How Many Pages in Google? Take a Guess

In the bitter war of words between Google and Yahoo over search-engine index size, Google has decided to give its latest answer in the form of a question.

The company said yesterday that it had phased in a larger index over the last four weeks. But rather than directly proclaiming that it had surpassed its archrival Yahoo, which last month claimed index supremacy, Google said it would ask Web surfers to decide for themselves.Google's chief executive, Eric E. Schmidt, said the company would remove the current number from its home page ("Searching 8,168,684,336 Web pages," it said yesterday) and instead ask users to guess the size of the new index.

Moreover, in typical offbeat Google style, there will be no announced prize for the best guess, although Mr. Schmidt did not rule out the possibility that one would be awarded."We're suggesting that users do a little taste test," he said in a telephone interview.

Google said it would post guidelines to help users make their own comparisons on its Web log at googleblog.blogspot.com.Although Google would not specify the new index size, Mr. Schmidt said Google technologists said it was about three times the size of its nearest competitor - a competitor he would not name.
googleblog

"We have a very specific way of counting that we believe is very accurate," he said.
In response, Yahoo issued a statement saying: "We congratulate Google on removing the index size number from its home page and recognizing that it is a meaningless number. As we've said in the past, what matters is that consumers find what they are looking for, and we invite Google users to compare their results to Yahoo Search."

Several search-engine industry executives have said that the one-upmanship on index size is not useful for consumers. They contend that the relevance and freshness of search results are more important.

Last month, Yahoo said it believed that it had the largest search-engine index, tracking 19.2 billion documents. The assertion outraged Google's executives, who asserted that Yahoo was overestimating its index by counting duplicate information.

"This will probably calm some of this thing down," Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, an online publication, said of Google's latest maneuver. There is no reasonable way for an objective third party to make an accurate and independent count of the index sizes, he said.

Mr. Schmidt did not say what would happen if someone from Yahoo made the most accurate guess.

Read more!

Google for Related Stuff:

Google launches blogs search engine

The internet company Google appears to be on another winner with the launch of a service that allows users to search the blogosphere for the latest weblog postings on any subject they choose.

Google Inc is already a major player in the weblog market through its purchase two years ago of the start-up Pyra Labs and its Blogger service that allows computer-users to set up their own personal sites in minutes.

Since that deal, internet pundits have been waiting for Google to launch a blog search tool, which it finally did yesterday with the Beta or test release of its Blogsearch engine at http://blogsearch.google.com.

Tech-focused bloggers argued about the merits of the new service, but widely praised its speed, especially compared to the niche search engines which already index weblogs for searches, including Technorati and Blogpulse.

Instead of using "spiders" to trawl through weblogs, as the main Google search engine does through the wider web, its Blogsearch tool simply monitors existing RSS or Atom blogfeeds, which are used to channel weblog content onto websites or directly into individuals web browsers or e-mail accounts. The advantage of that is that the search results appear to be much fresher than some of its rivals'.

Users can also set up Google searches within their own RSS readers, allowing them to monitor what is being written about their chosen topics more effectively.

Google is the first major internet player to lauch a search engine specifically for blogs, although Yahoo! and other competitors are expected to do so within months. The number of active blogs doubles around every five months, and Technorati.com currently tracks 17.1 million sites.

Google said its tool would allow searches not just for blogs written in English but also in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Portuguese.

In their early reviews of the service, some search engine bloggers complained that Google's new tool lacked the depth of some of its competitors in terms of sites indexed and, therefore, produced fewer results on every search.

But a search by Times Online on both Technorati and the Google Blogsearch for the term "Wayne Rooney" - in English only - produced more results on Google and with a more accessible presentation.

Duncan Riley, who posts on the Blogherald.com, gave the new service mixed marks, and said after his initial testing that he was "really disappointed with it".

But he later posted on another site, Threadwatch.org, and said: "Been playing with it some more, the pick-up time of posts is out of this world compared to the competition. As long as they can build up some of the older stuff and broaden the number of blogs quickly this is going to be the market leader very, very soon."

Read more!

Google for Related Stuff: