|
This newsletter was conceived at the 2005 ALA conference in Chicago, where
Google hosted a booth in the exhibit hall. We spent three days chatting with
librarians about Google: what you liked, what you didn't like, and where you
saw opportunities to work together to help people find useful, relevant information.
In an effort to keep those conversations going, we're launching this newsletter.
Consider it a first step toward what we hope will be a long and mutually beneficial
relationship. We anticipate sending it out quarterly, with the occasional special
feature as appropriate.
This introductory issue features an article written to address one of the most frequent
questions we've heard from librarians: How does Google index the web, and, more important,
how does it rank the results? Matt Cutts, an engineer in our Quality group, explains
the basics of indexing and sheds some light on some of the algorithms we use to determine
where a site should appear on results pages. He also suggests exercises school librarians
can do to help students better understand how Google works.
But this newsletter wouldn't be much of a conversation if it were written solely
by folks at Google. Future issues will feature articles contributed by librarians
and library supporters, links to library-related web sites, and updates on Google
products and services that can help you in your work. We invite you to send
us your thoughts: your questions about Google, your suggestions for articles,
and your stories of how librarians use and keep up with technology on the job. We'll
do our best to use your feedback to make each issue more relevant and useful to the
library community.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned.
Jodi Healy
Manager, Library Partnership Team
How does Google rank results?
One of the most common questions we hear from librarians is "How does Google decide
what result goes at the top of the list?" Here, from quality engineer Matt Cutts,
is a quick primer on how we crawl and index the web and then rank search results. Read
the article
As always, please feel free to contact
us if you have suggestions for improving this newsletter or questions about
Google.
Sign up to receive
this newsletter.
|
