Maile Ohye: Love & Technology

Women are diverse. And, in this beautiful diversity of women, there are some (like me) who are (at times) slightly neurotic (let’s pretend it’s endearing?). I think this is one reason why, if you’re a boy, complimenting a woman can be difficult.

Women are people, and people can be caught up in their thoughts, past relationships, childhoods, etc. Navigating personalities and knowing the “right”, or even just the “all right,” thing to say can be like walking through a minefield. What worked in one situation could be a total turnoff the next time around.

In most aspects of life, randomness sucks. If you’re a man, and if a woman has taken your compliment the wrong way, I empathize. I hope that all compliments from nice guys are accepted as they were intended, but for whatever reason, sometimes compliments falter — either they fall flat or they do more harm than good.

For all my neuroses, I’d still like to think that I’m logical. Here’s my first pass at creating a complimenting algorithm to help guys make more sense of (at times, crazy) people like me.

Again, pease note that I, Maile Ohye, am strange/nutty/<your-adjective-here>. The tests and algorithm do not apply across the board.

Compliment test cases

1. On the phone: “You’re perfect.”
   FAIL
   I could literally feel my brain pagefaulting when I heard this — my flaws are numerous. He seemed fairly sincere, but this had to be a joke. He later clarified that by “perfect”, he meant that he “respected me and held me in high regard.” So while my first reaction was “this guy is illogical” this compliment had a happy ending.

 

2. At a bar: “You’re pretty.”
   FAIL (So sorry, kind of harsh, I know)
   It’s always nice to hear that you’re pretty, but it feels a bit strange, too. I tend to wonder how many drinks he’s had, and whether he has any interest in me as a person. Besides, “pretty” isn’t an adjective I would use to describe myself. It’s just so dainty.

 

3. Accidentally turning/bumping into each other at a bar: “Wow, you’re pretty!”
   PASS
   So spontaneous it’s sweet.

 

4. At a bar: “You’re pretty. But you probably hear that all the time. I just really like your smile.”
   PASS
   Lol, thanks! (I’ll take it.)

 

5. If you’re in a relationship together: “You look pretty!”
   PASS
   Aww. So nice of you to say.

 

6. All of the compliments above, but said to me in my early twenties.
   PASS
   You could’ve said “I love your pink hair” and I would’ve eaten it up.
   Update on 04/13/2010: To clarify, I never had pink hair.

 

My algorithm for giving compliments in common situations

 

if (she’s your girlfriend || she’s not super confident) {
  needs and/or likes reassurance = true;
  desires appreciation for how she hopes to see herself = true;
  noteToSelf(needs and/or likes reassurance, desires appreciation for how she hopes to see herself);
  genericCompliment();
  // also good to randomize calling customizedCompliment()
  }

 

if (you’re pre-relationship) && (she’s a confident person || she’s no longer in her early 20′s) {
  needs reassurance = false;
  desires appreciation for how she hopes to see herself = true;
  noteToSelf(needs reassurance, desires appreciation for how she hopes to see herself);
  if (your compliment is truly spontaneous) || (your authority on the topic is indisputable) || (your sincerity is unmistakable) {
    genericCompliment();
  }
  else {
    // best to elaborate
    customizeCompliment();
  }

 

Please let me know if this doesn’t make sense.

I wanted to write a general post for the Webmaster Blog about how search engines handle URLs with/without trailing slashes, but turns out that the major engines differ quite a bit in their display.

Conducting quick research using the URL for Webmaster Central, which 301s the non-trailing-slash URL, www.google.com/webmasters, to the trailing slash URL, www.google.com/webmasters/,

here’s what I found today:

• Good news for PageRank and linking properties! Search engines appear to cluster 301′d trailing-slash URLs to/from no-trailing-slash URLs (evidenced by the same cached version for various URL formats)
• Google generally adheres to the target of your 301, displaying the target URL (with our without the trailing slash) in SERPs. Some examples from SERPs that show the 301 target with/without the trailing slash:
  www.google.com/products www.google.com/webmasters/
• Yahoo! and Bing may remove the trailing slash from results, even if it’s the target of your 301. For the query [google webmaster central], both Yahoo! and Bing show this URL without the trailing slash:
  www.google.com/webmasters
• Bing can remove more than just the trailing slash of a URL to fit query terms/keywords — they can remove characters, too. For the query [google webmaster tools], Bing shows:
  www.google.com/webmaster

 

Details and screenshots

 

Google generally follows 301s and displays URLs with or without a trailing slash accordingly (i.e. we stay pretty true to the URL that was successfully crawled). For example, Google search results reflect www.google.com/webmasters/, the target of the 301, as the canonical version.

 

But Yahoo! seems to remove the trailing slash from the results display (i.e. even though www.google.com/webmasters/ is the 301 target, the slash is removed):

 

Interestingly, clicking this result’s cached version shows the trailing-slash URL, www.google.com/webmasters/. So while the display may differ, it’s likely both URLs, slash and no-trailing-slash, are clustered as expected:

Bing removes the trailing slash, too.

 

But I think Bing also removes the ‘s’ in ‘webmasters’ when it doesn’t match the query term. Here they display www.google.com/webmaster. I found this feature most interesting.

In Bing, both the URLs
www.google.com/webmasters
and
www.google.com/webmaster
show the source URL in the cached version as
www.google.com/webmasters/.
Evidence again that while the display formats may differ, the duplicate content URLs are likely clustered.

Bing’s swapping/adjusting of display URLs to match queries is a pretty neat idea with potentially large implications. And I’m sure Bing prevents keywords in URLs from becoming spammy in these 301 cases. For example, perhaps their results display only allows stemming of the canonical URL from plural to singular nouns (webmasters -> webmaster), not complete variations of keywords.

 

I don’t research search engine behavior outside of Google as much as I should, sorry about that. If you have more findings on trailing slashes and URLs, please share. Would be cool to learn more.

 

Update on May 18, 2010: A few weeks after this post, I published an official Webmaster Central article about how Google handles URLs and the trailing slash.