| You're reading things into this that I didn't write, I'd say. When Google arrived, it was a huge advance in search. It offered an obvious improvement in relevancy, which is why so many serious searchers switched to it from AltaVista and then users of other search engines moved over. Nothing I wrote suggested that Google was bad, didn't offer great relevancy or anything like that. My story is about what happened when Google revealed PageRank scores for pages across the web. That fueled an explosion in link buying and selling. It allowed people to attach Google's own score to a page, a value if you will that Google itself placed on those pages, which made it easier to then assign a monetary value. In turn, that lead to many of the woes that the web as a whole has to deal with today: understanding how to use nofollow to block links, to stay in Google's good graces. Spam mail pitching links, trying to buy links. Link spam I'm sure we'd have had some of this even without PageRank scores ever having been revealed. Perhaps it would have been as much, even. After all, it was well-known that Google was leveraging links as part of its ranking algorithm. The market would have been there. But I do think that releasing the PageRank scores accelerated market faster than it would have done otherwise. Back to the gaming -- again, it feels like you're reading stuff I didn't actually write. I'm certainly not saying that Google itself introduced the ability for people to try and game search engines. That was happening even before Google existed. Of course, Google initially thought it was immune. In 1998, Sergey Brin even said this on a panel that I moderated: "Google’s slightly different in that we never ban anybody, and we don’t really believe in spam in the sense that there’s no mechanism for removing people from our index. The fundamental concept we use is, you know, is this page relevant to the search? And, you know, some pages which, you know, they may almost never appear on the search results page because they’re just not that relevant." Google soon changed its view and introduced extensive spam fighting efforts. Those were inevitable. As you say, it was prey that would attract predators. And even with the link selling, it has done an admirable job fighting off the spam. It's not always perfect, but it's a very robust system. Nevertheless, the spam attempts will continue regardless if Google actually blunts them because, as the article explained, there's simply so many people with misconceptions that they'll chase anything anyway. PageRank scores fed into this, that's all. |
> My story is about what happened when Google revealed PageRank scores for pages across the web.
And I'd assert that people already knew if they were number one in the search results, or not. And that metric continues to be the main thing they pay attention to. Well, that and their traffic numbers from Google. My point being, we all knew Google was using links to rank, and the search result rank was visible just by doing a search on a few of your synonyms and adjacent terms, market, brands, trademarks, etc. The battle over spamming links was inevitible, whether they revealed PageRank numbers or not.
> I'm sure we'd have had some of this even without PageRank scores ever having been revealed. Perhaps it would have been as much, even. After all, it was well-known that Google was leveraging links as part of its ranking algorithm. The market would have been there. But I do think that releasing the PageRank scores accelerated market faster than it would have done otherwise.
I can agree with that, but that's not the tone that I get from your article, at all.
The tone I get is that Google created this monster, visible PageRank score, and those crappy emails, link drops, and need to use nofollow, are uniquely Google's fault, and it all could have been prevented if they hadn't ruined the web in 2000 by making it visible.
> Google initially thought it was immune.
Your quote from Sergey doesn't imply to me that he thought they were immune. It tells me that they mechanism they intended to use to fight spam would be to reduce its rank so low that "...they may almost never appear on the search results page..."
You may think that's a pedantic difference, but I see it as a meaningful difference. You can't claim that we're all immune to measles, mumps, polio... But we've reduced the incidence to an incredibly low level, here in the Western world.