For those of you that follow the search engines and their cockiness that flies first class wherever they go, you should be very familiar with Google and their ‘unbeatable search algorithm’. The Google algo has probably been one of the most talked about, targeted, studied, tested, learned and contested of any other search algo in the history of search engines. Here are a few points that would put them in this position:
- They own between 60%-70% of the search market/queries, so why not target the big dawg?
- They proclaim to have the most detailed and steel proof equations of any out there.
- They claim to know of all webspam and can stop most of it with their algorithms.
- They have attracted some of the smartest people in the world to work for them.
With this knowledge at hand, how would you feel to know the ’smartest algorithm’ in the world has had to resort to human editing to better their search engine results?
Well it is happening and the once untainted results will now be at the mercy of a Wikipedia type editor, which is paid by the hour and will undoubtedly be in bed with the market they govern, somehow. If not when they sign up, definitely once they have the power. Google is offering to pay $25/hr and that is great money, but who wouldn’t take side payments for doing whatever? “Hey Joe Blow, I’ll give you $50k to make site A vital and site’s B, C, D, E, F and so on non-relevant.” Would you take the bribe? I think most people that will be doing this would.
Here is the posting on Craigslist found recently:
Search engine results rating:
We need individuals who can work from home to perform search engine results ratings. The work is straight-forward; you log into a Website and then look at predetermined web pages or other similar material and rank them based on how relevant they appear for a given search query. The workload could be anywhere from a few hours a month to a few hours a week. You will need to have a PayPal account as that is how you will be paid.
When you perform this testing you must have the ability to sit down at a computer uninterrupted for 1 hour periods. Also, we will check the data. If the data is inconsistent or done with little regard for quality, you will lose your opportunity to do this in the future.
If you’re interested, here are a few more details:
-You must be willing to be interviewed for approximately 15 minutes on the phone.
-You must be totally and completely fluent in English.
-Please have a college degree, or an AA degree at a minimum.
-Please send your resume along with a brief paragraph about yourself, and also tell us how long you have been using the Internet, how many hours a day/week you use the Internet, and what you typically do on the Internet.
The pay is approximately $25 per hour.
It may take us up to a week to get back to you so please be patient.
Thanks!
And here are the guidelines handed out.
Maybe the business of the future will be to load up a building full of employees, who all apply for the ‘human search project’, and then they become the online service who can apply spam, Non Relevant or Off-Topic tags on the competition listings and then tag the customer sites with the vital mark. Google will basically pay for your entire workforce salaries, maybe you make money off of the newer employees, then give the veterans the full $25/hr plus a little compensation from sales you earn for the service provided to individual companies, seo agencies and other search related marketing firms. The great part is getting off the ground would require very minimal costs, since salaries are usually the biggest cost.
The underlying point here is after all that we’ve heard from Google about having the smartest search algorithms out there, no matter what they do, people will always be smarter than machines. However, once you start inserting humans into the mix, the chances of corruption goes through the roof, as my example company above illustrates.
Google, don’t become Mahalo! They suck for a reason.
PS. (If someone takes my business model idea, at least give me a thank you!)
16 comments ↓
Wow. Great post.
Well… now there will be a new form of link buying.
Buy Direct from the Google editors! (That will probably be a Craigslist posting soon)
And why wouldn’t someone pay a little extra to be listed top 5? If the search results are so easy to manipulate by a human, the only way for businesses to compete would be to go directly to the editor.
50K is definitely worth it if you are in mega sectors like mortgage loans, web hosting, etc. (Is that monthly recurring, or yearly?)
I’m curious to see how this will play out.
Go Google!
MegaD
p.s. — is this going to be outsourced to overseas companies, or domestic?
p.s.s. — Wouldn’t it be great if the actual web site operators got to be editors of their own categories (like dmoz.. ahem)?
I don’t know, but I’ll be applying for this as a side gig.
Ron, your point seems to be that people can be bribed so algorithms must be better.
But surely you haven’t forgotten what happened with the big PR Spank of Oct 2007 when those “honest” algorithms began penalizing sites based on link associations with a certain other blog advertising company OR with advertisers known to have used them.
Those “objective” mathematical formulas can’t distinguish between natural and paid links so they automatically penalize. The only way to get the penalty lifted is by having a human review for whole-site, organic relevancy.
So, frankly, I see this is a rather responsible move on Google’s part to find a way to examine sites which request reconsideration of the penalty.
Can it be corrupted? Sure, but as we all know so can those “objective” algorithms. Is it likely that corrupt contractors would stay employed long? I don’t think so. After all, it’s just as likely that Google will *also* hire people to review the reviewers and will boot those who appear to be skewing the results.
Ron, Google’s been counting for human search refinement for many years already (personalized search = human edited search in disguise, where Google collects the data for “perfecting the algorithms”). They also have individuals who check the search results in different languages manually, so human involvement is there for sure.
Mahalo is a Google remora if you ask me. I am not a fan of Calcanis’ endeavors, and I don’t see how Mahalo will ever be successful.
