Author:

Robert Gentel

Microsoft’s BrowseRank alternative to Google’s PageRank

Posted by Robert Gentel – July 25, 2008

Cnet broke a story about Microsoft’s BrowseRank (pdf link) about a authority ranking algorithm proposal coming out of Microsoft’s Chinese R&D labs that proposes “Letting Web Users Vote for Page Importance”. There isn’t much new to this, other than the new term “BrowseRank” as Microsoft has long viewed clickstream data as a potential way to outdo Google’s search algorithm, which like all other major search engines revolves around a page ranking system Google introduced that uses links on the web to determine authority.

Using user traffic has potential if you can aggregate enough scale, but a lot of the data is behind walled gardens. You can easily look at public web pages to count links but access to clickstream data is not as simple. Your options are to buy ISP data, to sample traffic and extrapolate, or just collect as much as you can on your own properties (only a few companies with scale to have useful data).

So ultimately this kind of algorithm is unlikely to be a groundbreaking difference and seems destined to be a supplemental part of the general ranking algorithms. We’ll see more of it and it shows promise in smoothing out link anomalies like link farms but isn’t likely going to be the core of a major search engine any time soon.

Google’s bringing it out to measure again… 1 trillion urls!

Posted by Robert Gentel – July 25, 2008

Google announced a new milestone of 1 trillion urls, which is impressive enough that we might as well forgive them for bringing us back to the index measuring wars of yesteryear. In the past, search engine bragging rights were about how much of the web their index contained. Then Google stopped publishing their index total on their home page and said it was quality (of search relevance) and not quality that mattered.

But a trillion’s a bit much to keep mum about so there you go. It doesn’t mean much but it’s interesting that it comes right before a stealth competitor launches a search engine they will claim to be the biggest (I think it’s a coincidence).

Matt Cutts announces new Google Toolbar Pagerank coming

Posted by Robert Gentel – July 24, 2008

Matt Cutts, a Google engineer who leads their webspam team announced that Google is updating their tool bar Page rank soon.

What is “toolbar Pagerank”?

In the good ole days of SEO Google’s index was periodically updated, and the SEOs all rushed to check out their Pagerank and positions. Back then the correlation between the two was much bigger, and the Pagerank in the toolbar was what a lot of SEO professionals fixated on.

Over time, Google got better at discerning the context of pages and rankings depended a lot less on the url’s general Pagerank and Google also started delaying their tool bar Pagerank while beginning to constantly calculate the ranks. One of the reasons Google does this is to make it harder for SEOs to manipulate their rankings, as the feedback is delayed and it’s harder to tell what worked or didn’t work.

So now Google periodically (every 3-4 months) takes a snapshot of their Pagerank data and pushes it out to the public through the toolbar (and the various other sites that query their toolbar servers). For more information read Matt’s explanation here.

Google Knol now open to everyone

Posted by Robert Gentel – July 23, 2008

Google’s Knol service is being billed as a Wikipedia killer, and while it has its similarities in purpose it has differences in implementation that set it apart. First of all, the Knols (individual units of knowledge) are not as open as Wikipedia. Individuals can collaborate in groups but you can also make control your own knol and be its sole contributor.

In practice this means that there can be many Knol articles about the same subject and this will mean less consolidation and more diversity. The mission statements are very different as well, and you don’t need to write with a neutral point of view on a Knol and can produce original research. You can probably post a lot of pure garbage that wouldn’t be allowed on Wikipedia on a Knol.

The effect that I predict that this will have is that Knols will be more like individual web pages than a Web Encyclopedia. And they are going to tend to be more commercial and less academic without the encyclopedic purpose and with the revenue sharing of Adsense ads that they will offer their contributors.

Expect a SEO heavy crowd in the early stages. This is going to be more like blogging that Wikipedia in effect.

phpBB Admin Email Search Mod Version 1.0.1

Posted by Robert Gentel – August 14, 2004

Many times a user will contact a board admin saying that they can’t log in. Unfortunately because phpBB’s log in system does not use the email for the log in the user often forgets their username they used on the board.

With a small board it is easy to find the username based on the email, with a larger board it is not.

So this mod adds an admin panel email lookup. Just type in an email and it will show what account name that email is registered to. It also has direct links to view or edit the profile.

The installation is simple, and does not involve any file editing at all. Just upload the files and the email search will appear in the admin panel.

Download the Code

Get Support

phpBB SEO Mod – able2know SEO 2.0.0

Posted by Robert Gentel – November 16, 2003

I get so many questions about phpBB search engine optimization that I am finally writing up the definitive mod for this.

Read more at the original phpbb SEO Mod thread on able2know or download the mod.