Experiments in Cyberspace

After Google's April 2009 PageRank update, there has once again been a commotion and confusion about the issue of links in paid-for-posts and how they affect PageRank. As far as Google is concerned, their stand is crystal clear. Their webmaster guidelines dictate a nofollow attribute on such links as Google's Matt Cutts and Maile Ohye explain , Our goal is to provide users the best search experience by presenting equitable and accurate results. We enjoy working with webmasters, and an added benefit of our working together is that when you make better and more accessible content, the internet, as well as our index, improves. This in turn allows us to deliver more relevant search results to users. If, however, a webmaster chooses to buy or sell links for the purpose of manipulating search engine rankings, we reserve the right to protect the quality of our index. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank violates our webmaster guidelines. Such links can hurt relevance by cau...

Rumors have surfaced up that the number one search engine Google is in late (early according to some) stages to acquire Twitter for an undisclosed price above $250 million. Twitter has recently rejected an offer by Facebook for $500 million worth of Facebook shares. Why would Google want Twitter? Michael Arrington argues Twitter's real value is in search. It holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn't even have a horse in the game: More and more people are starting to use Twitter to talk about brands in real time as they interact with them. And those brands want to know all about it, whether to respond individually, or simply gather the information to see what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong. And all of it is discoverable at search.twitter.com, the search engine that Twitter acquired last summer. People searching for news. Brands searching for feedback. That's valuable stuff. Twitter know...

As readers of this blog are aware, my view of using social media is not mainstream, or should I say it is unorthodox. I strongly believe that achieving higher ranks in search engine results will yield more positive returns in the long run, as opposed to getting to the front pages of social media sites. Although this opinion is based more on intuition rather than raw data, I do have some statistics albeit limited in depth and scope. I paid a visit to an internet cafe whose owner is a friend of mine. After a full day's observation, here are my preliminary findings: From a total of 54 customers, none visited a social media site. 60% of those said "yes" when asked if they had made a query using a search engine that day. The most popular application was MSN's instant message service. I will go on and speculate that, a considerable percentage of social media users is made up of bloggers themselves and commercial site owners. For any blogger who wants to target casu...

  Either Google is onto something - a new experiment perhaps or a hack- or entire web is harmful and full of malicious content according to Google. The image shows the lame search for "MSN". However, if you click the link, rather any link on search engine result page, this is the screen that welcomes you: "Warning - visiting this web site may harm your computer." Do you really think we cannot trust the world wide web any more? Do children need protection to such an extent? I do not know, you decide. :-)

WebbieStuffs has an article about Google's ever-improving translation service, now available in almost all Indo-European languages plus a few others. An interesting but little known service or by-product of Google Translate is you can also use it as web proxy. Suppose you live in a country where everyone and his dog can go to a court and restrict access to a web site say, in Mauritius (I am not joking). Due to the government's (a fictitious government to the east of Bulgaria and Greece) short-sighted approach at the time of legislation and service providers' reluctance to make extra investment, nobody bothers to contact the web master enjoying the sunset in Mauritius and access to her site is blocked at a national level in a 10 minute court session. Since not everybody has the technical know-how to find a working proxy and adjust their browsers' settings, here is a neat trick. Go to Google Translate page . Enter the offensive URL. If the offensive site is Englis...

It is customary to compile a list of events when the New Year is near. As most of you know, Google makes a similar list of popular searches every year on a country by country basis. I have taken the liberty of picking the most interesting queries among them. Here they are: "my" from Australia - This is definitely my number one. When you don't have a mirror, what do you do? Yes, you ask Google. "qq" from China - It probably means something in Chinese; then again, it might not. "you" from Chile - Another intelligent search item. Were they talking to Google bot? It was also the number eight of the Colombians and number nine of the Spanish. I am beginning to suspect you is a nick for a new drug. "danmark" from Denmark - Apparently the Danish like to see how many times their country is indexed by the search engines. "google" from Germany - I have nothing to say. "hong kong" from Hong Kong - The Danish were not alone. ...

Linda Hilfling, with her project Gate Peepin' and the Misspelling Generator, will be among the speakers of Speaking out Loud symposium of Netherlands Media Art Institute , to be held on December 18, 2008. Linda works with the premises of participation and public spaces within media structures, with a focus on means of control (codes, organization and law) and their cultural impact. Her artistic practice takes the form of interventions reflecting upon or revealing hidden gaps in these structures. Initially designed and coded in python and bash by her and also available as a Firefox extension thanks to Erik Borra, the Misspelling Generator intervenes directly within the Google search engine, allowing users to take advantage of the informational gray-zone of misspellings. And it does exactly what it claims: Each query typed into the normal Google search-box will generate misspellings inserted above the normal Google results – similar to Google’s 'Did you mean', but now...

Einstein was a great scientist and without exception all physics students new to his work are introduced to his use of Gedanken Experiment or thought experiments. Gren Ireson, a lecturer at Loughborough University, UK, where his research interests include quantum philosophy, physics of sport and learning and teaching physical sciences, contests that a thought experiment has three requirements [PDF]: It is carried out in the mind (however one cares to define 'mind'). It draws on experience. It allows the experimenter to see what is happening (perhaps a better term to use than 'see' is 'imagine' or 'form a mental image').  I see a lot of blogs announcing they do follow comments lately, so I will humbly use Einstein's technique to shed some light on do follow commenting today. Let us start with a definition first. Google's Matt Cutts speaks: The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives web masters the ability to modify PageRank flow ...