Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Why Google is ditching search

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community
From a connectivist perspective, the changes to Google search make sense. Google search, the old way, involved scanning the entire web and then ranking results. Like any mass-based phenomenon, it was particularly vulnerable to gaming and abuse - hence, the rise of search engine optimization (SEO) as a discipline. The new Google search looks for results within your social network. It is a localized search, not web-wide (unless you ask for that). It is based not on overall trust (PageRank) but on the trust you have for various sources. The connection, rather than the content, becaomes the basis for results ranking. That's what sites like Twitter and Facebook tapped into, while trying to build something else. That's what Google is explicitly leveraging. (And that's why I disliked 'pages' in Google+ so much - they were reintroducing the mass to these very personalized networks, which I felt undermined them.)

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Apr 19, 2024 1:42 p.m.

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