09/11/02 Dumboz Dirt [or lizard sh-yet]: I submitted this Blog for expert editor consideration as a candidate for inclusion in the all-powerful ODP directory. The relevant category [google version] Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Technology/ The category Only includes 162 sites [no sub categories] I read somewhere that only 1 in 20 searchers goes looking much past the 10th link. I wonder how many in a hundred check out the 162nd link. Dumboz probably knows, but they don't tell nobody nothing--private club don't you know. I personally like a lot of links on one page and if the dumboz "brainless-trust" had an imagination they would make it possible to list all small sub-categories on one complete page. Less clicking, Less chaos, and More easily reached content.-- how awful. I submitted this rather stale but safely accurate description: Links and satirical commentary regarding news relevant to the mapping of cyberspace, and the related search engine industry. GatesGate: Cleaning up some old site files a ran across this suggestion I made back when Bill Gates was still a guilty "evildoer". "I think the fair solution to Bill Gates' antitrust violations is to make Windows 95 public domain software. This would give good engineers an opportunity to fix it and give the consumer choice and compatibility. Ten plus years of monopoly theft is enough". No good reason for posting this other than it provides me an opportunity to re-express my contempt for the king of social parasites-- and let's not leave out scum lawyers and the scumier judges they metamorphose into.

09/10/02 SEO [Spam Everyone Often]: I accidentally opened a piece of SEO junk mail today: Reading this line was as good as a shot of laughing gas. "I would like to introduce you to TrafficMagnet.com. We offer a unique technology that will submit your website to over 300,000 search engines and directories every month." Remember those awful old 300 search engine days. On the subject of e-mail. I tried to send a little note to Daniel Brandt of pir.org/google-watch.org . Daniel, I have been monitoring the fun you are having at WMW. In spite of all their talk about how competition will save us from oppression-- they certainly don't think this is true when it comes to ideas. They don't let me post, so in case you have no knowledge of my similar [3 year old] efforts to encourage industry reform, please visit http://donotgo.com [part of the pretty invisible web] Best of luck, -Gary I got a return error with a link to this site http://spews.org/ . As much as I hate Spam I think this "shoot the innocent also" overreaction is as unethical as the original spam crime. What? I should have to send spammish-test e-mails to prevent wasting my time composing a note to a first time used e-mail address because they might not accept mail from my domains hosting company? Adding a PS to the above note to Daniel: Nevermind! Whatis [in a name] : While everyone's on the google algorithm subject, I thought I would bring up a part of the algorithm that I think is underweighted. When a key word (search word) is actually part of a domain name I think that domain should be well ranked if it's "negatives" by algorithms' standards are not too high or nonexistent. This partArticle: DNS as a Search Engine: A Quantitative Evaluation hits in the same zip code as the nail, but as yet doesn't explore any defined system enhancements. Also in the vicinity of the nail is Whois.net but until they do something to make it possible to filter out all the owned-but-unused domains the nail of practical usefulness will remain elusive. A real disappointment is AllTheWebs "in the host name" Advanced search. Why they put the words "in the" when they don't filter for partial word matches is hard to understand. It's basically a complete, exact, host name matching filter and therefore of little practical use. As context you should understand that regionally specific sites often have regionally specific words in their domain name and that it would be very useful to be able to practically search on those specific words that are often part of "like site" domain names.

09/09/02 Unpossible: In the petty "you have got to be kidding" category the Good fellas at Web Master World once again have proven that they have the ugly ethics to go with what the use of the word "master" implies. The Internet is literally buzzing with talk about flawed algorisms and government controlled search engines. I think the three years I've put in on this subject does entitle me to a least a footnote reference in this "community conversation"-- so I attempt to post this simple reference at web Master world: I am feeling soooo... left out. www.donotgo.com It was deleted within minutes. If you were to judge google just by the character of the people who defended it, its "rank" would be pretty low. Regarding "page rank" : 5 minutes of logical thinking and I have a simple fix that would mitigate some of the unfairness. Assume that of the 100 factors google considers in assessing page rank that maybe 10 are really relevant. If google simply randomly rotated the importance of these 10 items in assessing page rank the danger, of always rewarding the popularly established and always maligning the perhaps "very relevant" but popularly invisible, would be reduced. If you want to read ALL about this google hype: This Danny Sullivan article has all the relevant links, minus the obvious exception, a link to this site 09/10/02 update: Good treads don't just fade away, their killed by MasterWorld jerks. The beginning --- the final head-shot. W3C Stooges: Who's on first, What's on second, and I don't know what the F they are talking about is chewing on third base... With these brontosaurus size egg-heads working on internet standards it's no wonder we're lost in a cyber Stone Age. People who can write sentences like this-- "Conformance requirements are the expressions that convey the criteria to be fulfilled in an implementation of a specification". --have got to be direct descendants of Cro-Magnon Nerd. Blogdumb: I haven't yet found any web logs that focus on any of the big picture web issues. Important stuff like infrastructure engineering, or better map making systems and technology, seems to be of exclusive interest to me alone. The sad fact is, good marketing can sell anything including the stupid square wheel that is the current search industry model. If you're just looking to get by on square wheels these blogs might be of some interest. On the other hand, if like me you're hoping for a rounding revolution you will no doubt find most of the content disappointingly irrelevant. Traffick/Blog SearchEngineBlog ICANN Blog Love and kisses Google Blog

09/08/02 PHD: [Preposterous Hyper Dialogue] Through the too many words, my subconscious did find this article's point and started singing the old Burger King jingle- hold the pickles, hold the lettuce, special orders don't upset us... have it your way... Fact is every information request or search engine query should be viewed as a "special order". If I don't want SEO Spam on my "search industry information" results it really shouldn't be asking too much. Using another over-used cliche -- it's about describing content, not categorizing it, stupid! DoNotGo-ogle: There's google goo on my shoe... Helping a friend find the best price on a particular brand of shoes produced some interesting results when I tried a google search. The brand name produced 28,000 results. Digging a little I found that 4000 (note: this is for one brand name) of these results pretty directly led to zappos.com the owner of the dominant "Sponsored Link". Worse, many of the remaining links were just Spam sites, partending to be something unZappos but they just inevitably lead you back to Zappos. Considering zappos marketing ethics I am wondering if Imelda Marcos' middle name might be Zappo.

09/07/02 item: Reading this felt like eaves-dropping on a conversation between two street thugs regarding the most effective ways to knock old ladies on their ass and steal their rent money. God I hate the human "race"! item: A google search, on the word[s] "Spammer-Space" produced this one-and-only pretty good result. I thought spammerspace would be one of my unique wordventions, but I guess I can't claim the copyright.

09/06/02 item: I tripped over a link to google-watch.org the other day. The home page doesn't look like much, but this article is some good writing and proves you can paint a pretty scary picture with a few thousand articulate words. item: 2 years and $800,000 later... I think the government would have been wiser to buy 100,000 -- $8 opinions. Cyberspace will probably be in Outerspace before these corporate cronies produce their "preserve Spammerspace" recommendations.

Archived Pages Week2 09/12/02 - 09/18/02