Google Blogs

by John Hiler

"Is Weblog Technology Here to Stay or Just Another Fad?"

Bob Tedeschi's rhetorical headline in a recent New York Times article has caused quite a stir in the weblog community.  Bloggers across the world are debating whether or not weblogs are a just passing fad, or if they'll ever actually have a meaningful impact on the lives of most web users.

While I've been enjoying the debate, the question is largely moot: whether or not people even know what a weblog is, blogs are already having a massive impact on the lives of almost all web users.  This is due to a quirk in the way the world's most popular search engine works.  Unbeknownst to most, weblogs have a significant impact on Google search results.  With over "150 million search queries per day" [1], that means that weblogs are influencing over a billion Google searches a week.

Take that, New York Times!

Why Google Loves Weblogs

Reason One: Google Loves the Links in Weblogs

The magic of Google comes from its patented search engine algorithm, nicely described in their Press Kit:

In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Google loves Links, because they are the very core of its search engine.  If page A links to page B, then that makes page B more popular in search results.

Weblogs are all about links like this.  As Rebecca Blood put it in her excellent weblog history:

The original weblogs were link-driven sites. Each was a mixture in unique proportions of links, commentary, and personal thoughts and essays. ... Many current weblogs follow this original style. Their editors present links both to little-known corners of the web and to current news articles they feel are worthy of note.

A match made in heaven!  Google loves links, and weblogs are all about links.  Every time a blogger links to a website, its Google rank rachets up ever so slightly.  If enough bloggers pile onto that link, it can start to have a significant impact on a sites' Google rank.

But links by themselves aren't enough to give Weblogs their influence on Google.  That comes from a more recent tweak in the Google search engine:

Reason Two: Google loves Fresh Content

In roughly August of last year, Google started indexing frequently updated sites much more often.  The primary reason for this was to increase Google's access to articles from news sites, like CNN and the New York Times.  Google even added a "News" section at the top of its search results, to present "news stories relevant to users' queries". [2]

But Google didn't stop there.  Its insatiable appetite for fresh content spilled over to any frequently updated websites, including Weblogs.  If Google noticed a page updating frequently, it started visiting that page much more frequently so it could suck the latest content into its database of over 3 billion documents.  As they put it in their latest press release, "Google refreshes millions of web pages every day to ensure that Google users have access to the most current information."

Putting it Together: Google loves Weblogs

Weblogs are perfect for Google: frequently updated websites crammed chockfull of tasty links.  It's no wonder that Google loves Weblogs so much.

Of course, if that's the case, why doesn't every Google search land the searcher on a blog?  That question underscores a crucial point about weblogs and Google: weblogs are the voters in this political system.  In other words, weblogs don't get elected by Google... but the sites they voted for do.

So even if you never visit a blog, you're being influenced by them.  The collective votes of the weblog community are determing what sites you see on Google, the world's largest search engine.

Mob Justice: Weblogs Swing into Action

We got a chance to see the collective power of the weblog community recently, when Matt Haughey (founder of community weblog MetaFilter) got a telemarketer call one day while he was sitting at home.  The cold callers were Critical IP, who had gotten his home phone number from the central database of domain name owners.  He posted his outrage on his own weblog:

[T]he gang at Critical IP feel the whois database is a virtual goldmine worth cold-calling and bothering you at home (when I asked them if they got my number from the whois database, they admited that yes, that was how they obtained it).  ...

But Matt didn't stop there...  he asked other bloggers to spread the word that Critical IP was coldcalling people while they were eating supper:

If you feel like sharing this message with anyone else, just copy this HTML and post on your site: Critical IP sucks.

Over the next few days, I noticed dozens of blogs linking to Matt's post, all with the same message: "Critical IP sucks".  Even now, you can find over two dozen weblogs linking to Matt's post.  The thought here was that the collective linking of the weblog community would achieve a sort of mob justice, with Google searchers finding the message "Critical IP sucks" whenever they searched for Critical IP.

To Matt's credit, the plan worked brilliantly!  His personal site became the #1 search result for google searches of "Critical IP".

Man, that was fast. Anyone searching Critical IP at google sees me above the company. And my post is #7 and rising at Daypop.

I did it as a quick experiment in meme creation and propagation, to see if it would actually work, and how long it would take. Now that I see it's pretty much a full success in about 48 hours, it's also worth noting how frighteningly powerful it is. I'm sure using Google's new temporal listings, I'll fall out of #1 in a few days, but it boggles the mind that anyone with a well-indexed weblog (google loves constantly updated pages) can supplant even the company's companytitle.com site.

So be careful out there, this angry mob justice is some pretty powerful stuff.

There's even a name in the weblog community for this phenomenon: Google Bombing.  Whether it's done accidentally or more purposefully, the very existence of this phenomenon points to the power of Weblogs to impact the Google search experience. [3]

The Growing Google Power of Weblogs

Of course, it's somewhat hyperbolic to claim that Weblogs are impacting all of Google's weekly billion-plus searches.  Google's search engine algorithm has built-in protection from Google Bombs, probably by tamping down the weight of older links.  Case in point: Matt's site has fallen from #1 to #46 in Google searches for Critical IP (as of 2/26/02).

Still, Google page ranks are already being impacted by weblogs in more long-term ways - how else would blogger Dave Winer outrank humorist Dave Barry in a Google search for Dave?  Or journalist Deborah Branscum outrank Debbie Gibson in a Google search for Deborah?

The Google Power of weblogs will only grow with time:

1. As weblogs get more traffic, their votes will count for more:
2. Google weights fresh votes more than older votes
3. Blog search engines like Daypop and blogdex are spreading links more quickly.

As weblogs get more traffic, their votes will count for more:

As Google describes their search algorithm, 'votes cast by pages that are themselves 'important' weigh more heavily and help to make other pages 'important.' '

Weblogs can effectively double dip from this equation.  Not only do their votes count for more as they each get more traffic, but the heavy cross-linking magnifies the impact of this collective voting machine.  This greatly magnifies the Google Power of weblogs.

Google weights fresh votes more than older votes

It's clear that Google has some sort of time-element to their search algorithm now, as evidenced by the diminishing power of Matt's Google Bomb on Critical IP.  The flip side of this is that fresh links are more heavily weighted than links from non-weblogs.

In other words, Weblogs have the potential to Google Bomb pretty much any keyword they want, if they act quickly and decisively.  Which brings us to the third reason that Weblogs will increase their Google Power:

Blog search engines like Daypop and blogdex are spreading links more quickly.

Daypop and Blogdex both offer Billboard-style lists of the top fresh links in the weblog community.  As a result, popular links (often called memes) spread much more quickly. 

According to Blogdex founder Cameron Marlow:

thanks to tools like blogdex and daypop, i think that there is now LOTS of cohesion in the weblog community. for instance, when i first started crawling, the greatest number of an individual link i would find would be on the order of 5 per day. now it is not uncommon to find 30 or 50.

Matt's Google Bomb on Critical IP might have taken much longer to spread without sites like Blogdex and Daypop to spread the word.  Because Google weights fresh links more heavily, it really helps for Weblogs to link to a website at roughly the same time.  Sites like Blogdex and Daypop make sure that this happens.

Weblogs: They ain't no Fad

Even if you've never heard of weblogs, they're having a powerful impact on your web searches every day.  So to answer the New York Times, are weblogs just a fad?  Anything that can potentially influence over a billion web searches every week sounds like more than a fad to me. 

Oh, and by the way? Critical IP sucks.

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Check out our follow-up on Google and Weblogs:

• Google Time Bomb: Will Weblogs blow up the world's favorite search engine?