This is just too cool

netman4ttm · #1 (**permalink**) 02-05-2004, 08:54 AM

http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5153627.html

This will make the SEO people go nuts.

I'm beginning to love IBM, again.

Brittany · #2 (**permalink**) 02-05-2004, 09:49 AM

"The Internet can be a treasure trove of business intelligence--but only if you can make sense of the data..."

Excellent article! Thanks for sharing it!

I'm curious to see what SEO experts think of this?

Quote:

WebFountain and other projects will take on a task that's exponentially more complex. "Search is trying to find the best page on a topic. WebFountain wants to find the trend," said Dan Gruhl, chief architect of the project at IBM's Almaden Research Center in South San Jose, Calif. ...

Brittany

Christian_SEO · #3 (**permalink**) 02-05-2004, 08:08 PM

Very interesting, and I'm interested in seeing what SEO experts think also...

Personally, I think it's a step in the right direction. The "Hubs and Authorities" was a valid idea before everyone went link-crazy and has diluted it as an effective means of determining who's hot and who's not. Now, the phrase, "Hub and Spokes" better describes what is going on.

With WebFountain, think www.Kartoo.com on a supercomputer. Speaking as someone that does SEO, I think it's great. Here's why: Basic SEO is nothing more than finding out what people use to search with, and then getting it on the site within a structure that is search engine friendly, as much as possible.

I think Webfountain could put a new spark the old robot. I only see it making content more valuable, not less, even as it tries to put things into context and determine trends.

If Webfountain becomes something that will impact us lowly consumers and would be experts (Calm down, I'm referring to myself, ok?), I think that remains to be seen. But if it does, then I think Google will be quick to adapt and do what it can to improve their results still further.

The value of content, and particularly optimized content is not going to go away. And any new technology that can put this whole link thing to rest would be very welcome in my opinion.

janeth · #4 (**permalink**) 02-05-2004, 08:27 PM

I think it is a step in the right direction. But you also have to keep in mind that as far as SEO goes as long as you write a program and send a robot out there are ways to make the robot see and do what you want it to.

The robot is limited by the program it runs on. There are no limits to the human mind.

I also do not see it replacing links but maybe making links have less power.

Webpub · #5 (**permalink**) 02-06-2004, 11:55 AM

Webpublicitee technology note: SAND Technology (NASDAQ:SNDT) http://www.sandtechnology.com has a similar system we think is VERY interesting called the SAND Analytic Server, "rapid deployment and efficient maintenance of enterprise-class analytic applications, the SAND Analytic Server represents an approach to Business Intelligence worthy of the Information Age."

Keep an eye on this little company with huge ideas, it never gets enough attention for sure.

Web Publicitee
http://www.webpublicitee.com

Mel · #6 (**permalink**) 02-07-2004, 05:15 AM

I do not see this project as having any impact on SEO, as it is operates in a totally different area.

If there are pearls of wisdom to be found in the "grungy pages" as IBM puts it, it may well be applicable to research and branding departments of governments and large coporataions, but not likely to web commerce which is all structured data.

Since there is really no way to optimize unstructured data, like the posts in this forum, I don't see it coming into the SEO world at all.

Conficio · #7 (**permalink**) 02-10-2004, 09:23 AM

Hi everybody,
I agree with Mel. This is something completely different. Data Mining, means you crunch a lot of data in order to unearth some structure, that was hidden. But this is not the instantaneous result, that someone using a search engine expects. It means some “query” does run a while or is run constantly against new pages coming into the data pool.

Am I totally wrong here?

However, this is still something useful and I would take such mining any day (for free from google ;-). I'm looking for some slow but methodical re-search service for quite a while. Things like Google NewsAlert are pointing into the right direction.

My biggest concern is, that it is vulnerable to abuse. If I want to enforce a trend, I start to post parts of the same data all over the place. If I try to undermine a trend I'm going to post falsified data or hypothetical data about a subject. The resources to post something are sooo cheap. This kind of mining machine will take fiction as well as news, so if I act as a humorist or fiction writer, it will mix it in with the news and extract the trends in the fictitious world. One can only hope that the people interpreting this are smart enough to catch on to this.

Just my five cents

K<o>

alienzhavelanded · #8 (**permalink**) 02-10-2004, 03:01 PM

Already got a visit from the WebFountain crawler here. Anyone else ? ;)

Happy coding,
The Martian

xenu · #9 (**permalink**) 11-30-2006, 12:25 PM

I,ve had a fair few visit's yes!
Carnt say it was anything major though!

**incrediblehelp** · #10 (**permalink**) 12-05-2006, 02:08 PM

Boy this post was pulled from the depths of the sea. Haven't seen anything major from Web Fountain, but in the 2 years since this article was publish, social networking sure has took off!

#11 (**permalink**) 12-05-2006, 03:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Boy this post was pulled from the depths of the sea. Haven't seen anything major from Web Fountain, but in the 2 years since this article was publish, social networking sure has took off!

~~What a very valid point! Interestingly enough, even though it is an old article it did generate a bit of discussion which means search has a lot of room for improvement, which is what we are here for!