

The Billion Dollar HTML Tag - 1SockChuck
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/06/24/the-billion-dollar-html-tag/

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kiddo
I always find this peculiar when google says they found users were doing fewer
searches when they increased the # of results on the serp to 20 or 30. Maybe
when a user sees more results they find what they were looking for more
quickly, and so don't have to do another search. Yet google always turns this
around and says this is bad because users do fewer searches. I guess from
google's perspective, revenue-wise, it's bad. But from a user's perspective,
it's good. Do no evil?

~~~
pyre
I don't think that hitting the 'next page of results' counts as a search. And
whether they display 10 results initially forcing the user to hit 'next' twice
to see all 30 results instead of just displaying 30 results outright... the
search result set is still the same. If those 30 results don't contain what
the user is looking for, they will still have to perform another search.

I guess this is assuming that people don't just re-search with different terms
if what they are looking for isn't right there on the first page.

~~~
jonknee
> I guess this is assuming that people don't just re-search with different
> terms if what they are looking for isn't right there on the first page.

Which I do all the time. I don't dispute that faster=better, but I have always
been skeptical of Google's claim of just how much better.

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brown9-2
"Mayer consulted the W3C HTML specs and found a tag (the align=right table
attribute) that would allow the right-hand table to load before the search
results, adding a revenue stream that has been critical to Google’s financial
success."

Is there any way to independently confirm that she was the one who consulted
the spec and made this discovery? Because otherwise it sounds an awful lot
like an executive taking credit for the work of someone underneath them.

~~~
kragen
It could also be a journalist sloppily attributing the work of someone
underneath her. Also, though, she's pretty technically deep; she was doing AI
before she started doing usability at the big G, and it wouldn't be at all
surprising for her to come up with an idea like that, especially given that
we're talking about a time when Google was a small company (this was when they
were first adding AdWords; would have been in 2000 or 2001?)

Under some circumstances you might argue that there's more leverage in an
executive like Marissa delegating work like this to someone else. But maybe
sometimes the raw brainpower you bring to bear on a technical problem can
really make a billion-dollar difference.

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raheemm
_They actually found a way to draw the Google checkout cart using HTML_ \- how
would they do that?

~~~
aston
The solution this article references was basically a table with 1x1 cells that
had their background colors set via CSS classes. I was on the team with the
guy who did the hack when I was an intern. That was about three years ago.

At some between then and now, Google actually went back to using a real image
for it, and now it looks like it's just a CSS sprite.

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staunch
/me waits for PB to tell us how it really happened.

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aichcon
A similar example is how Google renders the histograms on the Google Stock
Screener - they use tables instead of an image.

<http://www.google.com/finance/stockscreener>

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prodigal_erik
I don't believe Google would have been out a _billion dollars_ if the ads had
been on the left instead of the right.

~~~
sounddust
Tell that to any AdSense publisher who has increased revenue 20-30% by moving
ads a few pixels left or right, or by swapping the link color from one shade
of blue to another. There are plenty. And Google is the ultimate AdSense
publisher :)

~~~
zackattack
There are plenty? Please cite sources. 20-30% improvements sound too good to
be true for such minor alterations.

~~~
sounddust
It's pretty much universal with AdSense. If you know anyone who makes a
significant amount of money, ask them about it. Or just browse the AdSense
board on WebmasterWorld.

I have personally increased revenue by over 100% by making small color and
positioning changes, and this is also fairly common (I cited 20-30% because I
wanted to be super-conservative in my claim).

But here are some examples:

From Google's official blog: Removing a border from an ad doubled revenue to
$650/day:

[http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/05/unobtrusive-ads-can-
boos...](http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/05/unobtrusive-ads-can-boost-
revenue.html)

Palette swap doubled clickthrough: [http://www.cyberindian.com/web-
marketing/article.php?article...](http://www.cyberindian.com/web-
marketing/article.php?article_id=82)

Webmasterworld thread: Most people did not disclose percentage, but some did
(85% increase, 100% increase, etc)..

<http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/14556.htm>

There are endless examples.. just Google it.

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TweedHeads
The billion dollar tag should be <resources>

A way to include external resources in html (images, audio, video, etc) in
order to make a single file, which can be downloaded as a single file (same as
MHTML, MAFF, etc but without the hacks)

I hope it gets considered and included in HTML6

Implementation:

\- place it after the html closing tag to unclutter the file:

\- use it from any html tag <img src="url(#myimg)"/>

    
    
      </html>
      <resources>
        <resource id="myimg" content-type="image/jpeg" encoding="base64">...</resource>
        <resource id="x0" type="stylesheet" content-type="text/css">...</resource>
        <resource id="x1" type="script">...</resource>
        <resource id="x2" type="font">...</resource>
        <resource id="x3" type="audio">...</resource>
        <resource id="x4" type="video">...</resource>
        <resource id="x5" type="object">...</resource>
        <resource id="x6" type="embed">...</resource>
      </resources>

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gnaritas
That's a horrible idea and totally destroys the scalability of the web because
it destroys effective caching.

That every resource has it's own url and is downloaded separately is not a
mistake that needs corrected, it's what makes the web scale and it was done
that way on purpose.

~~~
TweedHeads
I am talking about "Save As..." one html file.

Take a look at your browser's File menu, and save this page as one single html
file.

Open that file in any editor and take a look inside it.

Do the same for every browser out there, and then, only then, you'll
understand my point.

~~~
gnaritas
Ah, you weren't very clear then, that's not at all what it looks like you're
saying.

