DIGGING FOR GOOGLEHOLES

Google may be our new god, but it's not omnipotent.

By Steven Johnson

1
The arrival of Google five years ago served as a kind of upgrade for the entire Web. Searching for
information went from a sluggish, unreliable process to something you could do with genuine
confidence. If it was online somewhere, Google and its ingenious PageRanksystem would find what
you were looking for—and more often than not, the information would arrive in Google's top 10
results.
2
But the oracle—recently described as "a little bit like God" in the New York Times—is not perfect.
Certain types of requests foil the Google search system or produce results that frustrate more than
satisfy. These are systemic problems, not isolated ones; you can reproduce them again and again.
The algorithms that Google's search engine relies on have been brilliantly optimized for most types
of information requests, but sometimes that optimization backfires. That's when you find yourself in
a Googlehole.
3
Googlehole No. 1: All Shopping, All the Time. If you're searching for something that can be sold
online, Google's top results skew very heavily toward stores, and away from general information.
Search for "flowers," and more than 90 percent of the top results are online florists. If you're doing
research on tulips, or want to learn gardening tips, or basically want to know anything about flowers
that doesn't involve purchasing them online, you have to wade through a sea of florists to find what
you're looking for.
4
The same goes for searching for specific products: Type in the make and model of a new DVD
player, and you'll get dozens of online electronic stores in the top results, all of them eager to sell
you the item. But you have to burrow through the results to find an impartial product review that
doesn't appear in an online catalog. I suspect this emphasis is due to the convention of linking to an
online store when mentioning a product, whether it's a book, CD, or outdoor grill. In addition, a
number of sites—such as DealTime—track the latest prices and availability of thousands of items at
online stores, which creates even more product links in Google's database. Because PageRank
assumes that pages that attract a lot of links are more relevant than pages without links, these most-
linked-to product pages bubble up to the top. Google is replicating one of the problems experienced
by some of the big portals—sites like Lycos and Infoseek—during the boom years. They sold so
much real estate on their pages to online stores and other advertisers that their results became less
reliable, which gave Google its opening in the first place. Now the same thing is happening again,
only it's happening organically, without Google manipulating the integrity of its search engine.
5
Googlehole No. 2: Skewed Synonyms. Search for "apple" on Google, and you have to troll
through a couple pages of results before you get anything not directly related to Apple Computer—
and it's a page promoting a public TV show called Newton's Apple. After that it's all Mac-related
links until Fiona Apple's home page. You have to sift through 50 results before you reach a link that
deals with apples that grow on trees: the home page for the Washington State Apple Growers
Association. To a certain extent, this probably reflects the interest of people searching as well as
those linking, but is the world really that much more interested in Apple Computer than in old-
fashioned apples?
6
At this stage in the Web's development, people who create a lot of links—most notably the
blogging community—tend to be more technologically inclined than the general population, and
thus more likely to link to Apple Computer than something like the Washington State Apple
Growers Association. (This process is sometimes known as "googlewashing," where one group of
prolific linkers can alter the online associations with a given word or phrase.) But there's another
factor here, which is that categories that don't have central, well-known sites devoted to them will
fare poorly when they share a keyword with other categories. Maybe there are thousands of pages
that deal with apples, but only one Apple Computer or Fiona Apple home page. People interested in
growing or eating apples will distribute those links more widely across those thousands of pages,
while Mac or Fiona fans will consolidate around fewer pages, driving them higher in Google's
rankings.
7
Googlehole No. 3: Book Learning. Google is beginning to have a subtle, but noticeable effect on
research. More and more scholarly publications are putting up their issues in PDF format, which
Google indexes as though they were traditional Web pages. But almost no one is publishing entire
books online in PDF form. So, when you're doing research online, Google is implicitly pushing you
toward information stored in articles and away from information stored in books. Assuming this
practice continues, and assuming that Google continues to grow in influence, we may find ourselves
in a world where, if you want to get an idea into circulation, you're better off publishing a PDF file
on the Web than landing a book deal.
8
There's a parallel development in Google's treatment of Web sites that restrict access to their
archives. The New York Times may be an authority in the world of opinion, but its closed archives
mean that its articles rarely rank highly in Google results, if they appear at all. Search for "Augusta
National," Howell Raines' pet obsession from this year, and not a single page from the Times site
appears in the top 50 results. Uber-blogger Dave Winerbet the CEO of the New York Times Digital
last year that in 2007 bloggers will rank higher than the Times in Google searches. As Winer
now puts it: "If you want to be in Google, you gotta be on the Web."
9
You can't really hold Google responsible for these blind spots. Each of them is just a reflection of
the way the Web has been organized by the millions who have contributed to its structure. But the
existence of Googleholes suggests an important caveat to the Google-as-oracle rhetoric: Google
may be the closest thing going to a vision of the "group mind," but that mind is shaped by the
interests and habits of the people who create hypertext links. A group mind decides that Apple
Computer is more relevant than the apples that you eat, but that group doesn't speak for everybody.
10
We're wrong to think of Google as a pure reference source. It's closer to a collectively authored
op-ed page—filled with bias, polemics, and a skewed sense of proportion—than an encyclopedia.
It's still the connected world's most dazzling place to visit, a perfect condensation of the Web's
wider anarchy. Just don't call it an oracle.
 READING ANALYSIS
APPROACHING THE TEXT
1. Genre: article of technology

