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March 10, 2011

Google's Word Count Experiment

Google tests a new feature that shows the approximate number of words next to certain search results. The word count is usually displayed for articles, but only for a small number of results. You'll probably think twice before clicking on a search result that has 50,000 words, unless you're looking for an in-depth report.



Maybe Google will also add an advanced search feature that lets you restrict the search results to short articles or long documents. A summarization feature would also be helpful.

7 comments:

  1. hmmm ... googlicoious

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  2. I wonder if this will be helpful in filtering out link farms?

    I'm not sure what their average word count is, but I imagine that adds, titles and snippets will amount to a less word 'dense' page than a real piece of content.

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  3. Shaney said...
    I wonder if this will be helpful in filtering out link farms?

    I'm not sure what their average word count is, but I imagine that adds, titles and snippets will amount to a less word 'dense' page than a real piece of content.

    March 11, 2011 4:33 AM

    Did not think of that when I read the article by now I think about it, it would seem to be a good way to take out link farms. Wondering if this could be part of the Panda update.

    Also just seeing the number of links on a page could also be use as a quality measure also.

    Sadly I doubt we will ever know unless someone was to reverse engineer Google Algorithm, may someone ought to ask Microsoft if they would like to comment we know they would lo

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  4. Sadly I doubt we will ever know unless someone was to reverse engineer Google Algorithm, may someone ought to ask Microsoft if they would like to comment we know they would like reverse engineering other people products.

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  5. David,

    a) Do you believe that Microsoft is the only company capable of reverse engineering other company's products? If so, I'm definitely going to buy some of their stock because that means they are the most unique company in the world.

    b) Why did you find this such a prime opportunity to bash Microsoft? Is Microsoft really relevant on this page? If you have deep hatred towards an entity that has only helped make computer ubiquitous and provided the fertile ecosystem that allowed Google to become who they are, then goto slashdot.

    c) Number of links on a page would be useful, in theory. However, this is not a novel concept. Simple ideas have simple workarounds. I suppose your real intent here is to try and eliminate worthless content from the web. But cat & mouse games are not won by simple heuristics. They're won by baseball bats and hostile takeovers. Every company is evil in this sense because they all want to win.

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  6. Will this experiment work like the results counter int the web search?

    I mean, above a threshold the output will be millions different than the reality.

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  7. It is very interesting I should not write too much, but enough. Do you know how to put the choice Name/URL when someone wants to leave a comment on my Blogger blog ? Thank you very much and keep up the good work.

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