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Using the Internet: Skill Related Problems in User Online Behavior; van Deursen& van Dijk; 2009System and Method of Encoding and Decoding Variable-length data: June 27, 2006http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/

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Here it is, the famous, to some infamous PageRank algorithm. This is its most stripped down state. Rumor has it that the algorithm now has in excess of 27 components. We’ll look at some of these extensions in a few moments.

Important to note: The PageRank algorithm is a pre-query calculation. It is a value that is assigned as a result of the search engine’s indexing of the entire Web and the associated value has no relationship to the user’s information need. There have been a number of additions and enhancements to lend some contextual credence to the relevance ranking of the results.

When google appears in 1998, it is the underdog to search giants like Alta Vista and Yahoo! Its simplified relevance model with the foundation of human mediation through linking [each link was at that time the product of direct human endeavor and so viewed as a “vote” for the page or site relevance and information merit]

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SES New York 2005: Mike Gehan… explains that engines want the most relevant results, which is hard "because end users are search nitwits!http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/001600.html

Relational content modeling

6/9/2010

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Search 2.0 is the “wisdom of crowds”

• Helping each other find information with online bookmarking and

community sites

• Technorati

• Delicious

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Using the Internet: Skill Related Problems in User Online Behavior; van Deursen & van Dijk; 2009

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Using the Internet: Skill Related Problems in User Online Behavior; van Deursen & van Dijk; 2009

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Watch out for those Facebook applications, quizzes,etc, Tweets, Linked-in dataImproving Search using Population Information (November 2008): Determine population information associated with the query that is derived from a population database

Locations of usersPopulations that users are associated withGroups users are associated with (gender, shared interests, self-& auto-assigned identity data)

Rendering Context Sensitive Ads for Multi-topic searchers (April 2008): Resolves ambiguities by monitoring user behavior to determine specific interest Presentation of Local Results (July 2008): Generating 2 sets of results, one with relevance based on location of device used for searchDetecting Novel Content (November 2008): indentify and assign novelty score to one or more textual sequences for an individual document in a setDocument Scoring based on Document Content Update (May 2007): scoring based on how document updated over time, rate of change, rate of change for anchor-link text pointing to documentDocument Scoring based on Link-based Criteria (April 2007): System to determine time-varying behavior of links pointing to a document ; growth in # of links pointing to the document (exceeds the acceptable threshold), freshness of links, age distribution of links

deployed as Google Scout

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Microsoft: Launches “decision engine” with focus on multiple meaning (contexts) as well as term indexing and topic association and tracking-Lead researcher Susan Dumais at the forefront of user behavior for prediction on search relevance-Look to recent acquisition of Powerset (semantic indexing) and FAST ESP (semantic processing)

Calculating Valence of Expressions within Docum0ents for Searching a Document Index (March 2009): System for natural language search and sentiment analysis through a breakdown of the valence manipulation in documentEfficiently Representing Word Sense Probabilities (April 2009): Word sense probabilities stored in a semantic index and mapped to “buckets.” Tracking Storylines Around a Query (May 2008): Employ probabilistic or spectral techniques to discover themes within documents delivered over a stream of time

Consolidate the plurality of info around certain subjects (track stories that continue over time)Collect results over time and sort (keeps track of the current themes and alerts to new)

TrackRank (relevance)Present abstracts

Compares the query with the contents of each document to discover whether query exists implicitly or explicitly in received documentBuilds topic models

Document Segmentation based on Visual Gaps (July 2006): Document white space/gaps used to identify hierarchical structure

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Systems and Methods for Contextual Transaction Proposals (July 2006)Delivering Items Based on Links to Resources Associated with Results (April 2008): Present links to resources associated by links to resources presented in results setWeb Activity Monitoring System with Tracking by Categories and Terms (December 2006): Collect event data from servers (traffic, search requests, purchases, etc), categorize and analyze to detect flurries of activities (increased interest) associated with a topic, term or category

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Some observers claim that Google is now running on as many as a million Linux servers. At the very least, it is running on hundreds of thousands. When you consider that the application Google delivers is instant access to documents and services available from, by last count, more than 81 million independent web servers, we're starting to understand how true it is, as Sun Microsystems co-founder John Gage famously said back in 1984, that "the network is the computer." It took over 20 years for the rest of the industry to realize that vision, but we're finally there. ...

