Reading Time: < 1 minute

I found that Firefox 3.5.6 was not loading Google.com in spite of trying a few times. I noticed in the bottom left of the browser (the status bar) that it was stuck at loading clients1.google.com. This was a new subdomain to me, so a quick search brought up a Google web discussion.

The initial suggestion by a Google employee to check for malware was not relevant. I had just performed a full system scan with no problems.

Another suggestion was to turn off Search Settings > Query Suggestions. I didn’t try it as I had no problem with that feature so far.

The third suggestion worked for me. At the top right of the Firefox page I changed the search provider from Google to Yahoo! and the search engine loaded as before. This doesn’t solve the problem, which is probably at clients1.google.com and not on my PC, but it is a workaround that suits me as I never use that search box in Firefox.

Auschwitz sign stolen while Drowsily Manifold sleeps

19 December 2009

Ash Nallawalla

Other No Comments

Reading Time: < 1 minute

It’s a sad indictment of the times when the print media can’t hire competent humans to proofread the galleys but resort to spell checkers. But sometimes, the result can be funny; sometimes it is apt. From the Melbourne, Australia Herald Sun, 19 December 2009, page 43:

Sign at Auschwitz camp gate: Aerobic Mac fare — Sign at Auschwitz camp gate: "Aerobic Mac fare"

With my unusual Indian surname I can sympathise with a lot of Poles whose names can neither be spelt nor pronounced correctly by the rest of the world. What hope, then, is there for a newspaper spelling checker close to deadline time?

I was lazily browsing the local paper on this cloudy summer morning when this small item caught my eye. After reading it, I sensed something wasn’t right. The museum spokesman is named Drowsily Manifold? Drowsily, Vasily – maybe. Those East European names can end in ‘ly’. But Manifold? I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the middle name of some British aristocrat, but not in Poland. Never. Then I noticed “Aerobic Mac fare”. There is a sad irony there. Nothing that happened in that infamous camp deserves those words.

The online version of the Herald Sun article is barely a sentence or two in length, but its stable mate the Brisbane Courier Mail article has a more plausible name “Jaroslaw Mensfeld” and “Arbeit Macht Frei” is correct.

Local shopping with Google QR codes

14 December 2009

Ash Nallawalla

Local Search 1 Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Following on from my previous post How to SEO for Google PlaceRank, I was delighted to read Bill Slawski’s discovery of a new patent: Machine-Readable Representation of Geographic Information, which was published two days ago. It isn’t easy to read, but head over to Bill’s post to get a human friendly rendering.

(Aside: I can’t view the USPTO images in spite of reinstalling QuickTime via Firefox 3.0, IE8, IE6 or Chrome on two machines. I only get the Q logo briefly, then a blank image. What am I doing wrong?)

We know how popular QR codes are in Japan. Will they work in the West? Bill asks the question:

One question that needs to be asked, is why would Google rely upon stickers for a system like this instead of using something like Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) information, or cell phone triangulation, or some other method that would negate the need for someone to take an actual picture?

The “picture” as I understand it is not of the venue, à la Google Goggles. I use a Telstra QR code app on my S60 work phone and my personal iPhone and aim it at the QR code. As soon as the app sees the QR code in focus, it proceeds to open the web browser and takes me to that URL. I can choose to bookmark it at that time or just view it and then close the browser. Thus there is no picture taken.

A few months ago, B&T reported that Telstra signed a deal with Pacific Magazines to use QR codes across the publisher’s range of magazines, including Marie Claire, New Idea, Famous, and Who Weekly. Over four months, the trial resulted in 20,000 scans by readers.

Over a year ago, my employers conducted a small trial in a Melbourne suburb using similar stickers on shop windows. The results were not encouraging, including the problem with one venue having plate glass that made it difficult to scan the QR code. However, time has marched on and as millions of iPhones and other smart phones are in use, there might be a future for these codes in the West (or Down Under).

Stickers do more than facilitate data transfer or help nominate Favorite Places – they extend Google branding (as if Google needs more branding) to thousands of passersby.

What type of business would do well using QR codes? Here is my pick:

Restaurant bill holders are a better place for these codes than windows, for I can picture myself scanning the code when I get the bill after a great meal. The I don’t think I’d go out into the dark street to scan a sticker in the window.
Public transport timetables for a specific train line or bus/tram route.
Coupons, offers, whatever, provided that the URL is relevant when using a phone browser.

Phone browser? Yes, if I see a QR code URL in a magazine, I won’t bother to scan it with my phone if it is not a mobile site. This is one of the barriers to adoption.

