Google’s Ad Auctions
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-googles-ad-auctions-work-1484827203 Ads – the bane of our existence when it interrupts our videos and takes up precious window space. And yet, as much as advertisements come as an inconvenience to consumers, it is the reason why so many things on the internet is freely accessible. I thought it would be interesting to delve further into […]
A Moving Target: The Evolution of Google Page-Ranking Search Algorithms:
The Vice President of Google’s Engineering Department, Ben Gomes, vowed that “our goal is to get you the exact answer you’re searching for faster.” Over the past decade, Google has implemented five significant algorithm updates to its web-page ranking algorithm in order to maintain and fulfill this vow: The Panda Update The Penguin Update […]
Fast, Frequent, and Fair: Public Transportation and Equitable Growth
https://uscpriceonline.usc.edu/resources/equitable-growth-and-transportation/ The article “Fast, Frequent, and Fair: Public Transportation and Equitable Growth” highlights the importance of innovation in meeting the demand of accessible transportation. In class we learned that the addition of more highways doesn’t necessarily mean a decrease in traffic. However, this article also considers the accessibility to transportation. In all of the situations […]
Network Effects and Game Theory
https://fee.org/articles/how-this-gps-app-uses-incentives-to-overcome-the-bystander-effect/ This article discusses the popular navigation app “Waze.” which allows users to identify and share road hazards, hiding police officers, accidents, etc. that they have encountered while driving along. Such information is useful for other drivers who might be planning to take a route that will pass through such “obstacles.” The main point that […]
There’s An Underground Economy Selling Links From The New York Times, BBC, CNN, And Other Big News Sites
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/deansterlingjones/links-for-sale-on-major-news-wesbites The above article discusses the existence of a market for buying and selling domains of dead websites that are linked to by popular news sites. The reason why people would want to buy these domains is that being linked to by a site with a lot of traffic gives a website higher priority […]
Is PageRank Scary?
Of all the topics in our most recent lectures, PageRank struck me as potentially the most impactful on my own and my peers’ daily life. Looking up questions is an activity most people do a considerable amount daily, and those who control what pops up when the small magnifying glass is hit therefore wield a […]
Strong and Weak Ties in Social Media Advertising
At its inception, social media was a way for friends and family to connect online. Now, it is becoming increasingly common for users to interact with people with whom they have either weak ties or no ties. The shift is becoming increasingly relevant for advertisers who rely on social media to increase brand awareness and […]
Page Speed and Page Rank
https://techspective.net/2019/10/14/the-effect-of-page-speed-on-google-ranking-and-seo/ In 2018, Google announced that it was using the speed at which a webpage loads as a factor in Page Rank. A website with lots of media, such as photos and videos, will typically take longer to load than one with only text; however, it is possible to program media-heavy pages so that they […]
TurboTax: Using Search Optimization for Evil
It wasn’t until we started discussing how search engines rank webpages that I started considering how much effort companies must exert to try to beat the system—to optimize their rank in the search engine. At first, I only considered it from the usual goal—trying to put their site first in the search engine results. Before, […]
How Google Chooses its Search Results
https://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/google1.htm www.nytimes.com/2019/09/08/technology/antitrust-amazon-apple-facebook-google.html As we discussed in class and as the first link explains, Google chooses which sites to display based on the frequency and location of key words, the amount of time each website has existed, and based on “the number of web pages that link to the page in question.” Overall, the third of […]
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