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August 19, 2004
'Interesting blog' � we're number one?
Scanning the statistics calculated from our web server logs, we noticed that we were getting referrals from searches for 'interesting blog'. Just to check this out, I googled those two words to find our notebook listed as the number one result! And we don't even have both terms anywhere on our page; we only have 'interest' and 'blog', separated by plenty of text. Rather, it is the homogeneous links to us that gave us this Google rank: one blog I know of linked to us with 'interesting blog' as the link text, and I've seen that post quoted elsewhere. Noting that we certainly aren't the most interesting blog on the net, I wondered why someone would search with those terms�would you really expect Google to know the Answer, to have the single universal ranking of interesting blogs? By crawling through the web and abstracting rankings from online content, Google becomes a barometer of language use. And for subscribers to popular "use" theories of meaning that tie the meaning of an expression directly to its use, Google is also cataloguing meaning on a global scale. But unlike those philosophers of language, Google has to actually choose a particular algorithm to draw something out of what is otherwise just millions of linguistic tokens stored in servers scattered across the globe. And this choice is certainly not uncontroversial, or without consequences.
Since Google is so incredibly popular�40.9% of search referals in the US, over 65% in the UK, Germany, and China�the system that Google has chosen, or that is Google, has influenced many decisions about how to use language on the web: webmasters looking to get top search rankings optimize their sites specifically for Google, those with top rankings sell links on their highly PageRanked front pages not for click-throughs but for the boost in Google's algorithms provided to the linked-to site. Even Google's users modify their language use based on Google's choices as success and failure in searching influences their future choices of search terms�and perhaps even language use elsewhere.
For me, the idea that global language use online�and Google's choices about what to draw from that use�can affect how we use language in the rest of our lives is an interesting one, especially because some of the algorithm choices Google has made give huge power to individuals like bloggers who, in any other system, would have very little influence over English semantics globally.
"For a large class of cases--though not for all--in which we employ the word meaning it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language game.
"And the "meaning" of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, S43
[editted for spelling]
"And the "meaning" of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, S43
[editted for spelling]
Posted by at August 19, 2004 03:02 PM
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