ResourceBlog Article: Google and an IPO, Google and Blogs

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Wednesday, 20th August 2003

Google and an IPO, Google and Blogs

Web Search--Google
Source: Reuters
Google IPO? Brin Says "Good Chance"
From the article, It's something that we debate periodically at board meetings -- not every board meeting -- every other or every third," [Sergey] Brin said at Jupitermedia Corp.'s Search Engine Strategies Conference this week in San Jose...Brin, who is also president, technology, said Google is profitable and added the company right now is not pressed for the cash that initial public offerings generate. "It might be nice to have some degree of currency to do acquisitions and things like that. On the other hand, there are significant management distractions involved in being a public company, so it's always kind of a toss-up," he said. Among the distractions, Google executives have pointed out, are frequent meetings with Wall Street bankers, analysts and other financial industry players, as well as the requirement that a company publicly disclose financial information.
--
And Something Else From the Google Beat Google

In Some Cases "Site Search" Page Totals Not Even Close OR Blog Content Dominates Google
With so much talk about weblogs and their influence at Google I decided to see what eliminating a few weblog sites tha host weblogs would do to page estimate totals if they were removed from the universe of potential documents. In the process I discovered what I think is a Google inconsistency dealing with estimated page totals. Here are examples illustrating a few of the searches I've been running during the past few days. Results show that eliminating one or more domains from a query might not be functioning properly as it relates to page estimates. Are other page total estimate also inaccurate? Do major weblog domains hold a majority amounts of content in the Google database (very likely not the case).
Example 1
Search "weapons of mass destruction"
Approx 1.1 million hits
Now, eliminate results from the blogspot.com domain (-site:blogspot.com)
Approx 650,000 hits.
Does this mean that nearly one-half of the web pages containing the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" come from weblogs hosted on Blogspot? I doubt it.
--
What happens if you eliminate more weblog domains?
Search: "weapons of mass destruction"
and eliminate the following domains: -site:userland.com -site:weblogs.com -site:blogspot.com
-site:livejournal.com -site:journalspace.com -site:greymatter.com
Approx 240,000 hits. This would indicate that an overwhelming majority in Google about WMD comes from weblogs.
--
Example 2
Search: search engine optimization
Approx 800,000 hits
Eliminate blogspot.com pages
Approx 415,000 hits
Does this mean half of the pages in Google discussing SEO come from Blogspot? I doubt it.
Finally, search search engine optimization and eliminate the following domains: -site:userland.com
-site:weblogs.com -site:blogspot.com -site:livejournal.com -site:journalspace.com -site:greymatter.com
Approx 165,000 hits.
Bottom Lines:
* Regardless of the cause this illustrates (again!) that using page total estimates might be a less than accurate in determining the "popularity" of someone or something.
* I've contacted Google about the problem and will report back.
See Also: Search Engine Showdown Maintains A List of Google Inconsistencies

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