Google's Matt Cutts shared on Google+ that he spoke in Korea back in January on search topics. The talk is about 45 minutes long, where he talks about the evolution of search, search as it is now, SEO tips and then the open web as it related to Korea.
Here is the video followed by the transcript:
Transcript:
0:00
0:07[APPLAUSE]
0:08Good morning.
0:10It's very good to see everybody today.
0:14I'm really excited to talk to you a little bit about Search,
0:18and talk to you a little bit about Google, the evolution of
0:21Search, how Search works today, and the future of
0:25Search, and then also talk a little bit about
0:28openness and the web.
0:32So who am I?
0:34Why am I here?
0:35Why am I in front of you?
0:39I started out working on Search, as you heard earlier
0:41today, 12 years ago tomorrow.
0:45So I have one more day left before I'll be
0:47around for 12 years.
0:50I get to answer lot of questions from webmasters,
0:54people who want to know how search engines work, how to do
0:57better in search engines.
0:59And we've made a total of over 400 different videos that have
1:04been viewed over 6.6 million times.
1:08So, a lot of people want to know how search engines work,
1:12how to do better on search engines, and we're excited to
1:14talk about that today.
1:17I also have a lot of ties with Korea.
1:20For example, the phone that I carry with me every single day
1:25is Galaxy Nexus.
1:27It's a fantastic phone.
1:29I actually have two Samsung phones in my pocket right now.
1:32One's a the local phone and one's for the United States.
1:37And in fact, the very first car that I ever owned was a
1:43Hyundai Excel, a blue hatchback.
1:47I drove it all the way through college.
1:49It was a incredibly car.
1:51I drove it all the way into grad school.
1:53I have extremely fond memories of my Hyundai Excel.
1:57Now I know that Hyundai has made huge strides and has made
2:01even better--
2:02you know, like the Equus.
2:04Right?
2:04Now, Hyundai is a luxury brand.
2:06But I have been extremely excited and proud to use
2:10Korean products for years and years and years.
2:14So what am I going to talk about today?
2:17I'd like to talk about the evolution of Search, that is,
2:20the past. How Search got to the way it is.
2:24I also want to talk about Search today.
2:27It's important to know how search engines work.
2:30If people are interested in search engine optimization or
2:33knowing the process that Google goes through in order
2:36to decide whether to launch a change or not.
2:39And then I'd like to talk a little bit about
2:41the future of Search.
2:42What would Search look like in a perfect world, if you could
2:46control everything about it and make sure that you had the
2:49ideal perfect search engine?
2:53And then I wanted to close out by talking a little bit about
2:55the importance of the open web standards and how important is
2:59to make sure that the web is open so that everybody can
3:03benefit as a result.
3:05So let's start with the early days of search engines.
3:10One of the very first well-known search engines
3:13globally was Yahoo.
3:15And it's almost a little bit of a strangeness, a little bit
3:19unusual to call it a search engine, because Yahoo started
3:24out as a hand-compiled list of links.
3:28So an individual person would decide what category
3:32to put things in.
3:34They would decide whether it deserved to be a certain
3:36category or not.
3:38The problem with that is that it doesn't scale very well.
3:42You need to find a search engine that can work across
3:44the breadth of the entire web, or else it isn't going to be
3:48as useful for every kind of query that people get.
3:53And so the next generation of search engines looked at the
3:57content on the page, that is, the actual words that existed
4:02on the page.
4:04Now, whenever I joined Google, we were a start-up, so there
4:08was less than 100 people, whenever I joined Google.
4:11And at the time, I was worried that we would
4:14be crushed by Altavista.
4:18Google was a little tiny company,
4:20Altavista was a huge company.
4:23But Google has something that the other search engines at
4:26that time did not do.
4:29We looked at the links pointing to web pages.
4:33So, not just what a web page said about itself, because,
4:37you might meet someone and they say that they're
4:39fantastic, they say they're great.
4:42But if you meet someone and their friend says that they're
4:45fantastic, or you know someone who objectively says that
4:48they're great or fantastic, that means even more than if
4:51you say it yourself.
4:53So looking at links was a vital new way to discover the
4:58reputation of web pages and which web pages should count.
5:03Google also started to look at, not just pay for
5:06inclusion, but trying to make sure the very best pages rank
5:10in the best possible order.
5:13Back whenever Google started, it was relatively common for
5:15people to pay to be indexed in their search engine.
