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Google to use TrustRank for News, Possibly More

Posted by Zonk on from the no-more-trusting-the-weekly-world-news dept.

mike slaven writes "In a follow-up to Tuesday's post about Google registering a trademark on the term TrustRank, an article on NewScientist explains how Google plans to track the credibility of news sources. The article also mentions that the patent on TrustRank is not limited to ranking just news stories: 'The patent also reveals that the same system could be roped in to rank other search results, not simply news. So sales and services could in the future be listed on the basis of price and the reputation of the company involved.'"

6 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. I see problems coming if Google uses trust rank by DeadSea · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From what I have read about trust rank, the basic premise is that they pick 200 or so "trusted sites". The trust rank for any page is then basically the number of link hops to the page from a trusted site.

    The problem I have with this is that there are many problems with identifying trusted sites and maintaining the trustworthiness of such sites after they have been chosen.

    From Google's point of view, a trusted site would have to have strict editorial standards and link to a lot of sites. I can think of a lot of sites with strict editorial content, but they generally do not link to a lot of sites. The open directory projects seems to me to be a candidate for a trusted site. It has editorial controls and links to a heck of a lot of sites.

    The first question to ask is: "After the trusted sites is chosen, how much would it cost to buy one?". I suppose dmoz itself would be hard to buy outright, but how much would it take to buy one of the editors, or to buy an editorial position? Probably not much. Dmoz alread has a lot of editorial fraud and it would make the problem worse. I'm not sure that its fair to expect trusted sites not to degrade to some extent.

    The second question to ask is: "How hard is it to buy links from trusted sites?". The answer has to be that it is pretty easy. Forget about corrupting the people as I discussed in the last point. Any trusted site that links to lots of pages is going to have a huge link management problem. Every day hundreds of domains that it links to may expire. You can snap those up and buy trust.

    All this doesn't even include folks who make sites look trustworthy with the sole intention of turning them to the dark side later. All of this happens currently with pagerank, but it will be much worse once the trust power is put into the hands of a few.

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    1. Re:I see problems coming if Google uses trust rank by twbecker · · Score: 5, Interesting

      From what I have read about trust rank, the basic premise is that they pick 200 or so "trusted sites". The trust rank for any page is then basically the number of link hops to the page from a trusted site.

      I was gonna mod you down, but I'll post instead. If you'd have RTFA, you'd have seen that the above statement is totally false. There are lots of criteria they are using to generate the number, of which internet traffic is only 1. To quote TFA:
      he database will be built by continually monitoring the number of stories from all news sources, along with average story length, number with bylines, and number of the bureaux cited, along with how long they have been in business. Google's database will also keep track of the number of staff a news source employs, the volume of internet traffic to its website and the number of countries accessing the site.

      Google will take all these parameters, weight them according to formulae it is constructing, and distil them down to create a single value. This number will then be used to rank the results of any news search.

      --
      "The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
    2. Re:I see problems coming if Google uses trust rank by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 5, Insightful
      All Bullshit.

      It means that CBS News and MSNBC get a heavy "trust" rating, while Juan Cole, tomflocco.com or Scoop.nz get "Le Shafte".

      More coprorate sponsored media is not why I click. This is Google being used to "mainstream" the Internet as an information source - which is now a loose cannon in the world of controlled messages. Millions, just hearing about "'blogs on the Innernets" for the first time will now be safely served "more of the same" - while having alternative messages and analysis spun away with "low-trust".

      Don't Be Evil, my ass.
      You want the real truth on "trustworthy" news sources from Google? Search for "The Mighty Wurlitzer"+CIA or "Project Mockingbird".

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
  2. Trustrank? by awhelan · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can we know this for sure? Has google confirmed it? What is the trustrank of newscientist.com ?

  3. Slashdot's News Rotation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    1. Google
    2. Apple
    3. Firefox
    4. Your Rights are being stolen!
    5. Microsoft sucks.

    Rinse. Repeat.

  4. In related news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    foxnews.com just disappeared entirely from the Internet.