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Size Doesn't Matter... But, For The Record, We're Bigger
from the taking-the-low-road... dept
We tried to avoid last month's silly index-waving battle between Yahoo and Google over who had the "bigger index," as it seems really pointless in an age when all that matters is relevance. However, it's a bit amusing to see how Google has now officially responded to Yahoo's claim of being bigger. They're admitting that size of index is a stupid measure (especially since no one agrees on how to measure it), saying they're going to drop the index count that they've always had on the front page... but, at the same time, pulling a last minute "but, really, we're bigger... nyah, nyah, nyah" sort of move. It would have been a better gesture to simply remove the count and point out that such things shouldn't matter, but the final "but, yes, we're bigger" just seems childish. Of course, the other side of this is that some would claim that if they didn't say that it was more or less an admission that they weren't bigger than Yahoo -- but that shouldn't matter. Google could just make the case that index size is a pointless measure anyway and move on. Though, along with one childish act, apparently, comes the end of another one. The version over this story found on CNET includes interview quotes from Eric Schmidt, suggesting that the company has gotten over its silly, pointless, one year ban on talking to CNET reporters.
Reader Comments
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am I the only one?
Am I the only one who feels like he just got done reading a story out of Penthouse Letters? Judas Priest!!! All this, "size doesn't matter" followed by "size matters"... euphemistically, I'm spent.
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Re: am I the only one?
Well I always liked looking to see how many sites were indexed(or close?). Yes this was a little confusing lol...
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No Subject Given
I never noticed that they had the count on the page.
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what's a page?
What I don't really get is, what constitutes a page?
Suppose I have a bit o' php that creates a page called page?num=5
that looks like this
5
the next number is (link)6
the previous number is (link)4.
Suppose I own a server that does this. I have a search engine that looks at these pages. If you enter any number, it finds you the page with that number. This search engine indexes more pages than either google's or yahoo's index, and it cost less too.
My point is, with dynamic pages, you can have a very large number of pages that have low information. So if they want to up their count, for only $2 million I'll write a server that has a trillion dynamic pages and they can up their count rapidly.
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google less than useful
perhaps I'm in the minority, but I have found
google (and other) search engines to be less and
less useful and frankly frustrating. So many
searches are now overwhelmed with bs adword type
pages.
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