5:20And if you think about it, that's not a great idea.
5:23A search engine should try to be as
5:24comprehensive as possible.
5:27You shouldn't need to pay for the search engine to give you
5:29good information.
5:32So Google has also evolved.
5:37From going from ten blue links, as we sometimes call
5:41it, the ten blue links referred to just the ten
5:43search results and the links that would come out of that.
5:47Google has gotten better and better.
5:49So now, at least in the United States, we're able to return
5:53all of the information blended together according to what is
5:56the most relevant.
5:58Now, I know that in Korea we're more likely to have
6:01segmented search, and so you'll have things in
6:03different sections.
6:05But it can be very useful at times to be able to say,
6:08first, let's see a web result.
6:10Then, let's see a video, because I've done the search
6:13Korean pop.
6:14And then, maybe a few more web results.
6:17So that sort of intelligence to figure out when you want to
6:20have a video result or an image or something that's a
6:24web result can be extremely useful.
6:28So I'd like to take just a second and talk about what the
6:32world would look like without Google.
6:36Whenever Google started out, search engine quality was not
6:40as good as it today.
6:43So Google was one of the very first search engines that
6:46clearly marked advertisements.
6:49I remember whenever I started out at Google, I went and I
6:52talked to another company.
6:54And they had a list of results that they called featured, and
6:57they had a list that they called partnered.
7:01And I said, what's the difference between a featured
7:04result and a partner result?
7:07And the company said, there's no difference at all.
7:09Everything is paid for.
7:11And that didn't seem fair at the time.
7:13So Google did a very good job of trying to mark what clearly
7:16what were the ads and what were the organic, what were
7:19the editorial results.
7:21And you can't pay to get a higher ranking on Google.
7:25I'm proud that even to this day, you can't pay to get a
7:29higher ranking on Google.
7:32If there hadn't been Google, I think you would also have
7:35found more spam on the web.
7:38I don't know how far this wireless mic will work.
7:40Let's see how we can go.
7:42Even if you can read English, this might look like nonsense,
7:48like gibberish.
7:49And the fact is, it is nonsense.
7:53It is gibberish.
7:55This is something that my team works on,
7:57called spam or web spam.
8:01If you see, free sound effects,
8:04Puget Sound naval shipyard.
8:06Maybe someone would type in Santa Anita
8:11VIP baseball sounds.
8:13A spammer would make these sorts of pages with the hope
8:17that if someone were to type in two or three random words
8:21from this page, a person would land on this page.
8:25And then you could show ads, or you could include malware.
8:28You could basically do something that would infect
8:31the user's computer or otherwise harm them.
8:34And so spam is a really bad thing.
8:37And before Google, there was a lot more spam on the web.
8:41Google changed the conversation in a lot of ways
8:44to think about the quality of the search results and not
8:47having spam.
8:48So I think we would have had more of it if Google hadn't
8:51taken strong action on spam.
8:54We definitely would have seen a lot more viruses
8:57and malware as well.
8:59I remember one year at Christmas, I
9:04went to visit my relatives.
9:06And has anyone had the experience where the computer
9:10was running a little bit slowly because it got infected
9:13or it had malware, spiders, viruses?
9:16Anyone had that sort of
9:18experience with their computers?
9:19Maybe their parents' computers?
9:21Anything along those lines?
9:22A few people.
9:24Absolutely, Well at the time, I had just spent an entire day
9:30cleaning out my mother-in-law's computer.
9:32So, out of the vacation--
9:35I had about five days off-- one entire day was spent
9:38getting her computer into good shape.
9:41And I realized that her computer was infected with a
9:44company that had been a partner of Google.
9:48So I went back to Google after the Christmas break and I
9:51said, we have to stop this.
9:53We never, ever want to partner with any sort of malware or
9:58negative provider or anything like that.
10:01And I'm very proud that Google has taken a strong stand.
10:04We try not to show ads.
10:05We try not to work with anyone who might be infecting
10:08someone's computer.
10:09We also make Chrome, which is not only fast, but protects
10:13users' computers by flagging malware and potential spyware
10:16and viruses, and we even mark potential hack sites and
10:20spyware in our search results.
10:22
10:24One last thing is that, if we didn't have Google, I think
10:28people would be a little bit slower.
10:32So, I've been in Korea for a few days now.
10:34I've gotten to take a tour of some palaces, museums, really
10:38got to see a lot of the sights.
