Date: Fri 09-Apr-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

iinfo-brand-google

Full Text:

INTERNET INFO FOR REAL PEOPLE: Google!

By Bob Brand

Finding relevant information on the Web remains a major challenge facing both

new and experienced Web-surfers. This topic has been the subject of several

articles about search engines in previous columns. Sadly, the primary focus of

many search sites has changed.

In an effort to exploit their popularity (and pay for the high cost of

maintaining the database), many sites sport a clearly commercial look. They

have become cluttered with banner ads and hotlinks to everything from chat

areas to weather reports. The technical jargon for this phenomenon is called:

portal development.

Unfortunately, in most cases, the reconstruction has been taken to an extreme.

It has become a non-trivial chore just to find the subject box where the

search word or phrase needs to be entered in order to start the search

process. The idea, of course, is for the site to direct the surfer to places

where the advertisers have links to their sites. They hope something will be

found of interest and purchased. In fact, the ranking of the information

returned from searches is often subtly influenced by the ad money spent by

search engine benefactors. In addition, a surfer often is exposed to a banner

ad that is germane to the topic being investigated. While there are times when

this is helpful, most often, it is not.

Have the search engines "sold out" to commercial interests? Most certainly!

Since advertising pays the freight, it makes sense that their ads should have

choice positions at the trough of commerce.

A New Player

In an already overcrowded "web-roadmap," a new player has emerged. From the

hallowed sun drenched walls of Silicon Valley's Stanford University, two

graduate students (Sergy Brin and Larry Page) have developed a new

cyber-mousetrap. Its name is Google. It is a classical search engine.

Officially, however, it is still in the cocoon (pre-production) stage.

Nevertheless, it works very well.

When visitors arrive at the site, they are greeted with a clean, uncluttered

look. This site is ready for business right from the gitgo. As Google enters

the commercial jungle of the Web, this is likely to change.

PageRank -- A New Cyber-Twist

Google employs a unique function named PageRank (probably coined by Larry

Page). The ranking of the matches (the URLs returned) to the search

word/phrase is influenced by the number of other websites that point to the

page. This turns out to be a kind of a cyber peer review. Essentially, if

other people like the site (expressed by a hotlink), it must be good. Clever.

To give a sample of the power of PageRank, I entered: "Internet Info for Real

People" (without the quotes) into the major search engines: Excite, Lycos,

Yahoo! Altavista, Hotbot, Ask Jeeves, and Google. Only Google returned (as

3): Internet Info For Real People -- Main Page

(http://www.thebee.com/bweb/brand.htm). Altavista returned good matches of

other IIFRP articles, but not the main page. The other engines returned

matches that were frankly, laughable. It should be noted that I link all my

articles to the main page. Naturally, the main page should stand like a beacon

on a clear summer's night for any search engine spider that roams the TCP/IP

network of the World Wide Web. Only Google was able to grasp the obvious.

People who have taken the time to develop a personal website often receive a

pleasant surprise when they enter their name in the Google engine. They are

usually rewarded with a match to their site.

The Kids From Stanford

How is it that these two kids from Stanford could develop a superior software

technique (technical term: algorithm) in the crowded area of search engine

development? Stanford University has a rich history of producing technological

innovation, especially in the search engine field. Both Yahoo! and Excite are

products of Stanford's silicon software foundry.

From a webmaster's point of view, a search engine that consistently generates

top 10 matches comes as a godsend. In my case, Google produces "first page"

(read: top 10) matches to my articles when the following search topics are

entered: Ken Layne, Hacking Furby, Matt Drudge, Antiques Roadshow, Juno

e-mail, Uuencoding, Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf, Homicide: LOTS, Cyber-booze,

Higher Speed, Second Phone Line, Dummies Books, Stephen Glass, 1999

Predictions and others. Try Google. Highly recommended.

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of interest:

http://www.techsightings.com/cgi-bin/ts_review.pl?240

http://www.techweb.com/wire/finance/story/netgain/INV19990127S0005

http://web.slashdot.org/articles/99/01/28/2057232.shtml

http://www.roedu.net/~cmatei/search/google/google.html

(This is the 149th of a series of elementary articles designed for surfing the

Internet. Next, ISPs -- large and Small is the subject on tap. Stay tuned.

Until next week, happy travels through cyberspace. Previous issues of Internet

Info for Real People can be found: http://www.thebee.com. Please e-mail

comments and suggestions to: rbrand@JUNO.com or editor@thebee.com.)