NY Times on Google: Any New Insights?

[Kevin Newcomb]

The New York Times published an in-depth article yesterday on Google based on a day spent with Amit Singhal, Udi Manber, Matt Cutts and the rest of the search quality team. I've given a brief overview on the SEW blog, with a link to the full article.

Among the topics discussed are how Google handles bug reports, and its own concerns with freshness of its results, including details on the development of the "Query Deserves Freshness (QDF)" solution that determines which queries should show results from new pages, and which should rely on established sites. The article also goes into detail about the 200+ "signals" that are fed into "classifiers" to calculate a page's relevance.

The Times article is long, but worth a read. Hidden inside are several tidbits that search marketers should be able to benefit from. Once you've had time to take a look, come back here and let's discuss what some of the more interesting ones may be.