Posts by Kit_

Did all that AI chatbot hype boost Bing's market share? Oh, wait, never mind

Questionable Stats

From Statcounter "For our search engine stats, we analyze every page view referred by a search engine." & "We remove bot activity"

So do they count traffic from ChatGPT? An increasing number of people are searching the web by using ChatGPT, which uses Bing. However, the traffic on the server side is possibly not being seen as 'search traffic'.

We have a custom shield on our site, and almost ended up blocking ChatGPT due to the rapidly increasing number of requests coming from its IPs. Although ChatGPT uses Bing, the IPs don't track as Bing search engine IPs.

Google is in a real pickle due to the increase in browsing via ChatGPT. It's so much easier and faster to have AI assist the search (I'm talking proper ChatGPT interface here, not the stuff integrated into Bing browser) - and I find myself using ChatGPT4 for 80% of web search requirements these days. There is currently no advertising baked in which makes it so much better. Bard on the other hand has deliberately crippled its own search abilities because a shift to AI means a shift away from advertising revenues, at least until they figure out the details of how to pollute the results with commercial items in a way that doesn't drive people to a non-advertising competitor.

Google either makes Bard useful to get market share, but that hits its profits hard for several years during the advertising revenue transition, or it keep Bard crippled and ChatGPT will continue to dominate AI and Google will find itself in an even weaker position in a few years.

Five billion phones are dead in drawers – carriers want to mine them

School Scheme

The best way to get mobiles back without all the hassle of people posting individual phones is to organise a scheme with schools. Offer then £XX per phone for the school, then every school in the country will ask their students to collect phones in (and parents will ask around in the office etc.). Easy way to gather large numbers of phones, plus the schools get to have some nice new tech kit thanks to the fundraising.

130,000 UK businesses sue Google over £13.6B in lost ad revenues

Re: Google gets absolutely nothing from us for this

I'm not sure I understand your comment.

Let's say I charge a customer £1000 to show their banner on our website. We use Google Ad Manager to add the banner to the right pages with certain weighting rules. The customer gives my company £1000. They give nothing to Google. We give nothing to Google.

Google Helping Advertisers

We sell advertising space, and use Google's banner publishing software. Google gets absolutely nothing from us for this, because we have sold the space directly to advertisers.

I just wanted to point out the other side of things - that Google has helped us sell advertising without taking anything for it. We also have video advertising options on our site - at at time of writing Google lets us host these videos free of charge on our site with no embedded advertising (I'm referring to the use of Youtube).

That's two highly valuable completely free tools that have helped our business grow.

LinkedIn study suggests it's not your best pals who will help get you that next job

The Number Connections

Let's look at the numbers.

So, I have 4,000 first degree connections (because like most people I use LinkedIn as a big network in case I need to find someone and basically accept any somewhat relevant connection request that comes in whether you have every heard of that person or not).

Second degree connections - I guess about 2,000,000? 3rd degree connections - about half the LinkedIn database?

Am I more likely to find a job with the group of 4,000 or the group of 2,000,000? Although the 3rd degree connections are so much bigger they start to be more likely to be in other industries, so perhaps that's why 2nd degree connections are the most likely to work.

I don't see the exact details of how they cluster, but if they group by 'number of shared connections' instead - then it will still lead to the same multiplicative effects that you have exponentially more connections with 'weaker connections'.

Amazon sues 10,000 Facebook Group admins for offering fake reviews

Verified Purchase

Amazon publishes all reviews, but it will only 'count' the reviews from people who purchased that item (which you can see visually tagged with Verified Purchase). However the fake reviews are done in a way where people purchase the item and then get a refund from the fake review organisers.

In general only 1-2% of real buyers leave a review (whether for products on Amazon or games on Steam) - and that is a key reason that fake reviews have such a strong impact, because if you keep buying fake reviews you can keep a low quality item appearing as a high quality one.

UK government may force online retailers to pick up e-waste from consumers

Re: Collection Link

Ahh - true. The instructions weren't immediately clear enough for the idiot behind this keyboard though. Although to be fair in the original page the way all the other options are hyperlinked up and the pickup option isn't made it look like a dead end.

When forcing online retailers to pick up e-waste, there needs to be some clauses relating to ease of online submission. As an example of bad behaviour - I saw Amazon making a song and dance in a recent news article about how they already have a recycling program and will pick up e-waste from customers' houses.

"Ok - that sounds good." I though, I do have a broken item right here I would like to be rid of. So off we toddle to Amazon's recycling page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201819410

"For equipment weighing less than 30kg, Amazon will pay for the cost of your return. You can print a prepaid label with the Landbell Group. Once your item is properly packed, you can bring it to one of the drop-off points or arrange a collection".

So - how do we 'arrange collection' ? No link, no information. So does that count for them to pick up e-waste if you have to be chums with the one guy in Amazon who arranges these pickups? They want to say they do something without actually allowing anyone to do it - or otherwise make it as hard as possible to arrange.

What about if I did a chat with Amazon support? What are the bets for how long and painful that customer service experience would be? How many times would they insist for me to do drop the thing off somewhere by myself before escalating to a high enough manager who will follow the words they promise? And then do I have to box it up all nicely with printed labels inside and out?

On a different topic - an easy way to cut down on e-waste is to extend the warranty period by an extra year. Things we buy really shouldn't be built to break after only a year - so it reduces waste and improves quality. I remember Europe discussing this in the past, but it seems to have fizzled out for some reason.

Gust catches Amazon's skirt, reveals glimpse of 'Netflix for books'

Free Online Reservations

If you have kids - you really need to use the online reservation system.

1. Look up the books you want on Amazon

2. Reserve them for free in the library online system (works in Surrey, not sure if national or not)

3. Get an email when the books arrive to collect

For kids - no reservation fees, no late fees, friendly librarians can let them go above the 9 book limit if they are reading fanatics. The small local library doesn't have much choice, but with online ordering the books get shipped in from the other libraries.

When your squash partner 'endorses' your coding skills on LinkedIn...

Endorse

I agree on the endorsement side. Actually the people who get a big endorsement score on LinkedIn are those that endorse hundreds of other people. If you endorse someone else, you get a 50%+ chance they will endorse you back out of politeness.

So it seems a huge score means either:

- This guy has way too much time on his hands and wastes valuable working time by giving endorsements out to others like confetti.

- This guy is a salesman and has used endorsements to build up relationships with clients.

I think LinkedIn recommendations are good, because you put your reputation more on the line to endorse someone in public than simply give them a letter of recommendation that will be seen by only a few managers.