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Google Manually Manipulating Results

Discussion in 'Google' started by nevetS, Dec 14, 2008.

  1. #1
    This was on the top of drudge when I logged in this morning - looks interesting:

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

    (I looked briefly to see if this was discussed already and didn't catch it if it was)
     
    nevetS, Dec 14, 2008 IP
  2. nevetS

    nevetS Evolving Dragon

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    #2
    bah. One of those flashy headlines with not much meat.

     
    nevetS, Dec 14, 2008 IP
  3. sweetfunny

    sweetfunny Banned

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    #3
    Google already hand edits the hell out of the results.
     
    sweetfunny, Dec 14, 2008 IP
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  4. JohnS0N

    JohnS0N Notable Member

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    #4
    Yup, google employs quality raters who manually rank/derank websites.
     
    JohnS0N, Dec 14, 2008 IP
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  5. IEmailer.com

    IEmailer.com Well-Known Member

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    #5
    Interesting Statement !!

    Let's at least hope they are really quality raters and won't cheat small business websites ;)
     
    IEmailer.com, Dec 14, 2008 IP
  6. zac439

    zac439 Notable Member

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    #6
    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.
     
    zac439, Dec 14, 2008 IP
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  7. scubita

    scubita Peon

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    #7
    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...
     
    scubita, Dec 14, 2008 IP
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  8. Brandon Sheley

    Brandon Sheley Illustrious Member

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    #8
    they do!!! :eek:

    I hand edit my own results, that's why I'm number1,2,3 for all my terms :p
     
    Brandon Sheley, Dec 14, 2008 IP
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  9. JohnS0N

    JohnS0N Notable Member

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    #9
    Woah, you must be getting tons of traffic!!! :confused:
     
    JohnS0N, Dec 14, 2008 IP
  10. spice

    spice Active Member

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    #10
    then why do we still see spam in google results
     
    spice, Dec 14, 2008 IP
  11. zingo

    zingo Peon

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    #11
    Probably because those are the editors sites and they want to make some AdSense funds??
     
    zingo, Dec 14, 2008 IP
  12. JohnS0N

    JohnS0N Notable Member

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    #12
    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.
     
    JohnS0N, Dec 14, 2008 IP
  13. imnajam

    imnajam Well-Known Member

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    #13
    Well, I thought that they just edit their algo not the result infact.
     
    imnajam, Dec 14, 2008 IP
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  14. howard

    howard Well-Known Member

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    #14
    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
     
    howard, Dec 15, 2008 IP
  15. sweetfunny

    sweetfunny Banned

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    #15
    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/traffic_details/pissedconsumer.com

    Google do hand edit individual sites, they hand edit results and they do it daily.
     
    sweetfunny, Dec 15, 2008 IP
  16. 1tigerlivejob

    1tigerlivejob Peon

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    #16
    Thats not right picking favorites
     
    1tigerlivejob, Dec 15, 2008 IP
  17. JohnS0N

    JohnS0N Notable Member

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    #17
    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.
     
    JohnS0N, Dec 15, 2008 IP
  18. bogart

    bogart Notable Member

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    #18
    bogart, Dec 15, 2008 IP
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  19. MikeDigital

    MikeDigital Banned

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    #19
    The TechCrunch interview is eye opening. I think Google was manually editing the results for a long time. It's only normal I think.
     
    MikeDigital, Dec 15, 2008 IP
  20. scubita

    scubita Peon

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    #20
    scubita, Dec 15, 2008 IP