This post is part of an ongoing series: How Search Really Works.
Previously: Relevance (1)

Another way we can assess the relevance of a document is by term weighting.

From the keyword density myth we know that true term weighting is done collection wide.

By looking at the number of documents in the index that a term appears in we can make a measurement of information: how good, how special… how meaningful is this word?

The word the would not be special at all, appearing in way too many documents. Its worth would be close to zero.

OK, I’ll admit it, I read the comments on YouTube…but I don’t think there is any truth to the rumor that I inspired this Scott Johnson classic.

With the flurry of news stories running rampant over the past 24-48 hours, poor Scarlett Yahoo must be exhausted. Who indeed to take to the cotillion? There’s that awful Rhett MSN or that nice Ashley Wilkes Google.

Frankly, I’m reminded of the opening scene with Scarlett on the veranda cloying with prospective suitors and the saga is all a little exhausting. Makes me want for a nice Mint Julip and a nap until this whole silly thing blows over

Afterall, tomorrow is just another trading day.

Image Courstesy Businessweek.com

HOLY SMOKES!  I am completely blown away by the moves of Yahoo this week, in an effort to stave off the Microsoft takeover.  As of yesterday for a two week trial, Google will handle advertising for a tiny piece of the searches carried out on Yahoo.  In fact, Google will place ads alongside 3% of the U.S. queries on Yahoo’s site.  GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS ON YAHOO!!!  It would appear that instead of being eaten by the lion, Yahoo would prefer to throw itself into the dragon’s mouth!  I’d LOVE to hear what you all have to say about that, or what your thoughts on this maneuver are!  Doesn’t that actually reduce Yahoo’s perceived value as a search engine, having results served up by the competition?  Wouldn’t that also drive down the stock price, making it even easier for Microsoft to be able to pick it up?

Ever heard it said … “to have a good friend, you’ve got to be a good friend”?

Image courtesy: Prosoundweb.com

Well its absolutely true! A group of friends with similar interests but complementary skills is beneficial for all involved, especially where each works to help the others in the group. If each member is an authority in their respective realms, and truly respects the work and skills of the others, the whole becomes greater than the sum of the members … which tends to elevate the “authority” of each of the members.

The search engine has become an integral part of life in the 21st century. The ability to type in a few words and then get some results that are interesting and useful for you – it’s as transforming to a culture as the introduction of the VCR, the audio CD, the personal computer, the microwave oven, and the cell phone..

Can you imagine having to remember or having a list of every website that you’d ever want to visit, especially the ones with URLs of 30 characters or more that don’t use many recognizable words? Search engines take that burden away from us.

According to a bi-annual report from Nielsen Mobile found that 58 million, or 23%, of all U.S. mobile phones users, have viewed mobile advertising in the last 1 month. Of these, 28 million subscribers say they responded to the ad in one way or another.

The findings are based on a study of over 22,000 mobile users, carried out in the last quarter of 2007. Overall there was a big jump in the number of users who recalled seeing mobile advertising, up 38 percent from the last report. In the second quarter of 2007, Nielsen reported 42 million subscribers saw mobile ads, while the number rose to 58 million for the fourth quarter.

What are realistic measures for your clients blog?

You’ve sold your client on a blog and you’ve developed a Blog Strategy. Plus you’ve made the blog much more implementable by coming up with 30 to 50 Blog Post ideas. But for this Blog Strategy to be really successful, one of the most important things that you can do is to manage your clients expectations.

Metrics without some point of comparison are just numbers. What turns that meaningless data into useful information is having a point of comparison.

Blog Benchmark figures are difficult to find.

This post is part of an ongoing series: How Search Really Works.
Previously: Simple Query Optimization.

Search is always boolean: yes or no. True or false.

Either the words are in the document or not.

But as you see, not all documents are “born alike”. Some are about our topic, some just mention it.

What we need, what we want, is not just a big list of results — we want a relevant list of results, preferably sorted so that the best bet appears on top.

The very very early years of Web 2.0.

Source: Geek And Poke