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Google, Blogs and Information
Posted by Paul Szynol on Monday, May 12 @ 18:35:39 EDT Free Expression
The Register is taking seriously the possibility that Google will remove blogs from its main index and place them in a separate tab, thereby eliminating "noise" from the search engine's primary results.

This is an interesting predicate and ideological issue.

First, Google will effectively privilege big media -- or, conversely, disadvantage blogs -- by stripping the main index of blogs altogether and reserving the space exclusively for other, more established sources of data. After all, many people will never click on the "blogs" option, and the blogs will disappear from their universe of options.

Second, I don't think it is fair or accurate to characterize blogs merely as "noise" (as the Register does). Arguably, to many Internet surfers blogs are far more important sources of information than are traditional media.

Finally, I don't think it is is wise or even reasonable to determine the value of information solely by the manner in which it is presented. The value of information is determined by content, not format.

Maybe ultimately this is not a huge threat to blogs as long as they do, in fact, remain on Google, albeit in a separate section. But it is, in the very least, interesting -- and telling -- to see the company make value judgments about what deserves to appear on Google's front page.

 
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Re: Google, Blogs and Information (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Monday, May 12 @ 22:40:49 EDT
I think that goofy blogs like mine help people access the "real" media, if the searches I get are any indication.


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Re: Google, Blogs and Information (Score: 1)
by JamesGrimmelmann on Monday, May 12 @ 22:43:32 EDT
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.laboratorium.net
Hmm. Interesting. Why not separate out media (practically, sites that update frequently)? That, in some sense, is what Google is already doing with Google News.

The difference between blogs and other news outlets is mostly that blogs have much higher link density, but the static-vs-stream distinction might well be the significant one.


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Re: Google, Blogs and Information (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, May 13 @ 00:37:36 EDT
I know I've become extremely frustrated at how often Google searches turn up useless comments on web-based discussion boards and the like. I'd much rather be able to limit my search to more-or-less static pages, where concrete information is more likely to be found. Everyone found it useful when Google News finally made it possible to search Usenet. I figure this will be a similar development.


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Re: Google, Blogs and Information (Score: 1)
by a-cubed on Tuesday, May 13 @ 12:08:33 EDT
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~sis00aaa
Given the "googlewashing" of both "The Second Superpower" and "googlewashing" recently, I think it's time Google did something about the weight blogs get given by its automated software (something about the prevalance of cross-linking I suspect). However, removing them onto a separate index is probably not sensible. If they can identify blogs that easily then they could do something to downplay their significance separately.

I think it's time someone came up and did to Google what they did to Altavista. It's all-or-nothing in these critical-mass applications, and no one's managed to do a Microsoft yet.



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Re: Google, Blogs and Information (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, May 13 @ 18:50:16 EDT
Eh. The thing is, many weblogs are tied in, very intimately, into the web. It's not just incestuous within the weblogs; good weblogs link to news and research sources, technical papers, and so on and so forth, at a level not nearly approximated by USENET. Also, there's a huge amount of noise out there that receives disproportionately high levels of linkage (compared to the regular web), but many blog articles have genuine original content, and are incredibly exciting to read.

So, yeah, a -noblog option might be a good thing, but I fail to see how removing blogs from the main search is going to help you any (news.google.com indexes media, but you don't remove the media websites from the regular google search).


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Re: Google, Blogs and Information (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Tuesday, May 13 @ 19:22:54 EDT
The article is written by Andrew Orlowski, who links to his previous article about how blogs "googlewashed" a phrase -- and there was a previously Lawmeme post on that one too, I think.

How much of this is Orlowski's wishful thinking? Google bought Pyra -- I'm thinking Google is therefore not in a rush to devalue blogs. You're right, Paul, that there are good reasons not to devalue blogs or marginalize them. My bet is that the Google folks are as smart as you are.

Orlowski's speculation that they might suddenly get as anti-bloggish as he is -- is probably wrong.

What this reveals is that some of the pros are feeling threatened by blogs, and for good reason I might add. I would have expected the Register to be more on the cluetrain, but accidents happen...

Btw, Lessig's blog linked to the Copyfight blog on mediacon today, which is very apropos to all of this. (Too lazy to post a hyperlink...)


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