Posted on by Aji Issac

Google may imitate Hedir’s idea

Who should read it: All SEM interested people along with ones who track online business. All people assosiated with Hedir.

Is Google to trying to imitate Hedir’s idea? This is a question asked by one of Hedir’s reputed member Google Junky. Hedir is the oldest and the most established human edited directory (much more than a plain directory, this is web 2.0 community based review system) which scans the websites for its,

  1. Services
  2. Products
  3. Vision
  4. Policies
  5. Overall customer reputation

Not on the basis of

  1. Web Contents
  2. OBL and IBL (outgoing backlinks and incoming backlinks)
  3. Page Rank
  4. Keyword optimization

The best thread which explains about Hedir is at webproworld.com, a six page discussion.

Hedir is a complete Human based ranking system which has its own limitations and disadvantages. New patent application (System and method for supporting editorial opinion in the ranking of search results) Google is going Hedir’s way. Let’s see what does this patent say,

  1. Look for the words “an editorial opinion parameter). It shows a shift from focusing on algorithm-based changes to the integration of a human editorial process. The patent page says

    Other search services have attempted to improve Internet searching by compiling static lists of web pages on specific topics. Directory listings, such as Yahoo! (www yahoo.com) and Open Directory (www.dmoz.org), are examples. These services map a search query against the editorial comments accompanying each web page that was reviewed by an editor of the service, and optionally the full text of the documents, to generate a list of results. The scope of these services is limited, however, to the set of pages that has been reviewed by the search services’ editors.

    AskJeeves (www.ask.com) generalizes the application of editorial opinion to a collection of pages. Their editors identify a set of pages that share a common theme (e.g., home pages of airports) and associate this set of pages with specific trigger words (e.g., the word “airport”). When one of the trigger words appears in the query, they present the user with a concise representation of the associated set of pages, allowing the user to choose one. Again, the scope of this technique is restricted to the set of pages that were reviewed by the editors, which tends to be many orders of magnitude smaller than the set of useful pages on the World Wide Web.

    Therefore, there exists a need for a system and method that improve Internet searching.

    SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
    A system and method, consistent with the present invention, address this and other needs by providing a mechanism that enhances the ranking of search results by integrating editorial opinion.

    In accordance with the purpose of the invention as embodied and broadly described herein, a method that provides search results is disclosed. The method includes receiving a search query, retrieving one or more objects in response to the search query, determining whether the search query corresponds to at least one query theme of a group of query themes, ranking the one or more objects based on a result of the determination, and providing the ranked one or more objects.

    In another implementation consistent with the present invention, a method for determining an editorial opinion parameter for use in ranking search results is disclosed. The method includes developing one or more query themes, identifying, for each query theme, a first set of objects as being favored, identifying, for each query theme, a second set of objects as being non-favored, and determining an editorial opinion parameter for each of the objects in the first and second sets.

    (Nothing new to the people who are in Google as they know it is already implemented, ask if Matt can deny it).

  2. Categorization: The patent says

    In a second way, the editors may establish categories/topics from a directory that may be compared to the search query to determine if the query satisfies a particular query theme. For example, a set of topics could be the topics in an online hierarchical directory (e.g., a Web Directory), such as Open Directory, Yahoo!, or Google (www.google.com). For determining sites that help in finding accommodations, a query theme could be expressed as a set of topics in Yahoo! as shown below:
    Recreation: Travel: Lodging;

    According to me a better categorization can be done using a mix of tags, Hedir suggests the solution at http://www.hedir.com/remove-addoption.html . Here Hedir has suggested a mix of taxonomy and folksonomy. Another area for Google to imitate.

This is good that Google is going this way. At SEO conferences we all expected that such a move when,

  • Yahoo acquired del.icio.us
  • Google and Yahoo stated manual scanning. There were few more threads but I lost the reference. Also read Matt cutts comments on when asked the same question.
  • When Wink hit the market.
  • When Hedir started getting publicity.
  • “TrustRank” has been being “quietly” implemented through several algo changes starting back maybe as early as the “Florida” update on December 3, 2003. Subsequent updates including “Jagger” involved new “TrustRank” implementation layering including ranking of IBLs and OBLs (inbound and outbound links).

If I get back to my original question Is google to trying to imitate Hedir’s idea? May be yes as Hedir is growing popular and many people are watching its growth rate. Google Analytics have also copied few features from other existing analytical products and some of them were copied from Visitlab for sure. http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js See how it is using image file for tracking (if it needs more explanation, you can contact me 🙂 ).

Google Vs Hedir

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