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Welcome to the first edition of the Google Librarian Newsletter.
This newsletter was conceived at the 2005 ALA conference in Chicago,
where Google hosted a booth in the exhibit hall. We spent three days
chatting with librarians about Google: what you liked, what you didn't
like, and where you saw opportunities to work together to help people
find useful, relevant information.
In an effort to keep those conversations going, we're launching this
newsletter. Consider it a first step toward what we hope will be a long
and mutually beneficial relationship. We anticipate sending it out
quarterly, with the occasional special feature as appropriate.
This introductory issue features an article written to address one of
the most frequent questions we've heard from librarians: How does
Google index the web, and, more important, how does it rank the
results? Matt Cutts, an engineer in our Quality group, explains the
basics of indexing and sheds some light on some of the algorithms we
use to determine where a site should appear on results pages. He also
suggests exercises school librarians can do to help students better
understand how Google works.
But this newsletter wouldn't be much of a conversation if it were
written solely by folks at Google. Future issues will feature articles
contributed by librarians and library supporters, links to
library-related web sites, and updates on Google products and services
that can help you in your work. We invite you to send us
your thoughts: your questions about Google, your suggestions for
articles, and your stories of how librarians use and keep up with
technology on the job. We'll do our best to use your feedback to make
each issue more relevant and useful to the library community.
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned.
Jodi Healy
Manager, Library Partnership Team
How does Google rank results?
One
of the most common questions we hear from librarians is "How does
Google decide what result goes at the top of the list?" Here, from
quality engineer Matt Cutts, is a quick primer on how we crawl and
index the web and then rank search results. Read the article
Please feel free to
contact
us if you have suggestions for improving this newsletter or
questions about Google.
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