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Tag: SMX London

  • Google’s Amit Singhal: Penguin A Success

    Early this morning, Google Fellow Amit Singhal was interviewed by Danny Sullivan at Chris Sherman on stage at SMX London, the sister conference of Search Engine Land. Singhal discussed a variety of Google search-related topics.

    We were hoping to get a some in depth discussion about Google’s recent Penguin update, but apparently that wasn’t a major point of conversation. Daniel Waisberg liveblogged the discussion at Search Engine Land, and Penguin only came up briefly. Here’s the relevant snippet of the liveblog:

    Danny talks about Penguin and asks how it is going from Google standpoint, are search results better? Amit says that in the end of the day, users will stay with the search engine that provides the most relevant results. Google’s objective was to reward high quality sites and that was a success with Penguin. One of the beauties of running a search engine is that the search engines that can measure best what the users feel is the one that will succeed more.

    From Google’s perspective they use any signal that is available for them, more than 200 of them. They have to make sure they are accurate and good. They will use any signal, whether it is organic or not.

    @SEOsherlock
    SEO Sherlock    “Google Penguin’s objective is to reward high quality sites and authors” Amit Singhal #smxlondon 4 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @ysekand
    Yousaf    Panda and penguin update has gone really well… Can someone show amit the results for Viagra #smx 4 hours ago via Twitter for iPad ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    @IrishWonder
    IrishWonder    @dannysullivan please ask Amit if he has any Penguin recovery tips apart from removing links #smx 4 hours ago via web ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    Google’s Matt Cutts also recently said that Google has considered Penguin a success, though plenty out there disagree.

    If you want Google’s advice on Penguin recovery, check out these videos Matt Cutts says to watch, these tips he endorsed on Twitter, and of course Google’s quality guidelines.

  • Google: Personalized Search Results Are Lifting Clickthrough Rates

    Google launched Search Plus Your World earlier this year. Most Google users probably just know it as Google filling their results with a lot more results based on social connections. A lot of users complained about it, but Google appears to consider the whole thing a success (not unlike the Penguin update).

    Google Fellow Amit Singhal spoke at SMX London this morning, and talked about the feature, and search personalization in general.

    Daniel Waisberg at SMX sister site Search Engine Land liveblogged Singhal’s on-stage discussion with Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. Singhal indicated that the SPYW is actually increasing search result clicks, and that the filter bubble is not much of an issue. From Waisberg’s liveblog:

    Amit says the key motivation behind Search Plus Your World is to have a secured search, it is the first baby step to achieve Google’s dream, and data shows that Google users like the personal results. It also gives the user one click removal from their personalized results. Google is currently analyzing and improving their personalization engine.
    Chris mentions that personalization can be narrowing, as it gives people the same results and they do not discover new things. Amit answers that there should be different points of views in any search results, and Google is aware of that and they balance between personalized and non-personalized results.

    Danny mentions a Pew research that concluded that people do not want personalization. Amit says “I am a scientist, when I look at researches I look at how the question was asked.” He discussed the specific research, and said that personalization is valuable for Google users. Danny asks: can you tell what percentage of personalized searches are clicked? Amit says people are clicking more than before on searches and it is lifting CTR from search pages. Chris mentions Bing Social efforts and how it is different from Google’s. Amit says: “the key challenge with personalization is that no one can judge a personalized search for someone else.” That’s why Google looks at the data about how users like their results. Search Plus Your World is the same approach as Universal Search, people have to find what they intend to find on their results.

    Bing, as you may know, unveiled a big redesign last week, which appears to be the search engine’s answer to Google’s SPYW personalized results. Bing, of course, has data from Facebook and Twitter, which Google doesn’t, which should be one of Bing’s biggest selling points, if you care about social results.

    There hasn’t been much indicating that Google will be gaining access to the Facebook and Twitter data anytime soon. The subject was mentioned briefly during the SMX London discussion. Waisberg liveblogs: “Danny mentions the integration Bing did with Twitter and Facebook, and how this might be good for users. Will Google do that in the future? Amit said that their contract with Twitter expired. Google cannot add Twitter and Facebook right now as their information is hidden behind a wall. It has been tough to build an integration in this terms.”

