Matt Cutts: Google Probably Won’t Call PageRank Something Else

Update: Matt Cutts says they probably won't rename PageRank. However, he agrees with Peter Norvig that people obsess about it too much.

Original article: Last year, Google quietly got rid of PageRank in Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa had said, "We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it's the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it."

Note: Watch our exclusive interview with Google's Matt Cutts at 1pm Pacific/4pm Eastern at live.webpronews.com.

A lot of people wondered why Google would keep PageRank in the Google Toolbar, where it still sits to this day. Search enthusiast Barry Schwartz of Rusty Brick speculated that Google would not want to remove it because PageRank is "too much of their branding." After some words from Google's Director of Research, Peter Norvig today, however, I'm not so sure that's the case.

Note: Watch Norvig's keynote address here (or view our liveblog of the event), and our exclusive interviw with him here:

Norvig said at SMX today that PageRank is still one thing that is "overhyped," and that Google never felt that it was such a big factor. They have always looked at all available data, combining every available signal and tiring to figure out the best way to combine them.

Norvig also said that it may be time for some re-branding with regard to PageRank. There may be a different term in the pipeline. "There's a technical formula that's PageRank, which is the way of judging the links between pages, and that's just one component of how we rank the pages and you get your final search results. There's all these other things that come in, but they don't have a catchy name. So some people apply PageRank to mean all the components that give you the final ranking, and that's where we get confused. So probably we need some other term for that...We'll get some marketing guys on it."

I don't know how seriously the company is considering this, as Norvig seems to simply be speaking off the cuff, but given the company's repeated emphasis on a lack of emphasis on PageRank, it would not be surprising to see them change the name. However, the problem with that could be, that these same PR-obsessed webmasters would just become obsessed with the re-branded term.

WebProNews will be doing a live interview with Google's Matt Cutts today at 1pm Pacific/4pm Eastern at live.webpronews.com. Perhaps he will offer his thoughts on the subject.

Do you think PageRank needs a different name? What would you call it? Give your suggestions here.

Facebook: “Promote your Post” Just a Test

Update: I finally got word back from Facebook, who confirmed that the feature is indeed only a test. "The "Promote" feature is just a test and is unrelated to our Promotions Guidelines," the company says. They  did not give any specifics about a possible full launch.

Original Article: Facebook appears to either be rolling out or testing a feature that lets Facebook Page owners promote specific posts. When you make an update, a link that says, "Promote" can be found by the links for "Comment" and "Like".

Once you click that Promote link, it brings up a dialogue box, which asks you to create an ad, with targeting descriptions, the ad duration, and the maximum price of "Up to $50.00 USD".

Editor's note: Feel free to become our fan on Facebook, by the way.

You can click on "Edit Ad" to go to the standard Facebook Advertising Page, or you can click "Create Ad" to go to this page:

Interestingly enough, this comes after talk last week about how you have to have promotions approved by a Facebook account representative, which would reportedly cost you about $10k. This would appear to eliminate that notion.

The feature appears to only be available for some admins of some pages. We're not sure if they're rolling out the feature or just testing it. I've contacted Facebook to learn more about the feature, and I'll update when I receive a response. Any other Facebook Page admins getting this feature? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends....

Google Testing a Revamp of the Search Results Page

Update 2: One of my co-workers is seeing the new SERPs:

Update: Danny Sullivan reports that "slight variations" of this design are "live in the wild," and "still being shown to a randomly selected group of people," and that Google doesn't have an expected launch date for a complete roll-out.

Original Article (11/19): Google is testing a new user interface for its search options feature. If you are unfamiliar with the search options feature, it is the link on your search results page that says "show options" and brings up a menu on the left-hand side of the screen providing a number of ways to filter your results.

According to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land, a "small number" of Google users will see the new interface starting today. The aim of the new interface is to provide users with a cleaner display. Sullivan says that if the testing goes well, Google may roll it out after the New Year. He quotes Google's Marissa Mayer as saying, "We're basically looking at a new look and feel for Google. It's an overall cleaning up of the search engine results page."

Do you think Google's results pages need a new look and feel? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends... what you think.

Images of this new look and feel look strangely familiar - similar to that of a certain "decision engine." Take a look:

Of course, the Google's search options and Bing have been compared in the past (and other search engines utilize a similar design too for that matter), in terms of the general layout. Their functionalities differ on various levels. It's important to note that this will just be how the search results pages will look, without having to click the search options link to get to it. There has been discussion in the past about how much users actually use Google's search options, simply because the feature is easy to overlook. Such a change would put the options right in your face.
 
Besides being visually different, the options themselves are different in some areas. For example, a "see also" section has been added, which suggests related queries. There is also a section called "show search tools," which now contains things like the Wonder Wheel, Timeline View, and "more shopping sites."

Google may start messing around with the top navigation on search results pages next year, but the company has acknowledged that it works well right now. It will be interesting to see the change in use of this top navigation if the left-hand options go mainstream.

What do you think of this re-working of Google's search results pages? Do you want to see it go mainstream, or do you like it better how it is right now? Share your thoughts.

Have You Read This?

> Google Launches Search Options

> Google Presents New Image Search Options

> Google's Search Options Increase

Google Buzz Draws New Content-Scraping Controversy

Update 2:  Google offered the following statement: "Buzz can only expand to show whatever was in the underlying feed. For example, if an item is truncated in the feed to only include 200 characters, then Buzz will only show 200 characters."

So, in other words, Bloggers can prevent their full content from showing in Buzz just like in a reader, depending on how they set up their feed.

Update: So far, Google has referred me to the same response they gave Stay, but I've inquired further. We'll keep you posted.

Original Article: If you were under the impression that the controversy surrounding Google Buzz was starting to die down, think again. So far, we've mostly heard about privacy issues, which Google has publicly addressed. They've also made changes based on user feedback. Now, we're hearing about possible copyright issues. Google appears to be republishing full articles without permission, and stripping out any ads that may be in those articles.

One can easily see why any blogger or publisher wouldn't be very pleased with this scenario. Not only are they serving up full articles that others have written without sending authors the traffic or even ad clicks, but if a user reads the article through Buzz within their Gmail account, they will likely see the ads Google itself serves.

Blogger Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive brings the subject up in a post, claiming that this is exactly what is happening to his content. However, Google did respond to him, saying they would "have the ad scraping issue fixed by next week." That would solve one problem, but presumably, this doesn't change the fact that they are showing full article text, which is an interesting choice on Google's part, considering the controversy surrounding how Google News aggregates publishers' content.

That is a different situation entirely, because Google News does not publish full articles (unless they come from one of their partners). They simply provide a title, small snippet, and link to the original source, hence driving traffic to that source. Based on Stay's story, Google will not likely be driving much traffic by showing full articles in Buzz. We've contacted Google for comment on this (we'll post when we receive it).

One might compare reading an article through Buzz to reading one through a feed reader, like Google Reader. Sometimes you can read a feed in its full text, but the author has the ability to prevent this. With Buzz, the full-text articles appear to be coming simply from people sharing the articles, which is out of the author's control (we asked Google if their is a way authors can prevent this...again, we'll post a response when we receive it).

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