First, privacy. Collective intelligence requires the storage of enormous amounts of data. And while this data can be used to deliver innovative applications, it can also be used to invade our privacy. The recent news disclosures about phone records being turned over to the NSA is one example. Yahoo's recent disclosure of the identity of a Chinese dissident to Chinese authorities is another.

The internet has enormous power to increase our freedom. It also has enormous power to limit our freedom, to track our every move and monitor our every conversation. We must make sure that we don't trade off freedom for convenience or security. Dave Farber, one of the fathers of the Internet, is fond of repeating the words of Ben Franklin: "Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither, and will lose both."

Second, concentration of power. While it's easy to see the user empowerment and democratization implicit in web 2.0, it's also easy to overlook the enormous power that is being accrued by those who've successfully become the repository for our collective intelligence. Who owns that data? Is it ours, or does it belong to the vendor?

If history is any guide, the democratization promised by Web 2.0 will eventually be succeeded by new monopolies, just as the democratization promised by the personal computer led to an industry dominated by only a few companies. Those companies will have enormous power over our lives -- and may use it for good or ill. Already we're seeing companies claiming that Google has the ability to make or break their business by how it adjusts its search rankings. That's just a small taste of what is to come as new power brokers rule the information pathways that will shape our future world.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2006/05/my-commencement-speech-at-sims.htmlMy Commencement Speech at SIMS (May 2006)

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Equal Representation By Search Engines: Vaughn & Zhang (2007)

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Note that nearly all of the top results are about the massacre

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Here there are no results about the massacre as part of Google’s then agreement with the Communist regime in China to suppress information that they did not want the population to receive.

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Google France has a more balanced view although still not in direct alignment with Google US.

So, why can’t we have one search engine that serves the globe?

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I refer to SEO from the early days of the Web as BoBo SEO because any Bobocan do it without thinking or even understanding what they are doing. This is strictly tactical work whose effectiveness is now rapidly degrading. Search optimization is now more effective when approached in a strategic manner.

Traditional link building that sees individuals planting links on random sites or pages for the single goal of having a single link pointing to the client site is no longer effective in a Web where the search engines are comparing link origination and link destination to see if they are talking about the same thing.

Stuffing keyword phrases into select locations or formatting on the page will be effective only if the context of the content actually matches the context of the query terms. Content is king. Customers will scroll or bookmark or email URLs to them selves or print the darn page (http://kftf.ischool.washington.edu/index.htm)

We’ve got to spend a little time wondering how our customers get to the site as well as what they will do once they get there because these two behaviors are inextricably linked.

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Blogs were vanity online diary - now they are a way to make a livingmoney changes everything

Forums were a communication device between individuals that shared an element – now it is a people finder and advertising billboard

Facebook was a college app for students in the same class

Online Bookmarking was a way to access favorites independent of a device –now it is a sharing/promotional device

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My first explore with social media came in 1999 or 2000 with ICQ and it has grown remarkably in the last 8 years and will continue to do so

Observations on the McCann data: the biggest growth is in the more passive areas of consumption (watch video/read blog), leaving comments has the lowest growth adoption

Observers are many/participants are fewAs more activity/engagement is required, less adoption by the masses

Now social media is a hammer and everything looks like a nail. At Ascentium, they set up a Facebook profile for an apple. The apple has 40+ friends, all from the client and the agency. Color me crazy but this does not seem to be an effective use of social media.

6/9/2010

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Academia has caught up with the alternative uses of social media and key influencers funded by…someone likely the search engines or some other for profit motive

ads here are contextual and reach the most concentrated target marketmore $ from key influencers

Characteristics of key influencers•Great market knowledge•Want to be involved•Meticulous about transparency•Passionate about their readers•What to foster discussion

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Pew Internet and American Life Project: A Topology of Information and Communication Technology Users, May 2007

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Using Key Influencers•Select carefully•Do not insult their intelligence•Be transparent about your motives•Be responsive

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If you leave with a single word on using social media to enhance your website’s visibility , it should be this….transparency. Because, the social pools are vast and populated by smart individuals that will take you down if you are found out. The consequences of manipulation are not worth the risk.

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