Google planeja nova mudança de algoritmo

A newscientist informa que o mecanismo de busca mais influente do mundo, o Google, planeja nova mudança na forma de classificação dos resultados das pesquisas de notícias.

O objetivo, como sempre, é trazer resultados mais relevantes para os usuários. De acordo com a patente registrada recentemente (WO 2005/029368) o mecanismo de busca planeja incluir parãmetros ligados a qualidade das páginas no algoritmo que decide quais resultados aparecerão primeiro.

The database will be built by continually monitoring the number of stories from all news sources, along with average story length, number with bylines, and number of the bureaux cited, along with how long they have been in business. Google's database will also keep track of the number of staff a news source employs, the volume of internet traffic to its website and the number of countries accessing the site.

Google will take all these parameters, weight them according to formulae it is constructing, and distil them down to create a single value. This number will then be used to rank the results of any news search. à€œArticles carrying more authority, say from CNN or the BBC, can be ousted from the results, simply because they are not as recentà€

De acordo com a reportagem da newscientist, a patente revela que os novos parâmetros podem ser usados tb para os resultados de busca normal... assim sites de e-commerce poderiam ser classificados pelos preços e reputação da loja virtual.

Qq iniciativa que melhore o resultado das pesquisas para o usuário deve ser motivo de comemoração... Entretanto, caso a sintonia fina dos novos parâmetros (principalmente os ligados ao mundo real, como número de funcionários) não seja muito bem feita, existe o risco de preservar o monopólio as vezes injusto da mídia tradicional.

Será q o Google vai levar em consideração o constante declínio nas vendas das versões em papel dos grandes jornais?

De acordo com o Wall Street Journal, os números divulgados ontem podem ser os piores da década...

The newspaper industry, already suffering from circulation problems, could be looking at its worst numbers in more than a decade.

Circulation numbers to be released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations probably will show industrywide declines of 1% to 3%, according to people familiar with the situation -- possibly the highest for daily newspapers since the industry shed 2.6% of subscribers in 1990-91.

O WSJ culpa a competição com as novas mídias, informa q os jornais diminuindo a qualidade das versões impressas e lembra das dificuldades de atrair leitores jovens...

The losses come at a time when Americans have many news outlets that didn't exist 20 years ago, including cable-television news channels and Internet sites, as well as email and cellphone alerts. Many newspapers have substantial and free online sites offering much of what is in the printed paper. These sites might not hurt readership overall, but they can erode a newspaper's paying audience.

At the same time, many newspapers have undercut the print product itself, trimming staff and coverage. They also have failed to figure out how to attract younger readers to their pages.

A businessweek destaca um outro fator para a queda na circulação dos jornais americanos: a regulamentação da atuação do telemarketing...

Federal do-not-call regulations, which fully went into effect early last year, likely played a role in the circulation decline. As recently as 2000, telemarketing accounted for 43.4 percent of all new newspaper subscribers, according to an NAA study, but that figure fell to 39.1 percent in 2002 and 30.9 percent last year.