Slashdot Mirror
Google's Secret Lab
Voelspriet writes "The mystery behind
eval.google.com should be solved soon. It's a secret lab of Google. Real
people, from all over the world, are paid to finetune the index of Google,
reveals Searchbistro, a new weblog of
the Dutch reporter
Henk van Ess. A Flash-movie shows some screens of Google's 'Rater Hub', Full
details about Eval.Google will be published later this week.
Looks like all of those people from around the world will be getting paid for doing nothing while the site's slashdotted!
Berto
And from this article we learn what, that google has a feedback facility?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
...I thought they said they wouldn't do any of that?
<sarcasm>
Finally...past noon on the East Coast and still no Google Slashdot story....I was beginning to get worried.
</sarcasm>
From TFA:
OK...so the best search engine is people. Well, as long as you have the scratch to pay these international agents (which Google certainly has), it seems like a great idea. If this arrangement can cut some of the spam, hallelujah, although I'm wondering just who chooses which sites are the 'right sites' to ocupy the top of the list...
Anyone know where I can put in an app?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Wednesday, June 1. 2005
...nothing. The site reveals itself only if you have the proper login and if you use a network known by Google. Residues of Eval.google are found on the web, but the full content of the mystery site has never been published before. Here it is: the real story about Eval.Google. And welcome to the first entry in Search Bistro. .
Google Secret Lab, Prelude
It's one of the best kept secrets of Google. It's a mystery on Webmasterworld. Also in Europe (France) they don't know what to expect from that odd URL http://eval.google.com./ Click it and you get
What is it? It's a lab of humans from all over the world (from China to The Netherlands, from Korea to Brasil) They are paid to check search results of Google every day. Most of the employers, called international agents by Google, were recruited through universities all over the world. The aim is to avoid spam, to get the right sites at the top of the listing and to test new features, not shown to the public yet.
I call it Google's Secret Evaluation Lab, but the real title is less adventurous; 'Rater Hub Google'. The coming weeks I will reveal all I know about this lab. To keep you busy, here's a Flash-movie from a part of the site. Stay tuned, next posting will be on Wednesday.
Thought it said "evil.google.com" for a sec then instead of "eval.google.com".
.. every mad genius need a secred lab
Jesus christ on a stick. Yet another Google story. Who'd have thunk it?
So when they said that it's all algorithmic, they were referring to Magrethea's latest computer?
Secretlab.google.com ?
make sure you don't let google search it or it might be come known.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Could "eval" be a misspelling of "evil", proving that Google has been knowingly "eval" all along? Time to switch search engines!!!
Is the secret eval lab built in to the side of a volcano?
When the submitter of the story writes the summary as if he were an objective 3rd party when he isn't? Far as the actual thing goes, it's interesting but so far very few details. I want to know how much these guys get paid and how long they work each day, and where do I apply if it's decent? ;)
I prefer the super-super-secret Google lab at evil.slashdot.com, where searches are reviewed by frickin' sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads.
This is proof... Google is slowly turning eval!
</bad puns>
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
Damn I always imagined Google would have legions of tiny googlenauts or elves to do this sort of thing.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Are the US going to attack Google, like they did with Irac's secret labs??
There aren't many people evaluating pages. It's page rank is only 513,258; right after the ever-talked-about talk.guns.ru.
....wanted too much in the way of medical.
Is this really so surprising to people that google has a human feedback loop ?
Their pagerank system, while incredibly good, is not infalliable, and requires some checks and balances.
Did they ever say directly that they didnt use humans to check up on the system?
I dont really see what the big secret is here..
Real people, from all over the world
As opposed to imaginary people that exist only in my head.
I want to know the secret behind evil.google.com
I thought Google was all about NOT being eval. What gives?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
shouldn't that read http://pigeon.google.com/ ?
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com/
Looks like Google has finally been slashdotted, or well at least a tiny part of Google.
Don't tell me it's in a supposedly inactive volcano on a south-pacific island, perhaps guarded by large numbers of minions in silver jumpsuits.
'Cause while I'm sure there are many Phd's there... I'd like to think none of them went to evil medical school.
