Should You Be Conceerned With New Algorithms?
Everyone is constantly talking about what will be the next “Google Killer”. New search engines appear and older competitors are trying new ways to be more effective in locating and displaying what you are looking for.
Recently Microsoft has begun trying a new search theory called BrowseRank which relies more on human visitor elements by measuring and ranking how the visitor actually uses the site. Things like how long they stay and much more. This sounds like a good idea, although many people already don’t trust MicroSoft and there will be privacy concerns raised.
What I think about whether you should be concerned about this new algorithm is that you should learn about it, but not worry about it. By making a site that your human visitors can easily use and enjoy is always going to be the best method of making it more popular no matter which search engine or ranking method are used. I have written before about designing for your human visitors and that advice is still what I believe.
Very interesting, although this has been tried before. DirectHit had a search engine built entirely on clickstream data (Acquired by Ask.com in 2000). They got the data from ISPs in those days. The end-result is really not that much better than Page-Rank.
We at Me.dium on the other hand (http://me.dium.com/search) are processing our user’s clickstream data in real-time to create a different lens based on what’s going on now. e.g. do a search for John Edwards on Google or Live, and you get johnedwards.com and wiki/johnedwards. Do the same search on Me.dium and you learn that today people care about his love child, pictures of his mistress, etc.
The difference is real-time (what people are browsing now) vs. historical (what they browsed in the past). Social vs. Old School. Check it out and let us know your thoughts. http://me.dium.com/search.
Comment by Chris — August 25, 2008 @ 2:45 pm