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From: tedd on 20 Aug 2010 08:54
At 10:00 AM +0100 8/20/10, Colin Guthrie wrote:
>Are there any other approaches I've missed? Is there some cunning,
>cleverness that eludes me?
>
>Col

Col:

I don't know about being clever, but the problem reminds me of
selling ad space on web sites.

I read a book about it, namely "OpenX Ad Server" by Yilmaz

It provided a lot of back-end considerations for displaying ads, such as:

1. How to randomly preference some ads over others. To give
preference to gold over silver by simply having more gold ads than
silver ads in the collection of ads to pick a random selection. For
example, if you have twenty gold ads and ten silver and randomly
pick, then gold has a a 2:1 advantage even though the pick is random.

2. What time of day show ads per location of user -- you see, each
time zone has it's own "busy" time and ads shown during those times
are at an advantage. For example your web site may be showing one set
of ads for CA, another for MO, and another for MI all at the same
local time.

3. And other such considerations -- it might be worth the cost to
purchase and review. They did a pretty in-depth study of how to track
and optimize ad sales.

Cheers,

tedd

--
-------
http://sperling.com/
From: Andrew Ballard on 20 Aug 2010 09:24
On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 9:05 AM, Colin Guthrie <gmane(a)colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
> Thanks everyone for responses.
>
> 'Twas brillig, and Nathan Rixham at 20/08/10 13:17 did gyre and gimble:
>> if you use mysql you can seed rand() with a number to get the same
>> random results out each time (for that seed number)
>>
>>   SELECT * from table ORDER BY RAND(234)
>>
>> Then just use limit and offset as normal.
>
> This is a neat trick! Yeah that will avoid the need for the static
> lookup table with 32 randomised columns.

Would it work to return a list of some limited number of randomly
ordered "featured" listings/items on the page, while leaving the full
list ordered by whatever natural ordering (by date, order entered,
alphabetical, etc.)? That gives every owner a chance to appear in a
prominent spot on the page while solving the issue you cited about
page breaks (and SEO if that is a concern). You can still use any of
the suggestions that have been discussed to determine how frequently
the featured items list is reseeded to help make caching practical.

Just a thought.

Andrew
From: Andrew Ballard on 20 Aug 2010 10:04
On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Colin Guthrie <gmane(a)colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
> 'Twas brillig, and Andrew Ballard at 20/08/10 14:24 did gyre and gimble:
>> Would it work to return a list of some limited number of randomly
>> ordered "featured" listings/items on the page, while leaving the full
>> list ordered by whatever natural ordering (by date, order entered,
>> alphabetical, etc.)? That gives every owner a chance to appear in a
>> prominent spot on the page while solving the issue you cited about
>> page breaks (and SEO if that is a concern). You can still use any of
>> the suggestions that have been discussed to determine how frequently
>> the featured items list is reseeded to help make caching practical.
>
> Yeah we've tried to push this as an option too, but so far our clients
> are not biting on this suggestion. They like the idea.... but in
> addition to randomised listings too!
>
> Speaking of SEO, that was one of our concerns about randomising listings
> too. What impact do you think such randomised listings will have on SEO?
>
> Obviously if a term is matched for a listing page that contains a thing
> and when the user visits that page, the thing itself is not on in the
> listing, then the user will be disappointed, but will this actually
> result in SEO penalties?
>
> Col

I'm not sure it would penalize you in the algorithms. I was thinking
more of the number of times I have followed a promising-looking link
and found that the site where I was directed was a page of and index
of article headings or post subjects showing results 1000-1500 out of
10000+, and the item I was hoping to see is no longer on that page. Is
it on the next page? No. Next page? No. Oh, forget it - back go
[search engine].

In that case, even if the site's page rank doesn't decrease, the
search results are out-of-sync and thus inaccurate. The site can
definitely take a hit with regard to end-user perception and can cause
annoyed users to leave and/or ignore your site, which are more
important issues than a number from some search engine's algorithm.
After all, it doesn't matter how many people Google, Bing, Yahoo or
some other search engine sends your way if those users end up
frustrated by the experience and don't actually use the site once they
get there.

Andrew
From: Ashley Sheridan on 20 Aug 2010 10:29
On Fri, 2010-08-20 at 15:19 +0100, Colin Guthrie wrote:

> 'Twas brillig, and Andrew Ballard at 20/08/10 15:04 did gyre and gimble:
> > On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Colin Guthrie <gmane(a)colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
> >> Speaking of SEO, that was one of our concerns about randomising listings
> >> too. What impact do you think such randomised listings will have on SEO?
> >>
> >> Obviously if a term is matched for a listing page that contains a thing
> >> and when the user visits that page, the thing itself is not on in the
> >> listing, then the user will be disappointed, but will this actually
> >> result in SEO penalties?
> >>
> >> Col
> >
> > I'm not sure it would penalize you in the algorithms. I was thinking
> > more of the number of times I have followed a promising-looking link
> > and found that the site where I was directed was a page of and index
> > of article headings or post subjects showing results 1000-1500 out of
> > 10000+, and the item I was hoping to see is no longer on that page. Is
> > it on the next page? No. Next page? No. Oh, forget it - back go
> > [search engine].
> >
> > In that case, even if the site's page rank doesn't decrease, the
> > search results are out-of-sync and thus inaccurate. The site can
> > definitely take a hit with regard to end-user perception and can cause
> > annoyed users to leave and/or ignore your site, which are more
> > important issues than a number from some search engine's algorithm.
> > After all, it doesn't matter how many people Google, Bing, Yahoo or
> > some other search engine sends your way if those users end up
> > frustrated by the experience and don't actually use the site once they
> > get there.
>
> Yeah, these are also my concerns with the approach and we've been
> careful to point them out to our client. If they know the potential
> risks and they still want to go ahead then we've just got to live with
> it, even if we don't agree that it's the right solution. The customer is
> always right after all!
>
> Cheers for the comments :)
>
> Col
>
> --
>
> Colin Guthrie
> gmane(at)colin.guthr.ie
> http://colin.guthr.ie/
>
> Day Job:
> Tribalogic Limited [http://www.tribalogic.net/]
> Open Source:
> Mandriva Linux Contributor [http://www.mandriva.com/]
> PulseAudio Hacker [http://www.pulseaudio.org/]
> Trac Hacker [http://trac.edgewall.org/]
>
>


If you use a sitemap specific to a search engine (Google sitemap for
example) then you can specify how often a page changes, or tell it not
to index at all. This could help a little in preventing getting
penalised by a search engine for the indexed content never matching what
a user actually does see. I have actually reported sites myself where I
was given something completely different from what I saw on a serp
listing, although I'm talking about wildly different, not just a product
or blog post that's been pushed back a few pages!

It brings to mind what a lot of companies do to ensure they are popular
in the phonebook. Ever noticed how there are an unusually high number of
companies towards the extreme ends of the alphabet. It was a deliberate
ploy to get as near to the first or last listing in a phonebook, which
was always done alphabetically (with the exception of paid-for listings
which were usually as larger adverts alongside the regular listings) So
you end up with AAA Cars, AA Electricians, ZZ Plumbers, ZYX Mechanics,
etc.

Thanks,
Ash
http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk


From: Andrew Ballard on 20 Aug 2010 10:55
On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 10:19 AM, Colin Guthrie <gmane(a)colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
> The customer is always right -> in his own mind (even if not in his RIGHT mind) <- after all!

Corrected that for you. ;-)

Andrew
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