Cleaning out my closet part I - patent bending

Hi all of you happy search geeks.. how are we festive or Grinchy? If you’re celebrating or not, the end of 2008 is fast approaching. There are so many things to look forward to in the new year and cleaning out blog post backlog is on of the joys of yammering on about one’s passion incessantly.

First on the list of things to ‘get out of my system’ are the numerous search related patents I never got around to writing about… For the truly search geeky ‘tis my first present under the end-of-year tree; some good reading to see what engineers are dreaming up at a search engine near you.

First up, the minions of mayhem up in the Plex; Google

Myth Busting 101 - taking media musings as gospel

Ooo look… Search Engine Land is getting into the behavioural metrics game – and creating more headaches.

Now, I love the fine folks at SEL because it’s a steady stream of search goodiness and they’ve been known to promote the Trail now and again. And while I don’t know Eric (Enge), I have a healthy respect for much of his work. But there is a time and a place to even whine at this venerable publication and Eric. (since we recently gave Search engine watch and Bruce Clay a hard time on this). 

You see, we just turned the corner on the whole ‘rankings are dead’ path and things have tempered which is nice to see. This time out more behavioural has been broached with a theory of bounce rate as a (serious) ranking factor. This line of thinking, while logically sensible, can be problematic from the search engines point of view.

Bounce rates as a ranking factor

The ‘study’ as cited, from SEO Black Hat, has been done to death and there in no way was any form of definitive research... if anything it was contradictory. I have been writing about search patents relating to behavioural metrics for some 18 months and while there is plenty of evidence of interest from Google, that fact remains as one Monsieur Cutts has called them; they are dirty/noisy signals (even an interview Eric did with Matt contains such assertions).

Search Engine Watch reports – Google’s algorithm is shifting

OM-friggen-G I am just stunned. Top resources in the SEO world simply SHOULD NOT be making bare-faced statements. They should not be publishing material that take suspicions and suppositions and state them as fact. Furthermore they should be careful what advice they give as a respected source.

For starters, there are MANY algorithms… stating ‘the algorithm' is a DUH… and they are always being tweaked, but whatever, bigger fish to fry here…

Now, I am the last guy that would be going off about peeps recognizing and discussing the evolution of search. Certainly not when mention of behavioural factors are involved as it is a common theme around here. But to write things such as those which were published today over at Search Engine Watch – it is simply bad form. At very least put a disclaimer or temper the language to one less assertive and assumptive. Or….

Show me your data (and I'll show U mine)

Yet another patent on phrase based indexing and retrieval (YaPaIR)

Unfortunately Cuil buzz has cooled, but at least co-founder Anna Patterson is back on the radar. If only in name and memories of what used to be that is. And if that radar is for patent droolers and semantic simians... then it is a name of note.

You see, things were different back in Oh4 when she was working with Google and toiled on computer learning model for understanding concepts and semantic relationships through phrasing. Ah yes, I remember it like it was yesterday….

That’s Cuil

Oh, we were just talking about Phrase based indexing and retrieval last week? You say Bill wrote about it as well? And we even managed to slip it into yesterday’s rant? Wow… just doesn’t want to go away huh?