10:40And I realized that there's this culture of
10:42pali pali, of speed.
10:46I was in my hotel and I needed to get this shirt cleaned so
10:50that it would be nice for everyone so
10:52it wouldn't be dirty.
10:54And the phone in the hotel has a button that
10:58says, instant service.
11:00So you just pick it up.
11:01And it was 10:00 at night.
11:03And I said, OK, I need to get this shirt clean.
11:06And they were very apologetic.
11:08They said, I'm sorry, it's going to take
11:10until tomorrow morning.
11:12And I was like, OK, that's fantastic.
11:15I wasn't expected it in just a few hours.
11:19South Korea is fantastic for speed.
11:22Things get done very quickly.
11:24We care about speed at Google, too.
11:27If we can't return the search results to you in under 500
11:31milliseconds--
11:32in under half of a second--
11:35we consider that a failed search.
11:38In addition, I worked in the Ads group for over a year.
11:42Now at Google, typically the engineers who work on Search
11:46Quality never talk to the engineers who work on Ads.
11:50They even sit in different buildings.
11:52It's as if they're almost in different companies.
11:55But the Ads group had a really good practice.
11:58They said, unless the ads are ready, we're not going to make
12:04the users wait to get the search results.
12:07So let me say that again.
12:08If your search results have been finished, they're ready
12:11to go, but we don't know what the ads should be, we're never
12:15going to make you wait for the ads.
12:17We go ahead and show the search results to you.
12:20And I think that's a really good practice.
12:23People are in a hurry.
12:24If you're in a subway on your phone and you're doing a
12:27search, you don't want to wait for the ads.
12:29You want to get the information quickly.
12:32You want to move on.
12:33And so I think that emphasis on speed has been something
12:36that we've care about a very much amount at Google.
12:41So that's a little bit about the history of Search, about
12:44the evolution of Search.
12:47Let me talk about how Search is today, how it works, and a
12:51few things that you might want to know about search engine
12:53optimization.
12:56The first thing that you need to know is that search is
12:58actually very hard.
13:00
13:02We have seen well over one trillion URLs on the web.
13:10One trillion, so one thousand billion different URLs.
13:16The web is huge.
13:18Finding the right information is like finding a grain of
13:21sand on the beach.
13:23It's extremely difficult to find the right grain of sand.
13:26In addition, over one billion searches a day come to Google,
13:32every single day.
13:34If it's a slow day it's still well over a billion.
13:37If it's a fast day, it can be even much, much higher.
13:40But no matter what, we have so many searches coming in that
13:45we have to be able to do it as quickly as possible.
13:49And finally, there are people who try to cheat.
13:51There are people who try to rank higher than they should,
13:54or who try to abuse users' trust. And those people make
13:58over a million spam pages every hour.
14:02Now the net result of all of this is that we have to do as
14:07much as we can with computers.
14:10If you remember, I talked about Yahoo, and I talked
14:13about how they compiled a list of links by hand.
14:16That approach can never scale 100% all the
14:19way up to the web.
14:21So what Google tries to do is, it tries to figure out how it
14:25can handle as much of its searches with computers.
14:28Because computers can work 24/7.
14:31Computers don't get tired.
14:33You don't have to give computers the day off.
14:35Computers will run the same program the same way every
14:38time, and they don't get biased.
14:40They don't have a particular point of view.
14:42
14:45So, I wanted to talk a little bit, given that we do use
14:48computers, about how we change the computer
14:53programs that we use.
14:56It turns out it's a pretty involved process.
14:59We do a lot of work to try to make sure that we return the
15:02best possible search results.
15:06It all starts out with an idea.
15:08An engineer has an idea.
15:10Over 20,000 ideas last year alone.
15:15Some of them are pretty good ideas.
15:17Sometimes they don't make sense.
15:19But the next thing you're going to do when you have an
15:21idea is you start out and you implement
15:23it in a test sandbox.
15:25That is, you test it out before you
15:27try it on real users.
15:30When that happens, if it looks pretty good, we have an entire
15:34group of thousands of readers.
15:36And we showed them the search results before the change and
15:41after the change, and they don't know which one is new.
15:46So it's like a blind taste test to decide whether a
15:49change is good or not.
15:50If the change still looks good-- because people tend to
15:53like the new results, even though they don't know which
15:55one is the new one, but they tend to pick the set of search
15:58results that they like--
16:00then we actually send that out to a small
16:03percentage of real users.