A desktop mouse that acts as a scanner is more likely to get me to scan QR codes for use with a desktop PC. Nine years ago the CueCat scanner was ahead of its time. It was a scanner but not a mouse and was a commercial failure, as per the Wikipedia article.

Perhaps, if a phone app can easily transfer the URL to my desktop via a sync process, I might scan QR codes more often.

Google PlaceRank in the wild

8 December 2009

Ash Nallawalla

Local Search 29 Comments

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Google has sent QR Code stickers to about 190,000 businesses across the US that have been tagged as a Favorite Place (they have a mobile version of their website). Favorite Places are the mobile equivalent of Place Pages (aka Google Places).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuVSpG-ZdkU[/youtube]

Google Video explaining Favorite Places

TechCrunch has quoted Google Earth VP John Hanke, “Google will be adding these businesses incrementally. ‘They are selected based on their PlaceRank,’ says

John Hanke, VP of Google Earth, Maps, and Local. PlaceRank is like PageRank for places It tries to figure out how prominent a place is based on factors such as ‘references on the Web, reviews, photos,’ says Hanke, ‘how many people know about it, how long its been around.'”

PlaceRank isn’t new – but I believe this is the first acknowledgment of its use with Google Maps in a local search context. Bill Slawski reported it back in 2007 in this post, which is well worth reading (like the rest of his site). Here is a link to the patent that describes Place Rank (two words) and Interestingness.

Undoubtedly, Local Search SEOs will be excited by a new unit of measure (will we get another green pixel bar? – I think not). I think this is a good move, but are Americans and the West in general ready to use QR Codes?

How to SEO for PlaceRank

The patent offers some clues about the ranking algorithm.

[0047] In an embodiment, this ranking, which can be referred to as place rank, is computed based on the weighted contributions of various non-cartographic meta attributes about a geospatial entity. Rather than directly measuring a characteristic of a physical place, such as its population, these attributes reflect traits of abstractions or representations associated with the geospatial entity. Examples include an attribute of a description of an entity (for instance, the amount of detail in the description of an entity or the number of times a description has been viewed), an attribute of a definition of an entity (e.g. the context or downloads of a definition of an entity, or attributes about the creation of an entity in a public forum), an indicator of the popularity of a geospatial entity (such as the number of views, downloads, or clicks on the entity or a placemark associated with the entity or an attribute based on a ranking or score assigned to an entity), or the relationship of an entity to its context, such as the category to which an entity belongs. Attributes that fit into each of these categories are described in greater detail below:

Here is my summation of the ranking detail in the patent:

Longer descriptions are preferred. Very short descriptions might incur a penalty.
The author of the Favorite Place content, that is, their authoritativeness can matter, e.g. a trusted provider of data versus a random individual.
The context of the Favorite Place mention, e.g. a discussion in the Google Earth community.
The number of replies in the above thread.
The number of clicks to a linked Favorite Place.
The number of views of a Favorite Place.
The community stature of the author e.g. number of posts, rank etc (really?)
The number of Favorite Places within a collection of Favorite Places, which I believe could be a shopping mall with lots of recommendations. MallRank anyone?
Age of the original recommendation.
The relative importance of the discussion within a thread – the subsequent posts might contain additional information, or even substantially more information. This score is added to the original post.
The relative importance of a sub-forum within a forum, e.g. a post in the What’s New forum might get a lower score than a post in a more “permanent” sub-forum.
An externally awarded score to a forum, e.g. a rating value, number of stars, and so on.
The density of forums in a geo-spatial context, e.g. the score for a San Francisco restaurant may place more importance on ratings gained from San Francisco-centric sites than from sites in other cities.
The click-through rate of an entity, e.g. a Google Group discussion of pizza shops might contain links to various outlets. The CTR data would be available to the algorithm.
The enablement rate of entity categories. e.g. On some maps you can choose to display or not display certain markers, e.g. schools, banks, churches, etc. Android GPS devices could be used to collect this information.
The estimated score for a web page associated with an entity, such as its PageRank.
Some of the above factors could be combined to derive a score for each entity.

So, there are numerous factors in this algorithm that might seem too complicated for an individual SEO to influence, which basically suggests that gaming PlaceRank will be very difficult. 🙂

Firefox hangs when loading clients1.google.com – Solutions

Auschwitz sign stolen while Drowsily Manifold sleeps

Local shopping with Google QR codes

Google PlaceRank in the wild

How to SEO for PlaceRank

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