Comments on: Apparent Google Bias http://www.embracingchaos.com/2007/04/google_bias.html Leo Parker Dirac on Business and Technology Trends Tue, 24 Aug 2010 02:01:59 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: leodirac http://www.embracingchaos.com/2007/04/google_bias.html/comment-page-1#comment-377 leodirac Thu, 03 May 2007 02:22:10 +0000 http://wp.embracingchaos.com/2007/04/google_bias.html#comment-377 <p>Okay, you've convinced me. I did a little digital archeology and noticed that traffic from google organic search started showing up the same day as I bought the adwords, possibly even a few hours before. There's no way that got added into the index that fast. Apologies for the implied slander.</p> Okay, you've convinced me. I did a little digital archeology and noticed that traffic from google organic search started showing up the same day as I bought the adwords, possibly even a few hours before. There's no way that got added into the index that fast. Apologies for the implied slander.

]]> By: B http://www.embracingchaos.com/2007/04/google_bias.html/comment-page-1#comment-376 B Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:07:01 +0000 http://wp.embracingchaos.com/2007/04/google_bias.html#comment-376 <p>Your evidence is still entirely circumstantial. </p> <p>Imagine for months you clap your hands and look outside expecting to see a red car. It never happens. Then, you buy a new car. Next time you clap your hands, you see a red car. </p> <p>You would conclude, given your logic, that somehow, buying that car "caused" things to change.</p> <p>Right?</p> <p>ps. How long do you think it takes Google to build a new index? Under 24 hours?<br /> </p> Your evidence is still entirely circumstantial.

Imagine for months you clap your hands and look outside expecting to see a red car. It never happens. Then, you buy a new car. Next time you clap your hands, you see a red car.

You would conclude, given your logic, that somehow, buying that car "caused" things to change.

Right?

ps. How long do you think it takes Google to build a new index? Under 24 hours?

]]> By: leodirac http://www.embracingchaos.com/2007/04/google_bias.html/comment-page-1#comment-375 leodirac Wed, 25 Apr 2007 13:24:29 +0000 http://wp.embracingchaos.com/2007/04/google_bias.html#comment-375 <p>I'm 99% confident the relationship is directly causal. I actually have a fair bit of data to support this. Over the months I have noted every time a prominent site links to my site because there's a bump in referral traffic. I have poked around in google's internal webmaster tools trying to understand why my site wasn't being indexed. They reported hundreds of links from outside. The site was being crawled daily. Part of the tools even said that various pages on my site had a pagerank assigned. The diagnostics from the internal tools was always along the lines of "Not sure why your site isn't being indexed, but sometimes the index takes a while to update. Be patient." It was like this for months.</p> <p>Within 24 hours of buying adwords, my site was in the index. Coincidence? I doubt it. This definitely was not a result of more people linking to the site from having seen the adwords. I know how many external links there are and about when they showed up, and how many times people have seen the ads. It happened way too fast for that to be the reason.</p> <p>I suspect there was some bug in the index generator that got kicked by the adwords system.</p> I'm 99% confident the relationship is directly causal. I actually have a fair bit of data to support this. Over the months I have noted every time a prominent site links to my site because there's a bump in referral traffic. I have poked around in google's internal webmaster tools trying to understand why my site wasn't being indexed. They reported hundreds of links from outside. The site was being crawled daily. Part of the tools even said that various pages on my site had a pagerank assigned. The diagnostics from the internal tools was always along the lines of "Not sure why your site isn't being indexed, but sometimes the index takes a while to update. Be patient." It was like this for months.

Within 24 hours of buying adwords, my site was in the index. Coincidence? I doubt it. This definitely was not a result of more people linking to the site from having seen the adwords. I know how many external links there are and about when they showed up, and how many times people have seen the ads. It happened way too fast for that to be the reason.

I suspect there was some bug in the index generator that got kicked by the adwords system.

]]> By: B http://www.embracingchaos.com/2007/04/google_bias.html/comment-page-1#comment-374 B Wed, 25 Apr 2007 10:49:17 +0000 http://wp.embracingchaos.com/2007/04/google_bias.html#comment-374 <p>1) You are suggesting a rather strong conclusion with a single data point.</p> <p>2) Correlation does not imply causality.</p> <p>3) And even if it *is* causal, it may not be directly causal. You buy adwords. More people see your site. More people link to your site. Your site is more highly ranked.<br /> </p> 1) You are suggesting a rather strong conclusion with a single data point.

2) Correlation does not imply causality.

3) And even if it *is* causal, it may not be directly causal. You buy adwords. More people see your site. More people link to your site. Your site is more highly ranked.

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