Is Google Search Fair? A Podcast with Lucidworks’ Grant Ingersoll

In this edition of the Early Adopter Research podcast, Dan Woods speaks with Grant Ingersoll, contributor to Solr, cofounder and CTO of Lucidworks, and cofounder of the Mahout Machine Learning Open Source Project, to discuss the fairness of Google search. Recently, President Trump has grabbed headlines by asserting that Google’s search algorithm is unfair. While Trump’s claims, like many he makes, are likely based more in personal animus than detailed study of the issue, he does raise an interesting point about how much we all take the results of search algorithms for granted. That makes this conversation particularly compelling, as Woods and Ingersoll talk about search algorithms in general, how companies and sites manipulate them, and whether we can truly trust the results. Topics covered include:

  • 2:20 – How search sites index other sites
  • 4:30 – The editorialization of search sites
  • 7:30 – Why sites like Google are better than the internal search mechanisms of individual company’s sites
  • 13:00 – How features affect search results
  • 22:40 – What could be changed about how algorithms work now
  • 31:00 – The future of SEO

Listen here:

And check out the blog that captures our conversation

Author: Dan Woods

My mission: Find technology for Early Adopters. Follow me on Twitter @danwoodsearly and on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/danwoodsearly/. I am a CTO, writer, and consultant. For tech vendors, I help explain their technology. For users, I help find, select, and deploy new solutions that have explosive business value. I love to speak and share ideas.