    Google’s lack of this data is extremely evident at times – particularly the lack of realtime search when big, breaking events are happening.

    The good news is that at least Twitter and Google are talking frequently. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was recently quoted as saying, “We continue to talk to Google frequently and on an ongoing basis. They are a company that’s doing several different things right now. Those conversations have a complexity to them that is different than our conversations with the company.”

    Who knows where these talks may one day lead.

  • Nobody At Google Understands Everything At Google

    This morning, Google Fellow Amit Singhal participated in a keynote interview with Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman at SMX London. The whole thing was liveblogged at Search Engine Land, the conference’s sister site.

    I’ve been picking apart some of the things Singhal talked about throughout the day. Here’s the rest so far:

    Google’s Amit Singhal: Penguin A Success

    Want To Tell Google How To Improve? Tell Amit Singhal.

    Google: Personalized Search Results Are Lifting Clickthrough Rates

    Google: Why Are You Asking Us If Your Ears Make You Look Fat?

    There was a pretty interesting part in which Singhal talked a little about how the company’s divisions work, with nobody really understanding everything the company is doing. Here’s the relevant snippet from Daniel Waisberg’s liveblogged account linked to above:

    Chris asks: with the scope that Google have reached, is there anyone that still knows all of Google? Amit says that there are senior executives that each can understand very well their own “entities” such as Search, Advertising, and other big groups, but no one understands everything.

    Given all that Google does, I can hardly imagine that anyone could understand everything. The search engine alone gets over 500 changes a year, as well as 20,000 experiments. Then you have everything else. Everything that encompasses Google Apps, Google+, Google Glasses, Driverless cars, and oh so much more.

    To get an idea of how much stuff Google really has, just look at this List of Google Products on Wikipedia. It’s big, and I don’t even think it’s complete.

    It’s really interesting, however, that a company can have such a substantial impact on so many people’s day to day lives, without anyone really understanding every element of that company. It’s kind of scary actually.

  • Want To Tell Google How To Improve? Tell Amit Singhal.

    Matt Cutts fields a whole lot of questions about Google. He often offers helpful advice via his blog, comments on other blogs, Twitter, and of course through his Webmaster Help videos, but Google Fellow Amit Singhal is the guy that leads the team that looks at all the messed up search results.

    Singhal spoke at SMX London this morning, in an on-stage interview with Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. While he didn’t delve into Penguin too much, other than to indicate that it has been a success, he did talk a little bit about dealing with flawed search results. Daniel Waisberg liveblogged the discussion at SMX’s sister site Search Engine Land. Here’s the relevant snippet:

    Chris asks Amit how is the evolution process at Google with so many updates; how does Google decide about which update goes live? Google has an internal system where every flawed search result is sent to Amit’s team. Based on that engineers are assigned to problems and solutions are tested on a sandbox. Then the engineer will show how the results will show after and before the update and the update is tested using an A/B test. They discuss the results and this loop runs several times until they find a change that is better in all aspects. After this process the change is send to a production environment for a very low percentage of real user traffic and see how the CTR is changed. Based on this, an independent analyst (that works for Google) will generate a report. Based on that report the group discuss and decides if the change is going to be launched or not. That’s how scientific the process is.

    As Waisberg notes, Google has recently shared several videos discussing how Google makes changes. You can watch these if you’re interested:

    This one has Cutts talking about Google’s experimentation process (among other things):

    According to Sullivan, who tweeted since the keynote discussion, Singhal wants user feedback:

    @dannysullivan
    Danny Sullivan    Think you know how Google Search should run better? @theamitsinghal asked for advice. Leave your comments here http://t.co/fJFbe1QI 3 hours ago via Seesmic twhirl ·  Reply ·  Retweet ·  Favorite · powered by @socialditto

    On Twitter, he’s @theamitsinghal. Here’s his Google+ profile.

    Don’t forget, Google has a feedback link at the bottom of every search results page. Of course, there are always spam reports as well.

    Image: Amit’s Google+ Profile Pic