2. Title: The title “Digging for Googleholes” left me such a strong impression when I first
came across this article three weeks ago, and I know that it is not only me who can’t resist
the tempatation of this interesting topic. From the very first day of its “debut”, Google was
considered to be the best search engine the world over, and words forming from the root
“google”, such as “google” and “googler”, are not something strange nowadays, especially
Internet-users. Most of us take full advantages of this search engine in each and every aspect
of our lives with the belief that just some typing and clicking in the Google homepage can
help us solving all the problems ranging from personal issues to workplace matters. That’s
the reason why I was very curious when coming across an article emphasizing on
“googleholes” or some defects of Google. I began reading the article with a great deal of
scepticism at first, however, after finishing reading, I have to accept the fact that Google,
though it is still the most popular search engine, is not as perfect as we used to think.

3. Sub-title: The sub-title “Google may be our new god, but it’s not omnipotent” has done its
best to bring out successfully the main idea of the whole article. In English, the phrase
“omnipotent god” is usually used for expressing the entire belief in the power to do anything
of God. The author skillfully separate this phrase into two parts, “god” and “omnipotent” in
oder to convey his opinion on the value of Google. He agrees with the fact that Google has
been an unreplaceable part of human living for the ability to gather information in the
Internet, however, he also draws the reader’s attention to its accuracy with the hope to give
Google a more appropriate assessment.

4. Structure:
Introduction (par.1)

General assumption (par.2)

Evaluation, examples and explanations (par. 3)

Examples and explanations (par.4)

Evaluation and examples (par.5)

Explanations (par.6)

Evaluation and explanations (par.7)

Examples and explanations (par.8)

 Explanations (par.9)

Conclusion (par.10)

5. Content of each paragraph and the whole article:

Par.1 The role of Google as a search engine

Par.2 Introduce of Google’s defect known as “Googlehole”
Par.3 1st defect: The tendency to give information related to online-purchasing
Par.4 Another examples of the 1st defect and reason
Par.5 2nd defect: Skewed synonyms affect Google’s ranking process
Par.6 Reason for existing skewed synonyms
Par.7 3rd defect: Limited results coming from books
Par.8 Another example of the 3rd defect
Par.9 General reason for the three defects
Par.10 Re-assessment of Google’s value and role

 Main idea: “Google’s defect”

INTENSIVE READING
1. Explanations and examples of some key terms:

Key terms
A little bit like god (par.2)
Most-linked-to product
pages (par.4)
Skewed synonyms (par.5)
Definition
Websites that are viewed
most by Internet-users
Synonyms that make
Google’s results become
inaccurate
Examples/
Further clarification
Consider Google as a
marvellous search engine
which can give out any
information requests.
Online florists, online
electronic stores
“apple” as a kind of fruit (in
general) in contrast with
“Apple Computer”- the brand
and Newton’s Apple – a
public TV show.

