Google – 2008 Winner

Let’s skip the corny, canned jokes and the awkward moments at the podium and just open the envelope, shall we? Ladies and gentlemen, the winner of the 2008 SEMMY Award in the Google category is … drum-roll, please …

Why Google Can’t Just “Dump” PageRank
Dan Thies, SEO Fast Start | 11/9/07

Congratulations to our winner! Here’s a choice bit from the winning post:

The biggest benefit of using PageRank doesn’t come in at the ranking step, it comes in at the document retrieval stage, when you’re trying to decide which of 27,438,902 documents that matched the query text are actually worth ranking. The search engine’s job at the retrieval stage is to pick 1,000 documents to rank, without losing any really important documents.

PageRank excels at this. In fact, PageRank’s role in the retrieval process is why Google’s “Supplemental Index” exists.

Runners-Up

The top two runners-up in public voting were:

1. What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters
   Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land | 4/26/07
2. Google 2.0: Google Universal Search
   Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land | 5/16/07

The winner and runners-up are welcome to grab the appropriate badge — we have a badge for both winners and runners-up.

How the Voting Ended

Here’s a look at how each finalist fared in the public voting:

Thanks to all who voted, and congrats again to the winner, runners-up, finalists, and all nominees. We look forward to reading your acceptance speech soon!