The Google Algorithm Is Changing

Google Operating System points out something interesting in Google’s algorithm recently: a preference in favoring recent content.

The example provided would seem to favor the conclusion; TCP/IP’s anniversary today has resulted in Google preferencing recent posts, including from Digg, over informative articles related to the search term such as Wikipedia who would have normally had the top or near to the top position.

Indexing recent posts has been a strength for Google, to the point that at least for areas like Blog Search they’ve become the defacto standard as others such as Technorati have struggled to keep up. That Google would preference recent posts in its search results without the usual incoming authority links throws out the rules we’ve always known with Google, and I’m not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing. It would depend a lot on the results, but it would limit attempts to game Google results through incoming links. Perhaps it’s the first step towards Google embracing Web 3.0 with semantic search that learns as it goes, constantly updating its results to suit the user at the time they are searching, complete with contextual awareness as well.