What’s going on over at the G? First we had a story in the New York Times about the strange persistence of JC Penny in the top spot on searches run on great variety of topics. This streak of good luck lasted for months, right before the Christmas holidays, and nobody at GHQ noticed what was going on, which is odd in itself, dontcha think? Well, the usual investigation took place and it turns out that JCP was not just lucky. It was getting some mysterious help from Person or Persons Unknown to boost its website into the Golden Ten, the top sites scored by Google, below which it is said few people look. Google’s anti-spam guru announced that the boost was coming from what he called “content farms”, a concept that not many people were able to define with anything like precision. It seems that a Content Farm is an operation designed to produce low quality content in large quantities, often larded with ads, in an effort to drive searchers toward certain preferred sites or product outlets. Or, at least something along those lines. Whatever they are, Google’s agin ‘em, and the company promised punitive action against those spammers who had polluted the results, such punishment to include demotion or even removal from search results altogether. Then last week there was another announcement from Google about changes to the ranking algorithim , the program which determines “relevance” by the presence of absence of certain chararcteristics. It was a non-confession confession that spammers had been dumping poor quality content into search results for a while, and the company was counterattacking. This is serious business, literally. Google has built a multi-billion dollar operation on search, something which was at one time a rather esoteric pursuit limited to specialists, but which now is a common feature of daily life, at least in the US. It was able to do this well because it claimed, with some justice, that its relevance ranking tools were so superior that users could be confident they were getting the very best answers. This made advertising on Google very attractive, and off we went to the races. Of course, this reputation drew challengers who tried, just for the hell of it, or for money, to promote some less worthy pages into the top ranks. Google noticed, and reacted. The attackers changed approaches, and the battle was joined. Goolge pretty much has had the lead but the JC Penny episode and the recent spate of crummy results has led to musings about the company’s losing its edge, or about its getting complacent regarding its methods. Anyway, the spammers now have their full attention.

Spam

Everybody hates the QWERTY keyboard. Everybody knows that it was designed for a mechanical typewriter, with keys placed in such a way that a rapid typist wouldn’t be able to hit too many keys too many keys too quickly. There have been about lebendyleben schemes for better layouts to replace QWERTY. They have all failed, even though each was probably an improvement over QWERTY, and even though some of them were very good indeed. Rational layout, close attention to man-machine interaction science, reduced cost due to fewer repetitive strain injuries. None of it mattered. Because the installed base of the QWERTY layout is so large, immense even, new schemes have almost no chance of getting anywhere. This is a direct contradiction of the “better technology always wins” dictum. Technology Review has a story on yet another attempt to dump QWERTY from the throne. It’s impressive, but I think it will join the others as an interesting ‘also ran’, something you see in a museum. Of course, there’s always the chance the masses will rise up and demand a better deal. But, just think: anybody who learned QWERTY can use any keyboard-like input device anywhere in that part of the world using the English language character set. That’s a big advantage.

Doom

Wired News is unhappy with the elements of the subscription policy announced by Apple last week. The story notes that there are several points which seem vague, and there is even a SJobs mail message (at least, it’s supposed to be from The Chief) stating that the apparently restrictive elements don’t apply to content publishers at all, but only to software publishers. Somebody is not listening, as usual. Publishers are still grousing about the 30% hack that Apple will take from sales, but the writer states that this has been the going rate for Apple app developers all along. It’s not really surprising that it was extended, perhaps merely on reflex, to publishers. The writer goes further to say that the publishers would swallow the thirty percent, but what really burns them is the inability to collect user data, to use for targeted adds, promos and the like.

Apple

I noted last week that Google followed Apple in opening ways for periodical publishers to get their content onto tablet format devices. The Apple plan is pretty much a Diktat, and takes a sharp 30% bite off the top of sales. And there is a non-compete provision, blocking the delivery opf content elsewhere at rates lower than Apple’s. That’s the deal: take it or leave it. Google is playing nice and offering One Pass, a varied subscription plan which gives publishers a greart deal of flexibility in setting prices, offering different subscriptions (per year, per month, etc), and also makes data on customers available. This last is strictly verboten in the Apple scheme. So publishers are in kind a cleft stick. If they go with Apple, they get access to the current Ipad user base, which by now is well into the millions. They give up a lot, though. If they go with Google, the terms are much more generous, but that luscious Apple customer base is out of reach. So, how desperate are they to get to those customers existing right now in AppleLand? Are publishers willing to be bossed around and humiliated? Maybe, but maybe Apple overplayed its admittedly strong hand. Here’s more:

Content

On Sunday, the New York Times had a long story in the business section about an investigation it had initiated into what seemed a very strange series of events. Somebody had noticed that in Google searches for almost anything related to domestic everyday life, such as clothes, shoes, housewares, etc. JC Penny’s web site would appear right up at the top. We are not talking about “sponsored” links…for pay ads, in effect. These results came from “natural” search. So, the Times guy started to dig and the outcome was more than a little surprising. It led the reporter into the seamy side of search engine optimization. That’s the bag of tricks professional optimizers use to place their clients’ sites as high up in the magic top ten links Google display in its hit list. There are White Hat and Black Hat optimizers; the first use recognized and allowed methds, and the second use, well, “other means”. How all this is done and what the payoff can be are detailed in the article, which is certainly worth a read. Anybody who works with search engines professionally will know most of this, but it’s interesting to see a lot of it synthesized and available in one place. Google doesn’t like being messed with, and in the current case, it likes even less the fact that the campaign went on for months, right before the Christmas holidays, apparently unnoticed by anybody on their staff. The heads-up came from outside, and that must have really ticked them off. Google can get tough on cases like this. The G punishes the offender by dropping its site way, way down on the hit list. Google is in a running battle with spammers who try to high-jack search results, either to show their hacking chops, or for money. The company’s ranking algorithm is the most closely guarded secret since the D-Day landings, so capturing it would certainly be a major coup in hackerdom. But the commercial motive seems more likely to me. Read it for yourself:

Spam

Well, it finally happened. On Feb. 3 to be exact. The last remaining internet address was assigned to somebody or something, and that’s the last onion in the larder. What happens now, you ask? Well, IPv6 is going forward, sort of. In a story appearing on the Technology Review site, v6 will have plenty of addresses. The 4 billion in v4 are not a patch on the size of the addressing scheme in v6, which is measured in octillions. A number of service providers have not done much with v6, because it’s a cost matter. Their current business situation is fine, but changing it to accomodate v6 would require a lot of money. The two schemes won’t map one to another easily, so I guess every current address would have to be reassigned in the new version. Lots of people are sore about this, because there was no surprise element. Sure, 4 billion addresses sound big back in 1990 or something, but since then many more users, and the devices of those users, have come along needing addresses. Foot-dragging and reality ducking took over and companies whistled past the graveyard, as they hoped something would turn up, as Dickens’ Mr. Micawber put it. But it didn’t. Current users on v4 should be ok. The problem arises with the assignment of new users and new devices. As the saying goes, you do it now, or you do it later.

Fresh Out