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bump for crazy news. I just read the same news 30 mins ago. I really don’t know how to comment on it. Sometimes I think the algorithms google uses can really push businesses to focus too much on seo. On the other hand when you get someone who can pick and choose a ranking then this makes it subject to exploitation and abuse.
Google needs some competition and I’m not sure if I want msn or yahoo as my alternative. On that note I wonder if Apple would come out with it’s own search engine! They have a browser, OS, why not a SE?
As much as I love “El Reg”, people have known for some time (years) that Google employs people to check results and adjust accordingly and this seems like a re-hash of that news.
I agree Google needs serious competition though, but who and how. Whatever it is needs to do a better PR job than Cuil, and less ad-conscious that MSN and Yahoo IMO. With the commercial cynicism around, it’s gotta be two kids in a bedroom again surely
Google needs some competition
You betcha they do. They rule supreme and internet users will be hard to wean off google, no matter how wonderful any competing SE is.
Gibberish!
Google this week admitted that its staff will pick and choose what appears in its search results
Where is this quote coming from? I have not seen a press release by Google saying anything of sort. Google just laid off 10,000 “contractors”, do you think they will hire the thousands needed to hand-pick search results?!?
Plus the whole motion of replacing a mechanized process (the algo) with human labor it’s counter-priductive and very costly. Heck, Google doesn’t even handpick it’s directory
It makes more logic to my way of thinking that google does everything as automated as possible.
That’s what they’re all about. Why they were created. ya I don’t see them going backwards.
If they are using people to hand pick results then unless they’re getting some major kickbacks then I think their manpower is better spent holding hands with advertisers who give up on adwords because they’re automated system is so hard to figure out.
@Stupid 190707 wrote:
Gibberish!
Where is this quote coming from? I have not seen a press release by Google saying anything of sort. Google just laid off 10,000 “contractors”, do you think they will hire the thousands needed to hand-pick search results?!?
Plus the whole motion of replacing a mechanized process (the algo) with human labor it’s counter-priductive and very costly. Heck, Google doesn’t even handpick it’s directory
Not gibberish at all. It was revealed a couple of years ago, been backed up by people from Google and discussed over and over on SEO forums ever since. There was even a leak of a document that Google hands to researchers with guidance notes quite some time back which I think is how it came to light initially.
EDIT: Just dug this up: http://www.pandia.com/sew/585-peter-norvig.html
What you refer to is nothing more than quality control. What the original article suggested was that people are hired for the sole purpose of manually arranging search results. Now, I hope I don’t have to explain how impossible of a task this would be – there are zillions of important searches, from cars, airfare, insurance, Britney Spears, etc
Add to this the customized results and hand-picked results are close to impossible.And I don’t see anything wrong with G hiring people to evaluate the quality of their results, at the end, this is how they adjust their algo. Also keep in mind that the Algo is designed by humans and will operate on what those humans believe it’s a quality result.
Bottom line – there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Google manually arranges its results.
Hi all,
if you read the article (provided by Stup) it basically confirms that there is NOT human involvement in a particular site’s ranking with exception of taking them out of the game.
the reason for this is very logical and makes perfect sense to me … and that is the more you have humans changing results … the more humans it is going to take to keep those results current.
what a slippery slope that would be.
On the other hand as S puts it … quality control situation is understandable
@Stupid 190733 wrote:
What you refer to is nothing more than quality control.
Yeah totally. But the results of the “quality control” ultimately affects the positions of those sites because penalties are dished out based on what the “humans” discover. There’s no way Google would say to someone you could pick a serps position for a site I’m sure (besides which it would be defeat the object of the algorithms), but their input will be picked up by the algos without doubt.
@Stupid 190733 wrote:
And I don’t see anything wrong with G hiring people to evaluate the quality of their results.
Totally agree. I’d actually like to see Google take more information from visitor behanviour to determine their results, which I guess must be happening more and more.
Editors do manually manipulate results when they feel it’s needed. This comes as no surprise and is self evident in the serps.
@Professor 190934 wrote:
Editors do manually manipulate results when they feel it’s needed. This comes as no surprise and is self evident in the serps.
Actually this issue is being speculated on at Webmasterworld right now and several prominent members are saying the same thing, although there is divided opinion – to be expected.
Google monitors top index pages of many hot keywords closely. You know there are a lot of “search engine gamers”. If google lets some pages on the top, gamers will make pretty much money. It’s unfair for the honest guys and hurts the internet. On the other hand, if google intervenes the index, it also hurts the internet.
I know this is coming a little late, gang, but we asked Bob Rains what he thought about all of this, and this was his reply (salty language warning!):
“To be clear, what the people on the forum are really taking about is Google Hand Jobs, which is what you call it when Google Human changes the serps to remove a problem site. Google washing is when you make an effort to clean up your bad links and tactics from past efforts to avoid a Google penalty, or to remove one.”
So Googlewashing is something different than what we’ve been discussing here, it seems.
Regarding the main point of the article — that Google personnel performs some selective editing here and there — does that really surprise us? It’s not that big of a shock, considering the company has made it pretty clear that it wants to start customizing the process. (Take Google SearchWiki, for example.)
Then again, if it’s something they started to do on a larger scale — and to all results, not just those for specific user accounts — this could wreak havoc with the SEO industry.
Me, I’m also curious about Google’s motives. Are they doing this for quality control, or because it will give them even greater control over an industry they already absolutely dominate … ?
