Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

Team Angry — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:46:27 -0000

This is one of the exact reasons why more people really should take 45 minutes and come over to http://www.angrysellers.com.

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

Rhys — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:20:22 -0000

The sooner PR is gone the better, its so flawed and such an easy system to fool.

H&R Online Services Limited

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

Chris Tew — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:46:12 -0000

I think you are seriously under-estimating what other factors Google takes into account - it goes way beyond links...

http://twitter.com/MrMunchW...
http://twitter.com/MrMunchW...

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

Markus — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:15:09 -0000

I think the difference is the timeliness of such a social media index which will be updated in seconds and not in days, weeks or months like the pagerank.

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

Ling — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:12:51 -0000

Interesting. Social media is simply a way of letting the people decide which page is more important. They're already doing that. Why would you need to add one more layer on top of that?

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

Markus — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:11:22 -0000

I totally agree with your idea of a social media index

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:25:11 -0000

"Users will indicate far better what is of interest by the fact of linking to it"

But this is exactly what PageRank does.
Probably in the future Google will add some features you mentioned to PageRank. I think that it would be a evolution not a revolution.

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

vacation — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:39:48 -0000

this is a pretty interesting concept.

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

Steven — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:15:22 -0000

What's the difference? PageRank can easily accomodate this into their new special sauce. Besides, friends sharing a link with friends, already increases pagerank, as long as that shared link is crawlable. Another one-off utility idea that has no monetization strategy.

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

Peter Rich — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:12:25 -0000

Social rank assumes that what the 'popular' masses deem important is what I am looking for, which it often is not. It also only indicates one aspect of human behavior. It is also a system, like Pagerank, that can be duped fairly easily--lots of friends ganging up on certain cites, etc. As some have mentioned, a more complex system of analyzing human behavior would be more beneficial. For example, let's couple the social aspect of the site with data about how that site is used. How long does each visitor stay at that site? Do they stay longer if referred from other sites? I know this is taboo (but being explored), but how long do they spend at a particular site in relation to the sites in their history? Integrating such factors as these might make searching the internet for related sites much more meaningful to my personal circumstances and history. While the social aspect is important, the computer could help direct like-behaving people to similiar sites.

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

StevenHodson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:21:23 -0000

thanks Brandon and most definitely this couldn't be site or service specific - it would have to take them all into account.

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

StevenHodson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:20:36 -0000

Gabe,

As I said to Bob I wasn't really thinking of the whole "voting" senerio when working through this idea but rather on the stuff that is already available flowing through social media. Users will indicate far better what is of interest by the fact of linking to it or talking about a person or idea or post. That for me would be more important that a "voting" scheme

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

StevenHodson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:18:20 -0000

Bob,

I didn't really take into account things like "voting" per se. What I was thinking of was other things like the tradition link counting (that Google does) and the untraditional things like *Name* count etc. There is enough information already flowing through all the different social media pipes that being able to form some sort of ranking out of it should be possible

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

Gabe — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:58:22 -0000

While a social media ranking based on user voting, attention, etc, could certainly play a part in search ranking in the future, I don't think it will "overtake" the tradition page ranking method.

People are much more inclined to share and vote on certain types of content over others. If I'm searching for information regarding a medical condition pagerank may give me better results than social ranking because this may not be something people care to share and vote on. Social ranking will certainly play an increasingly larger role, but you will need to acknowledge certain limits of social ranking.

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

StevenHodson — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:16:20 -0000

I agree with you Alexander - it would be a hellva challenge to pull off successfully but if someone does it could change a few things on the web.

Re: 2008/07/02/google-pagerank/

Alexander van Elsas — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:11:29 -0000

I touched it but didn't say it. A perfect complementary train of thought here Steven. Great post! It will be so interesting to see developments in this direction. Really hard to accomplish, but someone will try and have a go at it. What makes it especially hard in my mind is that PageRank s just that, a rank for pages. You can write clean algorithms that. A social media rank needs to take human behavior into account and that makes it more difficult. It is not just the "like" in Friendfeed or the digg of some piece of content. It needs to capture the fragmented conversation that arise around persons or content. The interaction. Sounds like a pretty interesting ranking challenge ;-)