The Alchemy of Search

Marissa Mayer made some nice commentary on the history - and importance of - the word count of the Google home page and the weight given to the words on a page in her Google Blog post yesterday:

“What Comes Next in This Series?”

A snippet:

“How does privacy relate to homepage word count? Larry and Sergey told me we could only add this to the homepage if we took a word away - keeping the “weight” of the homepage unchanged at 28. Given that the new Privacy link fit best with legal disclaimers on the page, I looked to the copyright line. There, we dropped the word “Google” (realizing it was implied, obviously) and added the new privacy link alongside it.”