Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Alexa on What's Related

Author:Sean Lindsay
Posted:3/18/1999; 10:40:54 PM
Topic:Microsoft on What's Related
Msg #:4273 (In response to 4262)
Prev/Next:4272 / 4274

I'd like to know how your algorithms work, and show me a site that What's Related turns up Something Relevant.

I'm curious about how the algorithms work too - for my disability magazine site (www.outlookmagazine.com), What's Related returns links to eight other other disability magazines. The results are so good, from a visitor's perspective, that the feature might as well be called Who's the Competition. I can't believe this is the only example of Alexa's algorithm actually working. The algorithm fails, though, if the visitor is reading an article within the site, from where they might want to read more about the topic, and not switch magazines.

When it works, Alexa's idea of What's Related seems to be answering one kind of search question: "Are there any other sites like this one?". It's (only?) effective when other searches fail and the site you're looking at is close to what you want.

But now that both Netscape and MSIE have this facility in the browser, though, surely the opportunity is there for other search engines to create What's Related features that answer the other questions we're forever asking. For example:

"What category is this site in?" - something for a directory like Yahoo or LookSmart to answer. Perhaps the site is not quite what you were looking for and you want to wander the nearby branches of the topic tree, or perhaps you want to visit a competitor.

"Are there any other pages like this one?" - something for Altavista to do, as well as JIT-SEs like Excite News. This is the perfect place for metadata to shine. If the page is already indexed, it should be easy for the the engine to return useful results - and it serves the dual purpose of firing new, qualified URLs at the indexer when people are actually reading them.

Combining these existing directory/indexes with the hitcounting methods that Alexa and Userland use, and you have a self-improving search engine without the "invasive" tracking methods that Alexa uses.

Dave, how about testing this out on Scripting News and DaveNet? Each news item on SN could have a What's Related button that seeds the search engine, and each DaveNet could have a list of the most recent DaveNets that have touched on similar topics.

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