NB: Not responsible for the reactions of the humor impaired.
A Human Right
I especially like the last link in the flash-movie:
"Erotic Writing"
Looks like this google agent is enjoying his job.
And they're building a giant laser?
Google I love you! Google! I want to have your babies! Gooooooogle!!!
What about slashdot editors setting up a mirror before posting?
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/stats/hosters
proof of their eval - they are #4 most phishiest hosting company!
(anyone have an explanation for this?)
twitter.com/gravitronic
It doesn't surprise me how they have this set up.
The system is widely distributed (read: international), low cost (read: $20 an hour), with no single point of failure, every person can be replaced if they break down, because it's been factored into the design! They apply the same Zerg mentality to everything!
400 Person LAN for Charity: Zion LAN 2005
(Yes, I know it is hard, but isn't that why Google hires all those smart people?)
Managed to get the files just before it got slashdoted :-D
http://cavalkaf.frihost.net/mirror/secret_google/
(Entire Page)
http://cavalkaf.frihost.net/mirror/secret_google/s ecretlab.swf
(Flash Movie)
Oh, and visit my forum http://forum.scuzzstuff.org/ while you are at it ;-)
... neither eval.google.com nor searchbistro.com were available for comment :P
It's made out of people! eval.google.com is people! It's people!
I wonder if they use meta-moderation?
[rant]
Do the folks who meta-mod the raters actually get more rater points, or is it like a certain well-known site (hint: rhymes with "cashbot") where you can meta-mod all the time and never get to mod?
Every time I ignore that certain site (rhymes with "'stache rot") for a few weeks and come back, voila, I'm rewarded with mod points. I don't like that. When I come back after being away, I want to spout off, not critique. Gimme mod points after I've been active every day for a while, so I know what to do with them.
[/rant]
sigs, as if you care.
abc
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/11972.htm discusses people getting referrals from eval.google.com back in 2003, so it seems this has been around for a while.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Someone should create a slash google site.
Many people are asking as to how much Google pays those international agents. The complete page of the blog didn't load (obviously /. ed) and the alternate text for the image read "... $20 per hour.." so thats how much they are paying
fuvoo: watch something
Who read eval.google.com as evil.google.com? I figured they had taken the "be good" option to a new level and had locked all their evil stuff away to its own site;-)
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Google is made from people!
Is it really so difficult to find decent product reviews these days? /gripe
If these reviewers do for search results what /. moderators do for comments like these, the world will be a better place for it.
Slashdotted already. Google cache anyone?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
so basically they have a group of people like minority report does behind the scenes doing all the real work
At first glance this looks like a portal for people to manually review serps and provide feedback for the serps that are in beta. Yahoo does this. Google has recruited people over the past year to review results (first indication of this came from a craiglist ad). If this is true then it's cool to witness how this process is accomplished. While on the subject of monitoring serps, here's a way to search on Yahoo and tune your results.
SEO employee: Our client listings got kicked from the first page of Google. I don't know how.
SEO boss: I know. They changed their methods.
SEO employee: Are they using agents?
SEO boss: Yes.
SEO employee: God damn it.
SEO boss: You have to focus. Not everyone is using Google. There are people who still search through MSN and AOL. You can do it.
SEO employee: All right.
SEO boss: Go.
It's going to turn into a Slashdot GroupThink (tm) situation. Indexing must be done without bias, something that MOST (certainly not at /.) are not.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
actually if you read the pasted in story from a user above... it explains that this website comes up blank regardless, unless your computer is in a trusted ip space or you give the appropriate get parameters...
Google searches are made out of people! They're people!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Nope, not to rate Google's index. Workers are not directly employed by Google but by a third-party company. Employees sign a non-disclosure form. Pays fairly well, but no benefits.
Instead of finding News for nerds or Stuff that matters just start your own site and put one article on it and link it to slashdot!
Author: Voelspriet
Author Email: henk@vaness.nl
Page: http://www.searchbistro.com/
Creation Date: May 22, 2005
Registered to: voelspriet.nl
Could you be a little more obvious?
