MovableBlog http://www.movableblog.com/ A weblog about the Movable Type Publishing Platform and other geekery en-us Richard Eriksson 2005-03-22T00:51:26-08:00 Questions About Google's "Similar pages" Links http://www.movableblog.com/archives/2005/03/22/similar-pages It's probably a safe bet that most people reading my weblog(s) are either bloggers themselves or at the very least, read a few weblogs. It's probably an even safer bet that you're familiar with Google. Those who are either (again,... Geekery Richard 2005-03-22T00:51:26-08:00 It's probably a safe bet that most people reading my weblog(s) are either bloggers themselves or at the very least, read a few weblogs. It's probably an even safer bet that you're familiar with Google. Those who are either (again, most likely both), I have two questions:

  • have you ever, when you scan your referrer log, seen a referrer from Google that contained "related:" in the query string?
  • how often do you as a Google user click the "Similar pages" link after typing in a search?

I ask because in my 4+ years of blogging, I've never, not once, seen someone come through a 'related link' referrer. Now, I'm willing to concede that I'm blocking one or two out of my memory, but none ever stood out for me to remember clearly. Also, I can count on one hand the amount of times I've clicked "Similar pages" and actually went to a site based on the results. This is out of thousands of searches over the same stretch I knew about weblogs and have been blogging. I've seen absolutely nobody talk about this 'feature' in the last 2 years, give or take.

Google doesn't even seem to serve ads on those results. Are those links so under-clicked that Google doesn't even bother? And if so, why have those links in the first place? Wouldn't it be more compelling—when and after Google buys a respectable weblog search engine, or develops their own, of course—to have a link to the people currently talking about that page?

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