How Search Works

I gave you a +1 because I had the same "scrolling issue".

After your comment I noticed a lot of comments on the same issue, so I decided to try it again. The second time I noticed that a blue arrow flashes at the bottom of the screen after all the content has populated, almost promoting you to scroll down. I suppose most everyone, including me, initially scrolled to fast to even see the first "arrow/prompt". Despite the discovery of the prompt feature, some of the issues remain. Example, wondering how far to scroll down before stopping (maybe pgdn?), and wondering which parts of the "page ? Exhibit ? Installation ? whatever it's called" are interactive.

>page ? Exhibit ? Installation ? whatever it's called

I too was unsure what to call it, but if they listen to the feedback, I think "whatever it's called" is really awesome and could be a legitimate substitute to the ppt platform. At least I would be interested in making a few presentations with it.

Yep, happened to me too. No indication of where to pause and watch, and had to keep back-scrolling as I noticed text appear just below the chrome. Bad implementation.

Scrolling with single 'space' key presses works fine on a desktop.

Exactly. And someone somewhere writing a script to hammer that screenshots to collect as much as he can.

I haven't looked too closely, but that view says it is only giving examples of "pure spam," as opposed to the more sophisticated forms of spam described. One might imagine that "pure spam" is the easiest to detect, so giving examples of pure spam might not be giving much away.

It might be your machine/browser/os. The same thing happened on my laptop (OSX/Chromium), but it worked fine on my desktop (Arch/Chromium).

Your 80% is based on what exactly? A tiny sample size. Please if you don't have solid data don't quote percentages it just encourages people to spread the number like it's a fact, which it isn't.

If you read the right sources a majority of seo advice is correct.

Www.seomoz.org http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust... Www.inbound.org (homepage stuff that has been voted up.)

  "80 Prozent von allem, was über SEO geschrieben wird, ist Bullshit"

You're taking diagrams too seriously.

But the way I interpreted it was, before, the query was short, scrunched up, and slightly ambiguous. The algorithm them lengthened it, representing expanding it to find the deeper meaning.

I was confused for a little bit by that. The way I took it was: "Google removes the wrinkles from your query as to make it processable."

That actually seems to be what Google does to your keyword searches: replace the specific with the general, turn proper names into redundant phrases ("schannel socket" -> "channel socket"), suggest dropping keywords, etc.

I think Query Understanding might trigger the weather, conversion and the other widgets to be displayed at the top of your search results. It's just a guess, since I don't work for Google. (:

I too find this completely void of any useful information.

There are many things that are still broken in search; I talk about one specific experience here:

http://urgeous.com/p87t3aaa40g-for-some-queries-all-first-10...

("For some queries, all first 10 results on Google are spam").

Didn't read that way to me. Doesn't it say that the webmaster tools page is the primary way to get notifications?

Crap factor = %advertising on page.

I agree, it is super irritating to no longer be able to do precise searches on google like I used to. Is there another search engine you would recommend which provides this functionality?

Same here. Tried reporting it a number of times in different ways but nothing ever happens. Have posted a few examples as response to moultanos answer further down in this thread.

Do you have some example queries to debug?

At some point users started closing the tab instantly as soon as it becomes clear something non-interactive like a flash movie is the central element of the page. The scrolling page is the optimal way of letting the user read the content at the desired pace.

Scrolling is really becoming the new thing in UX design.

Am I the only one who finds it irritating as hell to scroll when it renders slow? I don't think this is the end game. There has to be something better.

I think you're joking, but just for those that don't think that, we don't actually do that.

Grammatically, that makes no sense :)

Seems I'm not the only one who found that interesting :)

Apparently, perhaps the 'scroogled' campaign is having an effect.

However it does give a better insight into the challenges of building a search product. It is a series of really challenging problems. So many people take search for granted these days.

It may just be PR, but I do think a lot of non-technical people can benefit from going through the animation. It's pretty amazing that that is what's happening. It could just be an attempt by Google to expose their craft to the technical layperson.

aka 95+ petabytes.

Here's the unminified JS on the site responsible for the numbers updates.

   var kd = function () {
    function a() {
        e = e || Q("number_of_seconds");
        d = d || Q("searches_count_num");
        f = f || Q("searches_count_unit");
        var a = ~~ (((new Date).getTime() - h) / 1E3 % 86400),
            k = a * b + "";
        f.innerHTML = " " + c[Math.ceil(k.length / 3)] || "";
        e.innerHTML = a;
        d.innerHTML = k.replace(/(\d)(?=(\d\d\d)+(?!\d))/g, "$1,")
    }
    var b = ~~ (1E11 / 2592E3),
        c = " hundred thousand million billion trillion quadrillion quintillion sextillion septillion octillion nonillion decillion undecillion duodecillion tredecillion quattuordecillion quindecillion sexdecillion septendecillion octodecillion novemdecillion vigintillion".split(" "),
        e, d, f, h = (new Date).getTime();
    return {
        hc: a,
        rb: function () {
            a();
            setInterval(a, 100)
        }
    }
   }();

Not sure why you're being downvoted, as it seems like a legitimate question, but...

I don't think so. It seems logical that Google's been keeping statistics about this sort of thing, so it doesn't surprise me that they keep track of such things as 'average queries per second'.

That would be about 38K searches per second. Does this include Google instant searches?

Google search results show a time value for each search. E.g.: About 2,210,000,000 results (0.12 seconds). Is this time machine time per search? This number is often around 30 ms, give or take a factor of two. If so, each machine can handle about 30 searches per second. If so, 38K searches per second need about 1000 machines. Sounds a bit too low... so my interpretation must be wrong at least somewhere.

It probably just increments by some fixed amount each second, but it seems like a statistic they would have an estimate of.

I do not know why you were down-voted, perhaps for not fully forming an argument and making a tongue-in-cheek comment as an immediate response to the arrogant statement Google unnecessarily included in the description of how search works(yes, the same statement stood out to me, as out of place and arrogant, but not necessarily untrue).

As to your point, yes, Google does utilize its power, leverage, dominance to favor itself and its own products - and don't feel to bad others are demanding you show your proof - how quick they are to forget (and apparently Google's own employees who replied to your comment forgot also) that the FTC spent the last year investigating Google's behavior on this front - some of those charges into Google's behavior include using its knowledge of search and advertising to determine the most profitable online businesses, entering the space with their own product to compete directly or just drive up the price of the advertising terms (sometime 1000%). So imagine you were buying key word "y" for "$x"/click - Google comes along and competes, now their product is at the top of the organic results and you will need to pay (1000 x "$X") for the same advertising - oh by the way when they pays (1000 x "$x") for the same ad space that money just goes back to its own pocket.

So do not feel to bad - the FTC spent millions investigating Google to find said evidence and ultimately allowed Google to settle for $22.5 million, Google allowing others to use the Motorola patents is acquired, and changing their AdWords API. And keeping with their motto: "Don't be evil" it appears in the last 24 hours media has gone wild alleging Google spent $25,000 to honor the FTC Director during the investigation - I know when I am being investigated for federal anti-trust allegations I too like to honor the investigator, and like Google I do not give the investigator the money directly, I give it to a 3rd party who in turn gives it to the investigators office, this allows the investigator time to close the case before allegations are made and when allegations are eventually made it allows the investigator the opportunity to say at the time it was unknown who "donated" money for the honorarium.

This is completely false. The effect on revenue is not used to make launch decisions for ranking changes.

> There's a slight oversight, it should be: "We write programs & formulas to deliver the most profitable results possible for this quarter"

Says... you, right? Based on which examples of Google pursuing quarterly profits at the expense of users?