A Dutch blogger is giving the heads up on Google's Rater Hub here http://www.searchbistro.com/ Make sure you see the Flash movie. A lot of traffic at the moment as you can imagine so if you have problems there is a mirror here http://files.photojerk.com/alan/www.searchbistro.com/ and here for the Flash http://files.photojerk.com/alan/www.searchbistro.com/secretlab.swf - Michael
http://www.searchbistro.com/index.php?/archives/19-Google-Secret-Lab,-Prelude.html http://cavalkaf.frihost.net/mirror/secret_google/secretlab.swf to see it! Now to try to figure out how to get hired to do this!!
Yeah, this was slashdotted today. I didn't watch the entire flash thing yet, but wonder how long this has been going on.
http://eval.google.com has been appearing in server logs since 2002 and possibly earlier but Google only began to hire quantities of temporary 'Quality Raters' last September. - Michael
This would make sense in light of the idea that Google is going to go to Trust rank somewhere in its algorithm. You need those humans.
How quick until we get DMOZ like shenanigans though? People signing up to vote down their competitors... I hope Google is smarter than that.
Just out surfing the net looking for any information I could find about the rumoured TrustRank. Indeed there is some rather intersting articles encompassing this? Google is recrutting university students from all over the world to help combat spam and make Google's SERPs cleaner http://eval.google.com. You won't find a page on from this link without login. Apparently top secret. shhh Is this the foundation for TR I wonder?
http://www.searchbistro.com/index.php?/archives/19-Google-Secret-Lab,-Prelude.html This is an article about how google is recruiting international workers to help manually tweak their index. There's a flash movie that shows a little bit about their search rating tool. d'oh! I guess i'm late to the party.
OK, I've not looked at what he's posted - but I'm willing to bet that he's in breach of his NDA with G if he's showing stuff about the 'rater hub'. The NDA is pretty tight as you'd expect from a company like G. If anyone wants a referal for this, drop me a PM.
If anyone is doing this in Holland, its probably this Henk van Ess. In Holland he is quite known in the SEO market because of his objective news at Voelspriet.nl. He is independant afaik. I highly doubt if its true though, for the reasons Tops30 posted. I rather would aspect its some sort of their own testing area, to check if their machines work. I mean they probably have targets and all, to report to the management. With this tool they can check if Google is getting up at its expectations. Some research tool in own hand. The dutch Railway system for example, has always 10 people walking through trains to check on tickets, just to see what the percentages of tickets are. I think this is just to get objective feedback for Google, but wont be used in the results. Otherwise such employees will be worth money. Where do I get such ideas and what my resources are? Just the electric impulses from my head I have no resources that say that I am right. So dont pay attention if you only want to read facts. PS: If its true, they should also hire some people to check on their own directory
It is true. G do hire people in to check the relevancy of the search results. There is no direct effect on the results, although I'm sure they feedback to findout if algo are doing what they expect.
I guess these guys will be out on the streets begging in no time: http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html Oh look, there's one of them now... Boycott Google! Unfair to Pigeons! They should stage a s*it in.
http://jobsearch.monster.ca/getjob.asp?JobID=30064214&AVSDM=2005-05-16&Logo=1&pg=1&q=Rater&sort=rv Does this mean they influence the search results manually?