But back to Google, I doubt they’d ever use Craigslist to recruit. Also, there is no proof that the pdf you linked at comes from Google anyway. I think it is at least unfair to accuse Google of such a practice without proper proof.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not a Google fan - actually I wrote some of the harshest reviews in the past, but they were based on facts. If you want to accuse them of gambling their own system, pick on them for actually owning and SEO company (Performics) for example.
Always,
Mig
@Mihaela - Yes I realize humans have always been involved. But adding remote editors like wikipedia or dmoz is just degrading what they have. Both examples, there are people that I know for a fact have a beneficial relationship with the categories they are in. That’s where I feel the line was crossed. And the PDF I linked to DOES have proof.
I’m guessing you didn’t dork out like me and dissect the document :=). For ease of searching, on page 14 of the PDF, it illustrates how to access the EWOQ URL rating interface, or the Rater Hub. It explains 2 methods how to access, with one providing a direct link https://www.google.com/evaluation/search/rating/home where you then supply your Google credentials. Go ahead and follow the link, it will ask you to login, if you have a google login, enter it and submit, then it will tell you what it told me:
So this document was provided by Google and someone has confirmed it because they applied and was sent this document. Trust me, I wouldn’t have said a word unless I was sure it had legs.
@Kate - You are right, but no one has yet to get outside editors do the job right. I definitely think a lot of editors will take the job seriously, however, all it takes is a few bad apples to make it a bad idea. My example company idea is something that came to me in the matter of typing this post. Imagine the smart people who put their minds to it. I think if Google makes people true employees, they have a much better shot instead of contracting people you don’t have a reign on.Thanks for the debate you guys. This is good sports talk.
One other funny point left out is,
payment is made through Paypal.
I suppose the best way to prove the pdf is valid is to apply for the job and get it ourselves. Sure, I will not get it, as I am very negative when it comes to Google (I hammered them more than once on my blog, and if they check me out they’ll know).
If they really pay people to refine search, I can only laugh. It proves again the point that Google’s hypocrisy knows no borders. I can only recommend that we all switch to other search engine, turn off our ads, delete our feedburner accounts, delete our gmail accounts, never watch a YouTube video again, delete our blogger blogs, never use Google Analytics for stats and so on. Gosh, the way Google got its claws on all important online entities is scary.
Oh, about the link in the document, I have no doubt it is real - and internal, for people who already work there. I told you they use humans to refine search in other languages. They also use editors to check reports from Google users, like spam reports, etc. They are far from being perfect, Ron. Remember when Matt Cutts himself encouraged users to report paid links - how many blogs had to suffer because of Google’s hypocrisy last year. Luckily there are still ways to go around Google and get relevant traffic. We should use them while we can. As soon as Google sees a service becoming more successful than they like, they buy it.
What would you do if they come up with an offer to buy LinkWorth?
HAA… well, I guess we’d have to cross the buy out bridge if it ever came. I definitely think they could get further if they tried working with networks like ours rather than trying to bully people around. We’re just in business like they are.
I think the fact Google is so adamant about slapping peoples hands, they put themselves under the microscope for things like this. If Yahoo was caught doing it, not that big of a story.
Well, Yahoo is another Google remora. It’s no secret they’ve been working together for some time. They call it “collaboration” and we should get all tickled and inspired seeing such great companies work together. LOL!
Wow, all this talk about about remorae has me craving sushi.
Meanwhile, Ron, I do agree that true employees would be more trustworthy than contractors, but then Google would be more accountable for their decisions (rather than shrugging them off as bad moves on a contractors’ part).
When you hire employees you have to pay benefits. When you hire outside contractors you not only don’t pay benefits you can decide not to pay them with little chance of being sued. You don’t pay an employee…you’ll be sued for sure, even if you’re right.
Very interesting subject.
I don`t see it as being such a bad idea. I suppose humans can do what other computers can`t.
Corruption? Yes, it could happen, but if the assessor`s work is being checked, and sites are coming in to the assessors randomly, I don`t think it`d be a major problem at all.
Hi Friends!
I quite well agree with linkworth!
Google indexes our page with machine but determine our Page Rank through Human…
I know exactly because my friend is Google’s Rater…..
He told me much about the rules to put a website RELEVANT, USEFUL, SPAM or GARBAGE….
Human is not a machine. Human use their heart as least 1 percent to rate our website. So if they (raters) like our website (even our article is garbage) maybe the site will get a quite appreciation…
Why Internet does Google as a king of PR maker???
When Google put down your website, you hate Google, otherwise you will love Google if Your website given Higher PR….
Let us think twice for this….
[...] about Google hiring human search editors using Craigslist for example have been on the web for a while. Someone even posted a Google confidential document [...]
Sorry if I posted twice but I don’t see my last comment so I will comment again. I agree with you that humans will always be smarter than the machines. I do think that there will be a large measure of inconsistency by some of the folks who do this editing. Google is always trying to turn seo on its ear.
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