[LINK] Google Inadequacies [Was Re: Tony and ANU]

[Roger Clarke]

>Roger Clarke wrote:
>>  I've been using the ANU's copy of Panoptic/Funnelback as the
>>  standard, and measuring Google's service against it.

At 10:45 +1100 23/2/09, Danny Yee wrote:
>Sydney Uni also uses Panoptic/Funnelback.  My experience is that its
>relevance rankings are not nearly as good as even an improvised Google
>site search -- just "<search terms> site:usyd.edu.au".  I suspect
>that's largely because Google knows about links on *external* sites,
>which provides valuable information about how useful people find
>various Uni web pages.

'Relevance' and 'not as good as' depend on the standard adopted.

(And clearly we're each free to choose whatever standard suits us. 
And indeed to use different standards for different purposes).

As I understand it, Panoptic uses the (longstanding, until Google) 
convention of occurrence of words or strings within text, including 
location of use (e.g. use-in-title counts more than use-in-text) and 
frequency of use.

Google uses the (at least in 1998) novel approach of (also? or 
exclusively?) determining precedence according to the number of pages 
that point to it, which by inference means how authoritative the page 
is considered by other page-authors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

</teaching how to suck eggs>

[i.e. I know Danny knows all this, as do lots of other linkers!  But 
I thought it important that we use evaluative terms in full 
cognisance of the ambiguities involved.]


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
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Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW