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neural networks | google | spider

This question goes to the heart of what we do. You already know the short answer: Google uses more than 100 different factors, including the PageRank algorithm, to determine whether a site is trusted or reputable. If you think of the internet as a democracy, a web page that links to another page is “voting” for the value of the page. As we explain in our Technology Overview, PageRank interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote for Page B by Page A. PageRank then assesses a page’s importance by the number of votes it receives. But that’s not the end of the story. If Page A itself has more votes from other pages, the vote carries more weight. Or to put it another way, if more people trust your site, your trust is more valuable…more

This idea, as now acknowledged publicly by Google itself, echoes the notion of the Trust Vote, as I had described it previously on dotxxxblog.

Read: Combating Web Spam with Trustrank

trustrank | google

Line-making and Line-tending in Light of Trustrank

The classification systems we use everyday and all over the world are based almost entirely on arbitrary and subjective differences we decide exist between things. That two people can disagree on whether Object A belongs in Category 1 or Category 2 begins to illuminate an important problem faced by the Google Spider, as it is today. If two persons, with all five senses in good working order, can disagree on fundamental classification, how can the Spider, which is blind, serve them both?

To remember Image Search in its beginnings, you’ll recall SERPS filled with very generic looking, you might even say idealized, images of things. That was when the Spider was young and wholly literal, operating on the basis of simple text recognition for a pre-programmed list of words. If it encountered a file named apple.jpg, it assumed “apple” — which is exactly what its programmers wanted it to do. Programmers, who were also responsible for the initial “seed set” of images, chose ideal representations of basic objects, like the perfect red apple, a tree set by itself on a grassy hill, a pen on a desk, etc. Most people would probably do as they did, if given the job of “teaching the meaning of things” to a fledgling intelligence — read more about Division Trust and Trustrank.