16:06So if you have used Google in the past, maybe to do deep
16:10research, there is at least a chance that we've looked at
16:13the clicks on the search results to help us make Google
16:16Search quality better.
16:19Now we try out over 20,000 Search experiments every year.
16:25But what we end up doing gets compiled into a report.
16:29And every week we evaluate that report, and then we
16:33decide how many to launch.
16:35Let me just very briefly show you some stats.
16:37
16:40So these are numbers from 2009, but the proportions, the
16:43rough percentages, are about the same.
16:46We would try out anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 ideas.
16:50Of that, many more thousand, 8,549, we would send to these
16:57blind side-by-sides.
16:59And then a smaller fraction of that actually get sent out to
17:02real users and to see whether users tend to click on the
17:05newer results or tend to click on the older results.
17:09And the final number changes that we launched
17:12last year was 585.
17:16That means we change how Google ranks its search
17:20results more than once a day.
17:23Every single day, we're looking for ways to improve
17:27how we rank our search results, and we never stop
17:31that process.
17:32It's always going on.
17:34Once you work at Google, you start to notice anytime you do
17:37a search and you don't find the exact result that you're
17:40looking for.
17:41And then you end up filing that away.
17:43And you're going to send an email and ask how can we make
17:45that search better?
17:48So I wanted to cover in just three slides, if you wanted to
17:53rank better in global search engines, here are the tips and
17:57the tricks that you would want to know.
17:59There's basically only three slides of material here, but
18:04if you are comprehending of this knowledge, you will know
18:08more than probably 80% of people who make websites.
18:15On this slide, I just want to cover the basics.
18:19You want to make your site crawlable by search engines.
18:22Now, how do you do that?
18:25The first step is just to make sure that you give permission
18:28to the search engines.
18:30So there's a very well-known standard known as robots.txt.
18:35And if you allow search engines to crawl using this
18:38robots.txt, then they can enter your site.
18:42Otherwise, it's as if you put up a sign that says you're not
18:46allowed to enter.
18:47So the very first step once you decide you'd like to be
18:50crawled is to allow search engines to crawl in
18:53robots.txt.
18:55The next thing to do you can actually do at home or at work
18:59using any web browser.
19:01And the idea is just to click on links and make sure that
19:05you can find all the different pages of your site.
19:09For example, if you have to do a search in a web form, search
19:15engines might not know how to do that search.
19:18So the way to get around that is to offer links at the
19:21bottom that show you where you can click to reach each of the
19:24amounts of information.
19:26So simply by testing things out, by clicking links, you
19:30can find all of the pages on your site.
19:32That means your site should be
19:34discoverable in search engines.
19:36It should be able to be crawled.
19:38
19:41The next thing to bear in mind is to try to
19:44use standard HTML.
19:46So you saw in the last presentation by Junyoung that
19:52if you use Flash, then if you have an iPhone, you just can't
19:57see that site, because the iPhone doesn't know how to
19:59interpret Flash.
20:02If you can use standard HTML, that makes it much easier for
20:07search engines to interpret your site.
20:09So for example, most search engines won't know what to do
20:12with ActiveX fast or asynchronous JavaScript also
20:17known as AJAX.
20:18So if you can use standard HTML technology, rather than
20:23Flash or AJAX or ActiveX, or at least use less of that.
20:28Use it for pictures in the middle, but make sure that the
20:32navigation is standard, static HTML links.
20:36That way, every person and search engine can
20:39discover your site.
20:41So those are the basics.
20:43Here is just one or two more slides about search engine
20:46optimization.
20:47
20:49This slide is about the text that you put on your site.
20:55You would not believe how many pages have a title that just
20:59says Untitled.
21:02Or they don't have any title at all.
21:05Or the title of the page is exactly the same on every
21:08single page of the site.
21:10Whenever anyone does a search and they see the snippet for
21:14your web search result, the snippet that they say will be
21:18determined by your title and, in many cases, your meta
21:22description.
21:24So in many ways, it's like if you were walking by a shop,
21:28and the shop had an inviting glass display with lots of
21:32things you can see, versus whether it was boarded up.
21:37Now, if you see something that's very inviting, like if
21:39users see a title that looks interesting and useful to
21:42them, or if they see a meta description that says, this is
21:45going to be the information that you need, then they're
21:48more likely to click through and find
21:51information on your website.
21:54So it makes a really big difference to make sure that
21:56you have page titles and descriptions.
