

Google Doesn't Want to Lead You Down Any Dead Ends - joao
http://www.41latitude.com/post/2595785737/dead-ends

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thailandstartup
It is interesting about the maps, but I read the headline with the context of
Google search. Any SEO experts know if Google search also penalizes 'dead-end'
websites (ones with no outbound links)?

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inerte
Yes, or more precisely, good outbound links counts on your favor. I've never
heard of a site being "penalized" for not having links, but I'm sure having
good links is good for the website (and also, having bad links is bad to your
website).

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raganwald
At one time, I thought that outbound links actually drained your PageRank
juice. I also seem to recall IBM research coming up with an algorithm that
ranked sites as either authorities or hubs, and gave a different kind of
positive ranking to sites that did a good job of being hubs for a given search
term or terms.

~~~
lkozma
That would be Kleinberg's HITS algorithm.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HITS_algorithm>

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6ren
That's all very well, but how do you explain _Castle Ridge Rd_? (last map)
There are also some loops that have the same weight as dead ends.

Alternative explanation: the municipality surveyors assign prominence-values
to roads, based on width etc, which happen to (often) coincide with dead ends
being lighter. Google uses these values; competitors don't.

I agree it is a nice effect, both useful and beautiful.

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ry0ohki
Castle Ridge Rd, while a dead end, also is a trunk that has several branches.
It seems like only dead-ends that lead no where else get this width.

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syllogism
This makes sense. "Dead end" is probably defined as whether it connects to any
other roads. They wouldn't want to define dead-end as whether it connects to
any _non-dead end_ roads.

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kadavy
Cool, but I'm not convinced that the deciding factor is whether the street is
"dead end" or not vs. it just being a really minor street. There's at least
one dead end street in the examples that is pretty thick:
[https://skitch.com/kadavy/r8iie/41latitude-google-maps-
doesn...](https://skitch.com/kadavy/r8iie/41latitude-google-maps-doesnt-want-
to-lead-you-down-any-dead-ends)

~~~
roadnottaken
That street ends in a cul-de-sac. That's not really a dead-end.

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kadavy
There are plenty of other streets on that map that end the same way, but are
thinner.

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joshfinnie
This is quite interesting; never thought of giving map readers a visual clue
to whether a street is a throughway or not...

But this is just for visual representation, and I think the shading is a
little too drastic. There were some examples of some pretty long streets that
were almost invisible.

Another interesting catch by a very interesting website!

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obeattie
Take a look at London and you'll see it's not only dead-ends that get this
treatment. I think there's more going on here… the roads I see showing up less
prominently here are the kind that are difficult to drive down (I've been
looking around my neighborhood, so speaking from experience)… however they're
actually calculating this prominence, it's damned clever.

Edit: in fact, it can even be segments of roads. See
[https://img.skitch.com/20110104-d3k9f76gttjqbtsg94m85qb3nh.j...](https://img.skitch.com/20110104-d3k9f76gttjqbtsg94m85qb3nh.jpg)
(that's all the same street if you zoom in)

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jtbigwoo
The dead-end streets in my neighborhood are physically narrower, too, probably
for the same reason. AS a side effect, though, it gets hard for delivery
trucks and snow plows to turn around and get back on the main road..

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chloraphil
I imagine they're smaller because they see significantly less traffic.

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dennyabraham
interesting, but i'm not sure this is the whole story.

google maps's stroke width for roads seems to be based on some measure of
traffic or connectedness. from my experience, roads that see fewer cars and
fewer intersections tend to show up less prominently. since google has vector
data for maps, my guess is they algorithmically weigh and display routes and
this leads to dead ends being fainter than other roads

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blake8086
They could actually weight it based off the number of gps "check-ins" that
road sees.

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barmstrong
He is assuming this was an aesthetic choice. It's entirely possible they
weighted dead ends lower for the algorithm and the tiles just came out like
that when they rendered them.

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ugh
What’s the difference?

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natch
I read the headline with the context of business models, and businesses that
grow to rely on Google, and then, one day, find out: uh-oh.

