Google Manually Manipulating Results

[nevetS]

This was on the top of drudge when I logged in this morning - looks interesting:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12...ing_revisited/

Google this week admitted that its staff will pick and choose what appears in its search results. It's a historic statement - and nobody has yet grasped its significance.

(I looked briefly to see if this was discussed already and didn't catch it if it was)

[nevetS]

bah. One of those flashy headlines with not much meat.

Mayer also talked about Google’s use of user data created by actions on Wiki search to improve search results on Google in general. For now that data is not being used to change overall search results, she said. But in the future it’s likely Google will use the data to at least make obvious changes. An example is if “thousands of people” were to knock a search result off a search page, they’d be likely to make a change.

[sweetfunny]

Google already hand edits the hell out of the results.

[JohnS0N]

Yup, google employs quality raters who manually rank/derank websites.

[IEmailer.com]

Interesting Statement !!

Let's at least hope they are really quality raters and won't cheat small business websites

[zac439]

Great information! Just goes to show that taking your time and making a quality product will definitely get you a reward in the end. But I guess we all knew about Google doing this, since TNX.net doesn't even appear in Google's search engine rankings!

Glad to see that the new user data they collect on the "social" searching feature of Google isn't being used to impact search results. I don't even think they should make changes if a lot of people knock off a website from the SERPs, because we all know it isn't hard to get a few thousand people to do so if you have money.

I think it'd be best to just create a flagging system, where an actual Google employee checks out a website if it is being knocked off so much.

[scubita]

See why i get so confused and so decided to spam? I had respected and relevant sites ranking high. Now they are ranking nowhere. old sites, unique content, updated every 2-3 days.

Instead, $oogle ranks bloger blogs with no content at all and lots of ads. And they admit they hand mix the results... ohohoho funny statement.

Yesterday i discovered a site pretty interesting. I reported that site (absolutly no content, just google search box + 100 keywords + adsense). Let's see how long will they take to remove that piece of shit ranking #3...

[Loco.M]

Originally Posted by sweetfunny

Google already hand edits the hell out of the results.

they do!!!

I hand edit my own results, that's why I'm number1,2,3 for all my terms

[JohnS0N]

Originally Posted by Loco.M

they do!!!

I hand edit my own results, that's why I'm number1,2,3 for all my terms

Woah, you must be getting tons of traffic!!!

[spice]

then why do we still see spam in google results

[zingo]

Originally Posted by spice

then why do we still see spam in google results

Probably because those are the editors sites and they want to make some AdSense funds??

[JohnS0N]

Originally Posted by zingo

Probably because those are the editors sites and they want to make some AdSense funds??

It's not that easy. You can't rank/derank a result on your own. You can propose a change, but then a few people have to agree with your decision.

[imnajam]

Well, I thought that they just edit their algo not the result infact.

[howard]

Yup, google employs quality raters who manually rank/derank websites.

There seems to be some misunderstanding about what the Google quality raters do. They're asked to do systematic relevance judgements of particular search results, basically a way of saying whether the top results for a search really are the most relevant, or whether other results lower down are more relevant and ought to be ranked higher.

BUT, the important thing is, Google do not simply add these manual tweaks to the results. That would be completely unmanageable. They use these quantitative relevance scores to test alternative search algorithms. If a new algorithm scores better (i.e. is in better agreement with the human relevance scores), they'll probably choose to go with this change. It's a systematic way to test if an algorithm change really does improve relevance or not.

So no manual tweaks to the search results, but results are continually improved based on human-judged relevance.

... which is why Google nearly always scores best in search relevance tests (e.g. Rusty Search).

Howard

[sweetfunny]

Originally Posted by howard

There seems to be some misunderstanding about what the Google quality raters do. They're asked to do systematic relevance judgements of particular search results, basically a way of saying whether the top results for a search really are the most relevant, or whether other results lower down are more relevant and ought to be ranked higher.

BUT, the important thing is, Google do not simply add these manual tweaks to the results. That would be completely unmanageable. They use these quantitative relevance scores to test alternative search algorithms. If a new algorithm scores better (i.e. is in better agreement with the human relevance scores), they'll probably choose to go with this change. It's a systematic way to test if an algorithm change really does improve relevance or not.

So no manual tweaks to the search results, but results are continually improved based on human-judged relevance.

... which is why Google nearly always scores best in search relevance tests (e.g. Rusty Search).

Howard

What you said about the role of a quality rater is true, however Google "do" hand edit results and do it often.

Here is just one example regarding the PissedConsumer.com site. Matt Cutts himself commented, and within days the whole site was deindexed. He also mentioned 3 other URL's they had "taken action on" and were deindexed, so that's 4 domains manually edited in just one comment.

The effects: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...edconsumer.com

Google do hand edit individual sites, they hand edit results and they do it daily.

[1tigerlivejob]

Thats not right picking favorites

[JohnS0N]

Originally Posted by howard

There seems to be some misunderstanding about what the Google quality raters do. They're asked to do systematic relevance judgements of particular search results, basically a way of saying whether the top results for a search really are the most relevant, or whether other results lower down are more relevant and ought to be ranked higher.

BUT, the important thing is, Google do not simply add these manual tweaks to the results. That would be completely unmanageable. They use these quantitative relevance scores to test alternative search algorithms. If a new algorithm scores better (i.e. is in better agreement with the human relevance scores), they'll probably choose to go with this change. It's a systematic way to test if an algorithm change really does improve relevance or not.

So no manual tweaks to the search results, but results are continually improved based on human-judged relevance.

... which is why Google nearly always scores best in search relevance tests (e.g. Rusty Search).

Howard

That is true. A quality rater can't simply pick a "keyword" and sort the serps. The websites that can be ranked/deranked are predetermined by an algorithm.

Still, I see this as manipulation of results.

But hand picking results is also possible like sweetfunny explained above.

[bogart]

Marissa Meyer --Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience-- explains that editorial judgments will play a key role in Google searches.

See the interview here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/10...ete-interview/

[MikeDigital]

The TechCrunch interview is eye opening. I think Google was manually editing the results for a long time. It's only normal I think.

[scubita]

Originally Posted by bogart

Marissa Meyer --Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience-- explains that editorial judgments will play a key role in Google searches.

See the interview here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/10...ete-interview/

Looking at local results i wonder what da fak are those morons doing...