22:00It's amazing what even that can do as far as making sure
22:03that users click through to your site.
22:07Junyoung also mentioned that a lot of people use pictures of
22:10text rather than the text itself.
22:13We've seen this over and over again to the point where
22:16Google has joked internally that we should try to run
22:19optical character recognition on images to try to figure out
22:23what the text is on various pages.
22:25But the fact is, if you include the text yourself
22:28rather than just pictures or pictures of text, then we
22:32actually have words to index.
22:34
22:37The last bit of information about what text you should put
22:40on your page is to think about users and what they will type.
22:44So for example, suppose I wanted to know how high is
22:49Namsan Tower.
22:51What would I type?
22:53I would type, how high is Namsan Tower.
22:57But somebody else who is making the web page might say
23:01Namsan Tower is this high.
23:03And so users will often type different things than what the
23:07webmaster will put on their web page.
23:10We try to help users out, so if you type automobile, and
23:15the web page has car, we'll try to return that web page
23:19because we know about synonyms. But if you could put
23:23the words on your page directly, that makes it work
23:26much better.
23:28Now, I'd like to try an experiment.
23:30I don't know if this will work.
23:34And I haven't warned the translators that this was
23:36going to happen.
23:37So I don't know how well this will go off.
23:40But let's give it a try.
23:42In my pocket I have a device.
23:47You guys have probably all seen one of these before.
23:51Right?
23:52You put it into your computer.
23:55You can store things on it, images, pictures, files.
23:58
24:02What would you call this device?
24:03
24:08Lots of different answers.
24:10I heard USB stick.
24:12What did someone else say?
24:15Flash drive.
24:16Anything else?
24:18Memory stick.
24:20Thumb drive.
24:23Two gigabytes.
24:25There's so many different words that people
24:27could use for this.
24:28Now, I don't know how it works in Korean.
24:31It might be you all have the exact same word for this.
24:34But in English, people could type five or ten different
24:37things if they were searching for this one product.
24:40So it's a very simple analogy.
24:42If you had a web page and you were selling USB sticks, you'd
24:48want to use all of the words to describe it.
24:51You'd say, this is a premium quality flash drive.
24:55If you haven't seen this thumb stick before, it's a
24:58retractable tip, it has two gigabytes of storage, and when
25:02you use this flash drive, you'll find that it easily
25:05serves up the pictures and files.
25:08Now in just three sentences of text I've gotten four or five
25:12different synonyms for thumb drive, USB stick, flash drive.
25:18I haven't done in a way that's artificial.
25:20It's not spamming.
25:22It's helpful because it describes all the different
25:24ways of using this particular product.
25:28It's amazing to me how many people will use specialized,
25:33very technical terms, and they won't think about what a real
25:37user will type when they're looking for information.
25:40If you make something that's interesting or useful, people
25:44will want to talk about it.
25:46And so the best way to get links, in my experience, is to
25:50come up with something excellent.
25:51An interactive feature or some kind of research that people
25:55haven't seen before.
25:56Pictures.
25:57The kinds of things that people
25:58want to send to friends.
26:00They want to bookmark.
26:01They want to come back to.
26:02They want to tell people about.
26:05Any of that can be compelling content.
26:07It could be a video.
26:08But whatever it is, that's the kind of thing that can cause
26:11people to want to link your site.
26:15It's also pretty interesting that social media
26:18can amplify a message.
26:20There's a lot of people on Facebook.
26:22There's a lot of people on Twitter, Sidewall, right?
26:26So you can get the word out in lots of different ways
26:29whenever you have new material.
26:31It can be extremely useful to build up a following, because
26:34if you engage in conversations with the people who read your
26:38site, then they're more interested and they want to
26:41share your content with other people.
26:43So we have seen times where someone can do a single tweet,
26:47and from that tweet, tens of thousands of people will visit
26:51the site and view the site.
26:54So social media can be a wonderful way to help spread
26:57your message.
26:58
27:02I'll do a little bit of a plug and just mention that Google
27:06provides free tools for webmasters.
27:08Google.code.cr/webmasters I think we'll be showing a demo
27:13later today of Webmaster Tools.
27:16But it's very simple system that shows you how fast your
27:19site is, how responsive it is, if we know about errors on
27:22your site, if we ever detect that your site might have been
27:26hacked or have malware, we'll send you a message directly so
27:29that you can be alerted of it.