Some information, esp the

Blind spot (par. 9) An area that can’t be reached general one, is usually ranked
lower in Google’s result
 Google-as-oracle rhetoric The overestimated opinion
“A little bit like God” (par.2)
(par.9) on the role of Google
Op-ed (= "opinion" +
"editorial") is a kind of
The website that is somehow
writing appeared at
Authored op-ed page affected by the opinion of a
newspaper publication and
(par.10) group of people in this way
present the writer's opinion
or another.
on an issue of current public
interest.

2. Author’s message:

The author points out three main defects that Internet-users often deal with when
using Google for searching information by giving lots of examples and also explaining the
reasons for such defects. By doing so, he wants to bring Googlers a more appropriate view
on their favorite tools, a view that considers Google, although is still the most reliable
search engine, as technological invention which may have defects. Moreover, with this clear
and objective article, the author shows his goodwill contribution for a better Google.

3. My own opinion

The role of Google is undeniably essential, and I have to admit that I did make the
most of it for solving some personal problems as well as finishing all the assignments. The
defects mentioned in the article here are something I usually dealt with when doing
research. After reading “Digging for Googleholes”, besides coming to the understanding
about why these defects exist in Google’s system, I was reminded of the lesson about
relativism when judging anything or anyone. There’s nothing and no one perfect in this
world, and Google making defects is so normal that these can’t affect the best position of
Google in the cometition with other search engines these days. However, keeping an open
mind toward things considered to be the best will give us a chance to find out the way to
make the best become better, and I think, it’s the key to success, not only in work but also in
each and every aspect of lives.

LANGUAGE WORK
1. Vocabulary work

Word and location Class Meaning

Omipotent adjective having total power; able to do anything
(subtitle)
Foil (par.1) verb to stop sth from happening
Algorithm (par.1) noun (especially computing) a set of rules that must be
followed when solving a particular problem
Backfire (par.1) verb to have the opposite effect to the one intended,
 with bad or dangerous results
Wade through (par.3) phr.verb to deal with or read sth that is boring and takes a
lot of time
Sift through (par.4) phr.verb to examine sth very carefully in order to decide
what is important or useful or to find sth
important
Index (par.7) verb to make an index of documents, the contents of a
book, etc.; to add sth to a list of this type
Archive (par.8) noun a collection of historical documents or records of
a government, a family, a place or an
organization; the place where these records are
stored
Caveat (par.9) noun a warning that particular things need to be
considered before sth can be done
Rhetoric (par.9) noun speech or writing that is intended to influence
people, but that is not completely true

2. Some terminology in Internet aspect

The article is related to the field of techonology and Internet, so there are a great deal of
terminology appear in it:

PageRank : a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google
Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a
hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of
"measuring" its relative importance within the set.
 DealTime: the original name of Shopping.com sites, founded in Israel in 1998 by Dr.
Nahum Sharfman and Amir Ashkenazi, the original business model was to create a
downloadable client that would monitor changes in prices of products the user seeks
to buy over time, notifying the user when the product price reached a predetermined
level.
 Lycos: a search engine and web portal established in 1994. Lycos also encompasses
a network of email, webhosting, social networking, and entertainment websites.
 Infoseek: a very popular search engine founded in 1994 by Steve Kirsch. It was also
known as "big yellow". Infoseek was originally operated by the Infoseek
Corporation, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Infoseek was bought by The
Walt Disney Company in 1998, and the technology was merged with that of the
Disney-acquired Starwave to form the Go.com network. Since then it has been
replaced with Yahoo! search and is no longer in use.
3. Vocabulary:

This is the article of technology with the emphasis on the three defects of current Google
system. So it’s no wonder that readers will have to deal with some brand-name which is only
popular for Internet-users such as PageRank, DealTime, Lycos, Infoseek… and technology
terminologies such as “link”, “blogging community”, “googleholes”, “googlewashing”, “PDF
format”. This usage makes the article more reliable, but somehow causes difficulty for readers
who don’t have much knowledge about Internet and Google.
4. Grammar

 The article is about the current defects in Google system, and that’s the reason why
The Simple Past tense is used a lot for describing the problems and tracing the root.
However, there’s also some sentences that exist with the Simple Past tense, and all
of them are about the history of Google.

 We can also see the over-use of Conditional sentence in the article. This kind of
sentence is the best choice for expressing the Google’s defect in a way that let
readers imaginarily search for something they want on Google but can’t be satisfied.