Comments on: Microsoft’s Answer to PageRank: BrowseRank

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:47:04 +0000

By: duh

duh — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:04:15 +0000

So the theory here is that Google is NOT using the data they get from the millions of users using the Google toolbar???

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:21:34 +0000

Very interesting, although this has been tried before. DirectHit had a search engine built entirely on clickstream data (Acquired by Ask.com in 2000). They got the data from ISPs in those days. The end-result is really not that much better than Page-Rank.

Me.dium on the other hand (http://me.dium.com/search) is processing user’s clickstream data in real-time to create a different lens based on what’s going on now. e.g. do a search for John Edwards on Google or Live, and you get johnedwards.com and wiki/johnedwards. Do the same search on Me.dium and you learn that today people care about his love child, pictures of his mistress, etc.

The difference is real-time (what people are browsing now) vs. historical (what they browsed in the past). Social vs. Old School. Check it out. http://me.dium.com/search.

By: Ronny

Ronny — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:20:04 +0000

Josh, you’re basically right about detecting fraud browsing, but then we’ll be back again to my first comment – Browser renting. Undetectable, although it’s pricey.

By: Josh Catone

Josh Catone — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:06:26 +0000

By the same token, I would tend to think that if faking browsing would be easier than faking back links, so would detecting it. Just like Google puts a lot of time and effort into sorting the legit links from the fakes, I am guessing Microsoft, if they ever use BrowseRank, would put a lot of time and effort into weeding out real browsing from faked.

On some level, the BrowseRank system sort of makes me think of the system that Nielsen uses for television ratings — or in other words, a representative sample might be enough to capture useful data… not everyone need participate.

By: huni

huni — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:03:35 +0000

more crap from micro(limpskin)soft!!!

By: Stevie D

Stevie D — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:04:47 +0000

Dean C – absolutely. I’m no programmer, but I’d have thought it wouldn’t be difficult to make your own spider and point it firmly at your sites – or the sites of people who paid you.

My other problem with this is that so often users follow “dead end” links that don’t give them what they want. With so many websites and users opening links in new windows and tabs, I would think it’s going to be pretty difficult to accurately track what people are looking at and what route they’ve taken to get there.

By: Dean C

Dean C — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:35:07 +0000

lol, of course user behaviour can’t be gamed can it Microsoft? Buying links is far harder than creating a fake user script in PHP which’ll go around imitating thousands of users behaviours whilst constantly mining a free proxy list to avoid detection.

By: Ronny

Ronny — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 07:24:53 +0000

So now instead of link selling, the new trend will be mass browser renting (coined just now).

Missed those huge “Get PAID to see ADS!” popups? Apparently, Microsoft did. So here we go, only this time you’ll get paid to browse through websites, and the popups are AJAXed.

I can’t see a way Microsoft could balance between online video or gaming sites and for example tech support sites, whom whole point is to quickly deliver the best answer.

And what about Google? Their target is to send the user out of Google, via organic or sponsored links, as soon as possible. So maybe giving time spent on a page too much weight is not so bright.

Of course they’ll try to balance it. I just don’t count on Microsoft to do it properly.