Hey Google! Can You Help Me Find A Web Site?

I love the Alexa toolbar because of the 'suggested sites' that it displays as you browse. I nearly always keep this visible, and have found hundreds of great sites I would have never known about because of it. I also display the Google Toolbar, which leads me to this request: Please add 'other sites you might like' to the Google Toolbar.

Doesn't this make all the sense in the world? Isn't Google supposed to help people find websites? Well there are a lot more ways of finding sites than just search, and recommendation is a huge one. Some recommendations come from friends, some from links between sites, but there are lots of algorithmic ways to determine 'other sites like this one' and Google should devote some PHD brainpower to this endeavor.

I think this would not only help web surfers, those poor folks that Google claims to place high above all others, but I think it would ultimately help them with their SEO manipulation problem. How? By exposing people to new web sites, these sites can earn the kind of 'good' links that Google lives - ones bestowed based on love and merit alone (as opposed to those evil links that traded or purchased or otherwise created to influence PageRank).

I'm assuming Google will take the same alorithm they use to determine context for Adwords, and apply the results against their organic results list rather than the paid results list. The 'new site exposure' will occur because the algo will (hopefully) find new and insightful keyword combinations to search based on, therefore showing people sites different from those that they usually see when they type in their typical search queries.

It's also interesting to note that Amazon, which ownes Alexa, chose not to include site recommendations in the A9 toolbar. So this plea goes out to them as well.

Posted by Craig Danuloff at May 11, 2004 4:52 PM