27:31There's all sorts of great free information in Google's
27:34Webmaster Tools.
27:35And we try to make that available.
27:37
27:40So that's a little bit about the past of Search and a
27:44little bit about how Search is today.
27:46Let's talk a little bit about the future of
27:48Search and what to expect.
27:52Larry Page would like to say that the perfect search engine
27:55understands exactly what you mean and gives you back
27:59exactly what you want.
28:01So for example, I don't speak German.
28:08But what if I had a long layover in Germany on the way
28:12back from Korea?
28:14And as a result I wanted to go ride in the subway.
28:20Well, I don't speak any German.
28:22I don't recognize German.
28:24I don't read German.
28:25But wouldn't it be great if I could just point my phone at
28:28some German text and it would tell me what
28:32that says in English?
28:34Or what if I walk up to someone and I want to make
28:37sure that I'm getting on the right subway line?
28:40Wouldn't it be great if I could speak in English, my
28:44computer, which is my mobile phone, which I always have
28:48with me, could do voice recognition and then could
28:52translate that text from English into German or Korean
28:57or Spanish.
28:59And then it could synthesize that text.
29:02And so it could do speech synthesis so that I could talk
29:06to anyone in any language even if I
29:09don't speak that language.
29:11The fact is, we're not that far from having that.
29:16We're pretty close.
29:17And the idea that you could drop down in the middle of the
29:21world with anybody.
29:23I got to go to a country in Africa last year, Tanzania.
29:30Very few people in the world speak Swahili.
29:35But if your computer can speak Swahili for you, then you're
29:39able to talk to anybody in the world.
29:43So I think that we're making good progress on that.
29:47Google Translate is not perfect, but it's free and
29:52it's only going to get better and better and better.
29:56So if you want to know, what's the direction to the nearest
29:59subway station?
30:00You can type that in.
30:01You can even get it written phonetically, and then once
30:07it's translated you can have it say that aloud.
30:10And then if something doesn't translate correctly, you can
30:13hover over it to see alternate translations.
30:18So a lot of people think about Google as
30:20just a search engine.
30:22But Google's mission is to organize the world's
30:25information and make it universally
30:28accessible and useful.
30:30Great information is available in every language.
30:34Great information is available in Korean.
30:38And so the more that Google can do to help surface, to
30:42highlight, to display and show all of the great information
30:47that exists in Korean, the better off everybody in the
30:51entire world will be.
30:52
30:54This is just a picture to demonstrate where we'll be in
30:57a few years.
30:59Mobile is already to the point where we pretty much have a
31:02net connection wherever we go.
31:05And if you could take a picture of a water bottle and
31:08figure out, OK, where does this water bottle come from?
31:11Is there any nutritional information that I need to
31:13worry about?
31:14Pretty soon you'll be able to do that in any language.
31:19And we're getting very close to being able to talk to your
31:22phone and have it talk back to you in any language.
31:26So the future of Search is not just going to a desktop
31:31computer and typing into a web browser.
31:35The future of Search is that you will always have a smart
31:38computer right next to you.
31:41And you've seen this with the incredible
31:43growth of mobile phones.
31:45Your phones will be able to help you because they'll know
31:47more about you, because you choose to give information so
31:51that you can get fantastic information back out.
31:56Now, one more area about the future of Search is that it's
32:01not just the exact same list of links for
32:04every single person.
32:06In an ideal world, if you were to ask about information from
32:12just a random person on the street, or from a friend, who
32:17would you trust more to get your information?
32:20You'd probably trust your friend more.
32:23So if I were going to use a home router, or if I were
32:26going to buy concert tickets, I would trust Inhyuk
32:29and I would ask him for advice.
32:30I wouldn't just necessarily talk to any random person.
32:34So I show this picture earlier today.
32:37And you might not have noticed but, at the very bottom of
32:40this page, I have Louis Gray shared this on Google+.
32:46Now, we've started out on Google+, but we're actually
32:48trying to pull in more information from
32:50all across the web.
32:52Quora, FriendFeed, Twitter, TypePad, WordPress, all the
32:58different places you can find good information on the web,
33:01we would like to highlight that information.
33:03So when I searched for Korean pop, I found a recommendation
33:08from my friend for a specific video.
33:12That makes it more likely that I will probably like that
33:15particular video.
33:17And I don't know whether we want to play it right now.
33:19We want to save time for questions.
33:21But I played it last night, and it's a fantastic video.
