (2) You have weird canonicalization issues with your site and […]
Video: How Google Improves Their Search Algorithms
Google published a nice 4 minute video on how they go about improving their web search algorithms, the quality of results and the user interfaces. They talk about finding problems, coming up with new ideas, testing those ideas, approving or rejecting those ideas and implementing the ideas. Overall, much of this is not new to […]
Could Google Play Jeopardy Like IBM’s Watson?
Like many people, I was amazed to watch IBM’s Watson supercomputer playing Jeopardy this week against past human champions. But could Google have done the same thing? Let’s go behind the scenes of these two search masters to understand what they can — and can’t — do.
First Google Toolbar PageRank Update Of 2011
Google has updated the PageRank values of many sites within the Google Toolbar. This is the first toolbar PageRank update of the year, and arguably the first one in almost 9 months. There have been minor updates, where some sites have seen their PageRank change during 2010, but I believe the last huge PageRank update […]
How The “Focus On First” Helps Hide Google’s Relevancy Problems
In January, I was invited to speak to Google’s search quality team about issues I had with Google’s search results. My topic? For queries where I know a subject really well, I often found Google provided some pretty poor results in the top listings along with the good ones. I wanted more perfection! With the […]
Official: Google Now Lets One Domain Dominate Search Results
Prior to this week, Google would only show up to two results from the same domain on a single search result page. Now, Google has confirmed what many are seeing, where a single brand dominates a single page of Google’s search results. This is not a bug, this is not an anomaly, it is an […]
Google Search Results Dominated By One Domain
Update: Google has confirmed that this is a ranking/UI change. See statement below. Is it a test? Is it a bug? Is it a permanent change to Google’s search results? No one knows, and Google hasn’t answered our questions about it yet. What’s “it”? As Malcolm Coles describes in a blog post today, Google is […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 6, 2010
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Where Is Search Going? Surf Canyon’s Mark Cramer Some time ago, a gentleman by the name of Mark Cramer emailed me wanting to talk about the future of search. It was […]
Google’s Norvig: After The Top Result, There’s No Right Or Wrong
In light of this week’s news that Google Wave has crashed, plus Danny Sullivan’s follow up piece about Google’s other failures, it’s somewhat ironic that Slate magazine this week published an interview with Peter Norvig about … being wrong. Norvig is Google’s Director of Research and has been with the company for almost ten years […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, August 4, 2010
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: The SEO Rap Sheet: What Does Your Mug Shot Look Like? While attending the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle this year, I was very eager to sit in on the SEO […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 4, 2010
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Liveblog: SMX West 2010 Keynote – The State Of The Search Union It’s day three of SMX West 2010, and we’re going to kick off with a group keynote conversation called […]
SMX West 2010 Day Two Coverage
The second day of SMX West 2010 is in the books, and here are links to our own coverage of the day’s keynote:
Google’s Norvig: PageRank Is Overhyped
Speaking today at SMX West in Santa Clara, Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig, said that PageRank is overhyped and probably needs a new name. His comments came during the morning keynote session in a conversation with Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. After being asked about search technologies that he thinks are […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 3, 2010
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Liveblog: SMX West 2010 Keynote – An Insider’s Look At Google Research It’s day two of SMX West 2010 in a rainy Santa Clara, California, and we’ll be liveblogging today’s keynote […]
Liveblog: SMX West 2010 Keynote – An Insider’s Look At Google Research
It’s day two of SMX West 2010 in a rainy Santa Clara, California, and we’ll be liveblogging today’s keynote session. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman will be chatting on the big stage with Peter Norvig, Google’s Director of Research. We’re expecting some sneak peeks at future Google products and technology, so come […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 2, 2010
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bartz Says Yahoo Would Consider Buyout Speaking today on CNBC, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said that Yahoo would “absolutely” consider a buyout offer from “any company at the right price.” According […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, June 17, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 27, 2008
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
A Search Product CEO – Necessary To Win The Search Engine Game?
With Jim Lanzone being replaced as Ask.com’s CEO, I thought it time to do a piece that’s been banging about in my head. Do successful search companies have to have CEOs or top execs who "grew up" from the search product side? The jury is probably still out, but it’s interesting to look back at […]
Glimpse The Future Of Search At SMX West
We’ve just finalized the third keynote panel for SMX West, and it’s going to be a fascinating session. Gord Hotchkiss and I will be talking about the future of search with Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone, Brad Goldberg, Microsoft’s General Manager, Search Business Group, and Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig. This ‘Generation Next’ keynote discussion […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, December 19, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google & Human Quality Reviews: Old News Returns
A quote from Google’s director of research Peter Norvig in an article at Technology Review about how human reviewers assess Google’s search quality is starting to pick up play on the web and will no doubt grow. Problem is, it’s not news. Still, I suppose it’s interesting to those who are new to the space […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 23, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Search In The Year 2010
If I ever had to build a search engine, or more precisely, the interface of a search engine, this would be the team I would want to bring together. When I came up with the idea of looking forward three years and speculating on what the search results page may look like in 2010, these […]
SearchCap: The Day In Search, July 17, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.
Google’s Research Director Peter Norvig On ‘The Future Of Search’
MIT’s Technology Review published an interview with Google Director of Research Peter Norvig that explores his (and presumably Google’s) thinking about problems in search and “next-generation” search functionality that Google is working on. There’s nothing strikingly new in the interview but it’s an interesting overview and window into some of the current projects.
SearchCap: The Day In Search, April 23, 2007
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:
Goog411 Voice Search And Speech Recognition
Tim O’Reilly has an interesting post that went up last Friday on Google’s potential motivation in rolling out Goog411. The obvious answer to the question “Why is Google doing this?” is mobile voice search and directory assistance ($13 billion in annual revenue per Opus Research). The conventional wisdom, which includes me here, holds that Google […]