Google Research head dubs holy PageRank 'over-hyped'

Google research head Peter Norvig says that the search giant's hallowed PageRank link-analysis algorithm is overrated. And always has been. "One thing that I think is still over-hyped is PageRank," Norvig said this morning during a question and answer keynote at the search-obsessed SMX West conference in Santa Clara, …

[Anonymous Coward]

Peter Norvig

That's the Peter Norvig of "Russel & Norvig" fame, for anyone here taking a CS course that has AI modules.

[Neoc]

What I'd like to see...

With Google adding more and more "feed" into their results, I'd like to see an option (in your iGoogle account setup, possibly) to disable some of those feeds. I, for one, couldn't care less about Twitter results when I search on a term and don't want to have to add subtractive terms to every search to exclude Twitter feeds.

[Anonymous Coward]

Patent ?

"the patented technology is a central pillar in the Google Mythology"

A patent, ie. published method, should dismiss a myth ! Perhaps US patents are different...

Can anyone provide a ink to the page-rank patent ?

[Lunatik]

There's this thing called Google...

...what you can use to find things what are on the internet, like this:

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6285999

[Anonymous Coward]

link

http://bit.ly/lqO5S

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is your friend...

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6285999

[Mage]

Just Google Stanford page-rank patent

U.S. Patent 6285999

also Stanford pagerank patent

[Anonymous Coward]

bloody price comparison is killing google

seriously try searching for anything - google it's full of sh**e... http://www.grenadepod.com/2010/02/22/seo-is-killing-google/

google!! remove all price comparison sites please!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

give me back my google

Try this:

http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/

It filters the comparison crap out of search results. I just posted the same to your grenadepod link.

[Gordon is not a Moron]

Is this....

the opening PR salvo in thier EU anti-trust \ anti-competition lawsuit ?

"We didn't intentionally promote Google's own services to the top of all search results, it's just out search engine isn't that good."

[Harry]

"Perhaps US patents are different..."

They certainly are.

US patents are completely worthless ... to anybody *except* US lawyers, that is.

[Harry]

"google!! remove all price comparison sites please!!!!"

Yes, and even more important, remove those rubbish pages that consist of saved search results of umpteen prescanned keywords -- and especially those which say "We didn't find any results for" whatever keyword you were searching for.

[Harry]

"http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com"

A nice idea. But better still if google could incorporate the idea into its own searches and let you right click on a result and say "omit this host from future search results".

It does currently have that "show me less shopping sites" option but shopping sites are easily recognised and probably less than half the problem. The real timewasters are spam sites that have tricked google into indexing pages of little more than keywords and no real content.

Not only that, but google could spot when a significant number of people have opted out of a particular domain, and have a look to see if it merits global demoting.