33:25It's exactly the kind of thing that I think a good
33:27introduction for me that could lead to
33:29more Korean pop videos.
33:31So the future of Search is not just far away.
33:34It's coming very close.
33:36It's mobile, it's being able to understand language better,
33:41and it's being able to understand your relationships
33:43and highlight things from your friends.
33:47One last area is that a lot of people think about search
33:50engines almost like they're a black box.
33:54They don't know how they work.
33:56I think it's important for all search engines, every global
33:59search engine, every major search engine, to talk about
34:03how they work and explain more about their policies.
34:07In an ideal world, search engines would be transparent.
34:12They wouldn't be a black box.
34:16So five or six years ago, the fact that my team worked on
34:21web spam was confidential.
34:24It was a secret.
34:26We didn't even really like to talk about the fact that we
34:29tackled web spam.
34:31But we realized that's not the best policy.
34:35The best policy is to explain how Google works so that
34:40people understand how search engines work.
34:43They know not to be afraid of them.
34:45They know their advantages.
34:47And they know how to manage public information on the web,
34:50so that they're not surprised when information shows up in
34:53search engines.
34:54And I think it's been real progress for people to know
34:59how search engines work.
35:00It can only help if everybody has an idea of the criteria
35:05and the different types of signals that search engines
35:08use in order to score results, the sorts of things that I
35:11talked about earlier in the presentation.
35:13
35:16The last area that I wanted to talk about is that I would
35:19like to close out a little bit by talking about the
35:22importance of the Open Web.
35:24Now, before I talk about the Open Web, let me just say, I
35:28think we will have a little bit of time for questions.
35:31And I think we will have a little bit of a small gift for
35:36whoever wants to ask the first one or two questions.
35:38So be thinking now if there's a particular question that
35:41you'd like to ask because the first person who's brave
35:44enough, I think we will have a little something for them.
35:48I want to give you plenty of time to think about it in case
35:50you have any questions about how Google works or anything.
35:53
35:56So let's talk about the importance of the Open Web.
35:58
36:01This is a really interesting slide.
36:06Historically, Internet Explorer has done
36:09very well in Korea.
36:12But according to the most recent stats, and I pulled
36:16these statistics, literally, yesterday, in the last six
36:21months, the usage of Google Chrome has more than doubled.
36:27Six months ago, in July of 2011, Chrome was about 4.3%.
36:33And if you look at the slide now, you can see that in
36:37December of 2011, Chrome is at 11.38%.
36:43That's important because Chrome is a browser from
36:46Google, but it's also a very good browser.
36:50It's fast. It fits very well with the pali
36:52pali ideas of Korea.
36:55But it's also secure.
36:57It protects users.
36:59It makes sure that they don't get spyware
37:02and malware and viruses.
37:05Every year, we have a contest in which people trying to
37:09crack browsers and they see if they can hack them.
37:14And for the last three years, Google Chrome was the only
37:18major browser that did not have a
37:20security hole get found.
37:23So Google has donated money to people who find security holes
37:28so that we can make Google Chrome even more secure.
37:32Now there's another reason why this graph is really
37:34interesting and why it's really important.
37:38Look at the share of Internet Explorer.
37:41In the last six months, it's dropped to about 80%.
37:48Now that is still huge.
37:51But if you have a website that relies on ActiveX or some
37:56other technology that only works on Internet Explorer,
38:01you're excluding 20% of all of your visitors.
38:06So if you have some technology that people could only use
38:10Internet Explorer with, one out of every five users is
38:14getting annoying, or is not well served, or is somehow not
38:19able to access your website and they have to go and unload
38:22their browser and load up Internet Explorer to use it.
38:26So website standards are important.
38:29Your website should work in any browser, not just in
38:33Internet Explorer, not just in Chrome.
38:35But if you build it right, it will work well in Safari, it
38:39will work well in Firefox, and it's more
38:41likely to work on mobile.
38:43You guys already heard today mobile is an
38:46incredible upward path.
38:49And so if your website is going to be prepared for
38:52things like the iPhone, which doesn't have Flash, or other
38:56mobile browsers, you want to use standard technologies.
39:00So it's absolutely the case that with Chrome above 10%,
39:04websites should use open standards.
39:09And in fact, you should avoid standards locked to one
39:11particular browser.
39:13Now when I talk about the importance of the Open Web,
39:17I'm not just talking about websites and web servers.
39:23I'm also talking about being open to search engines.
