Google Letting Users Rank Search Results

Myriad writes "C|Net News is running an article about Google testing out a new system which would let users rank pages. From the article, 'Two weeks ago, Google began quietly testing a Web page voting system that, for the first time on a large scale, could eventually let Web surfers help determine the popularity of sites ranked by the company's search engine.'" As someone who has a lot of experience with systems where users self rate content, let me just wish Google the best of luck. Especially since for many unscrupulous businesses, ratings in search engines directly translate to dollars.

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[felipeal]

Even if the system works fine (i.e., without abuse), it would be nice if the user still have the option to use it or the not (as the current system works very well).

Better yet, they could have a slashdot-like user customization mechanism (i.e., where the user can set the threshold and moderate/vote a search result in many ways).

Anyway, I wish them luck too (Google rules :)

Great, but ..

[Eloquence]

.. this will only work when combined with trust metrics. There are certainly different views on what constitutes a quality site, and if you just let everyone vote, you get a fuzzy average (plus you have problems filtering false votes). So what you need is a system of identity where you can say "Show me all pages rated highly by people in my trusted user list".

To establish such a system, Google needs to get users to create accounts. A more feasible solution may be cooperation with instant messaging providers, using their identity pool and friends lists as filter criteria. But if they want people to create accounts, they need to turn Google into a community. The first thing to do this would be to have an automatic discussion forum for every major website.

That, again, would create a lot of traffic, so they might be better off using a peer-to-peer app residing on the users' systems instead, which would also allow you to add website-specific real time chat, file sharing, micropayments and other nifty things. It would also make it easier to create responsive user interfaces, which is always a problem with web UIs.

Re:Great, but ..

[SEE]

Hmm. Then how in hell did I ever get to a Karma of 98? Or are you telling me that the /. groupthink has the following opinions (all expressed in posts that got net positive moderation):

1) The antitrust actions against Microsoft were gross abuses of government power.

2) RMS is fundamentally mistaken on the nature of property. The case for intellectual property is in fact stronger than the case for physical property, since IP is entirely the product of the creator's labor, while physical property includes preexistent matter to which no one can claim a natural right.

3) Money doesn't corrupt governments; governments corrupt money. "Unchecked corporate power" isn't a problem on its own. The problem is that whenever a government allows itself to move beyond lassiez-faire, it creates an incentive for the entrenched corporate powers to pay for regualtions and laws that protect them and squash competitors.

Give Google some credit

[FTL]

Google aren't idiots. Don't be so quick to post about how this will be a huge failure and how easy it will be to defeat the system.

Think about it. According to the article, the system is currently just collecting information, it isn't affecting rankings -- yet. So in a couple of weeks Google will look at this new data, look at the corresponding pages, then figure out what should be done. Why are we assuming that they will just do a linar mapping between the number of happy faces and relevance?

I wouldn't put it past them to dynamically map relevance with a far more complicated function. User rankings are another non-random data stream. All information (even negative information) is useful. Just as long as one strips it from its labels, and looks at it blindly. Can you say neural networks?

Meta-Rating

[jeriqo]

As slashdot got Meta-Moderation, i think google should use Meta-Rating, so users could help detect spammers.

Oh, by the way, if you're already a Slashdot moderator and want to know if you can Meta-Moderate, just check /metamod.pl.

-J

Re:Just disqualify the money element...

[Bonker]

Users who perenially search outside of corporate sites could be able to customize their setting so that they'd have to select when they want to include corporate sites. Could it work? I don't know.

Google already has a 'customized' interface that allows users to do things like change language, etc...

I think the sugestion of separating corporate and non-corporate searches has its merits. I hate searching for an anime fanfiction and being directed to Best Buy's website because they happen to carry the anime title I mentioned in the search query.

It has its problems too, however. Tagging each of the pages in Google's truly massive search database with a corporate or non-corporate tag is a non-trivial problem. For obvious reasons, website owners cannot be trusted to tag their own pages.

You're also opening a can of worms here, since many website owners will protest either a commercial or a non-commercial tagging.

Even if you tagged sites by domain, you'd still have hundreds of thousands... possibly millions of domains, not to mention sites that carry both corporate and private content like Geocities, Tripod, or other free webhosts.

Then you have to consider what to do with semi-for-profit pages? Many pages have 'tipping jars' now. Many open-source software development pages have information about for-profit works, or are developed by for-profit organizations. Should companies like Redhat be excluded from non-profit searches? Probably. How about Vorbis Ogg? That's not nearly so clear. How about web-comics, almost all of which give away their content freely, but sell merchandise, dead-tree books, or other premiums.

In the end, I think that I'd rather put up with having to sort through twenty or so highly relevant results to get the search result I wanted rather than having to search twice to make sure that I get all the possible relevant results.

OpenDirectory

[Ratbert42]

Maybe OpenDirectory could add a rate-an-editor feature for their users. If you wanna talk about abuse, look there, not to Google.

Re:Why not just monitor clickthroughs?

[PhoenxHwk]

Becuase that doesn't tell if you clicked and didn't like the page. Just because one person clicks on a junk page doesn't mean that page should be higher rated for the next person.