39:27So this was a newspaper article that came out in
39:30December in Korea, and it noted that something like half
39:35of government websites were blocked from being crawled
39:38from search engines.
39:41That means that there's a lot of resources that people could
39:44discover that they weren't being able to discover.
39:49Now, I want to note that there's been a lot of
39:51progress, even since this article has come out.
39:54So many, many organizations have, since this article,
39:59unblocked in robots.txt so that any search engine can
40:03come in and find high quality information.
40:05So it's not as bad as this article makes it sound
40:08anymore, but there's still some progress that could be
40:12made on making sure that websites are discoverable and
40:15are good resources.
40:16
40:20If you haven't seen this, this is something
40:23called the Khan Academy.
40:26I know that in Korea, education
40:29is incredibly important.
40:31It's vital that people be able to learn from the highest
40:35quality resources.
40:37And the web is becoming one of the highest quality resources
40:41available in the entire world.
40:44The Khan Academy is a set of videos and a website that you
40:49can use to achieve nearly a college-level education for
40:53free from anywhere in the world from home.
40:57So this is one guy.
40:59His name is Salman Khan, and he was a hedge fund trader.
41:03He made money as a banker.
41:05And then he said, OK, I'd like to do something that feels a
41:08little more meaningful with my life.
41:11And he was teaching his cousins math.
41:15Because it was a lot of trouble, he made these videos
41:18so that they could review the videos anytime they wanted.
41:22And he would call them on the phone.
41:25And eventually his cousins said, you know what?
41:28I don't want to talk to you on the phone.
41:30There's a lot of pressure.
41:31Just make the videos and then I can watch the videos as
41:34often as I need to so I can practice the math.
41:38And what really surprised Sal Khan was a lot of other people
41:44started to watch the videos, and so he started to
41:47make more of them.
41:49And now, you can learn all kinds of mathematics,
41:52economics, science, many different subjects just from
41:56watching these videos.
41:58The fact is the web is a fantastic source of
42:02information, and Korea should be represented as one of those
42:06fantastic sources of reputation.
42:10Nobody wants to be an island.
42:12An island is isolating.
42:15An island means that not as much development is happening
42:19as could happen.
42:21And so I think that there is a message that I'd like to leave
42:24for Korea, which is, we have a saying in English.
42:29And the saying is, to punch above your weight.
42:33What does that mean?
42:35To punch above your weight means you better than you
42:39would expect given the size of something.
42:43So it's someone who is doing a better job
42:46than you would expect.
42:48I think Korea is one of those companies that punches above
42:52its weight.
42:54It represents itself so well on the international stage.
42:58The World Cup, the G20, the Olympic Games that already
43:03happened, the Olympic Games that will happen in 2018.
43:07Korea has so much to be proud of.
43:10Korea is number one in the world in broadband
43:14penetration.
43:16Korea is number one in the world in getting information
43:19to people via broadband.
43:23I think the only area where Korea doesn't
43:26punch above its weight--
43:28at least, not yet--
43:30is getting its information out to the rest of the world.
43:35Korea is fantastic at providing good broadband, at
43:39providing wonderful things that it should be proud of.
43:42But if Korea could do a little bit more, so that if people
43:45want to learn about Hangul, if people want to learn about
43:50writing resources, if people wanted to learn about the
43:53official Sunshine Policies and the successes of President
43:57Kim, there's much great stuff that Korea can tell the world.
44:03And so I think it will be fantastic if that information
44:07is available to the entire world.
44:10So I hope that everybody has found this talk a little bit
44:13useful, that people have enjoyed hearing a little bit
44:16about the past of search engines, how search engines
44:20work today, and how to do better in search engines with
44:23search engine optimization, what the future of Search
44:26might look like, and then how important is for Korea to
44:31represent itself on the international stage, so that
44:34anybody wants to find more information about how great
44:37Korea is, anybody can find it.
44:42With that, you can see--
44:45this is me.
44:47I got to do a little bit of tourism on the weekend, and it
44:50was a lot fun.
44:52With that, I would love to take any questions that people
44:55have. I think we've got just a few minutes if anybody's
44:57interested.
44:58I think we do have at least a couple small things for the
45:01first one or two or three people who wanted to ask
45:03questions if anybody's interested at all.
45:06
I love the bow at the beginning, clearly a seasoned speaker.
You can always learn something new and exciting from these presentations.
Forum discussion at Google+.