If it weren't for GOOGLE, NO Lesbian STRAPON PORN!
I therefore welcome these Jesus Christ on a Stick google overlords!
I bet they have a thousand monkeys working on a thousand typewriters.
Burns: It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times!
I was searching Google to find out how to remove this obnoxious Aurora adware client when I got this pop-up ad for Google Desktop Search.
...Brock Samson (http://www.adultswim.com/shows/venturebros/index. html ) to kick the sh*t out of this guy running the blog.
IronChefMorimoto
Uhm... either you're all getting this wrong, or I am. Of course google has people evaluating their search index. You guys aren't really buying the pigeon thingy, right?
Of course they're evaluating their search and ranking technology all the time. It's also evolving all the time. And of course there's a site where you can log into from all over the world (google is global you know) and of course this site is restricted to those people they hired to do the job.
Actually, it's pronounced Eval medical school
We gotta do a search for Max Von Sydow right away! :-)
Voelspriet -> henk@vaness.nl
/.ed
Henk van Ess
Domain Name: SEARCHBISTRO.COM
Registrant:
voelspriet.nl
regenboog 36
amersfoort 3824ED
Netherlands
Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: SEARCHBISTRO.COM
Created on: 22-May-05
Expires on: 22-May-07
Last Updated on: 22-May-05
Administrative Contact:
van ess, henk henk@vaness.nl
voelspriet.nl
regenboog 36
amersfoort 3824ED
Netherlands
(084) 222-8995 Fax -- (084) 222-8995
Technical Contact:
van ess, henk henk@vaness.nl
voelspriet.nl
regenboog 36
amersfoort 3824ED
Netherlands
(084) 222-8995 Fax -- (084) 222-8995
Domain servers in listed order:
WSC1.JOMAX.NET
WSC2.JOMAX.NET
I wonder how many ads are on that page when it's not
I've put the Flash-animation of eval.google.com on a second server.
"The mystery behind eval.google.com should be solved soon. It's a secret lab of Google."
/.7 (Licence to Google)
Doesn't seem too secret to me.
Damn you
Borgle
Bork Bork Bork
I still can't find the link to the Colonel's Secret Recipe.
Google has made a Beowulf cluster of old Korean people and its based in Soviet Russia! But it will be in Beta until Duke Nukem Forever comes out in Japan.
(eval is the Russian for Beowulf cluster of Old Korean people)
That's interesting. When I emailed them to suggest that they bump google up to the top of a search for "www" they told me they don't edit results by hand.
Just in case you're wondering: I made that suggestion because of firefox's feature that does an I'm Feeling Lucky search if the url you typed can't be found. So, if you accidentally type www/something.net you'll get the first result for "www" which happened at the time to be Microsoft - now it's Yahoo.
nil
Wow, we finally slashdotted Google!
Huh. I guess the sharks with frickin' lasers on their heads must have let their guards down.
;)
Seriously, every search engine does evaluation on their results. It's a good way to test that relevance is high, especially in different languages and locations. The fact that Google does lots of testing and evaluation of our results in tons of different ways shouldn't be a surprise. That's part of the 70-30 breakdown where ~70% of our effort is on the core areas of search and advertising, but we usually don't talk about that 70% work to improve our results or validate their quality. So keep it quiet; I hear some other search engines read Slashdot too.
this would be a whole lot cooler if the testing was being done by oompa loompas, as opposed to people..
Yahoo has been doing human manipulation to search for years, which is why it's top results are better.
Google's holy algorithms can't help it figure out context, so it needs humans. So basically they're admitting their techniques suck, need to be tweaked, and they're copying Yahoo for search ideas.
I am putting up a mirror of search bistro. Unfortunately my server host's data centre is currently having issues with some new gige pipes so my mirror itself may go down, slow, unavailable. The mirror is still being created (site slow and overloaded) and will gradually be entered into here - http://files.photojerk.com/alan/www.searchbistro.c om
You will see the 404 image for images that havnt yet been downloaded.
People have been talking about this for a while... http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/11972.htm
Copying posts from other sites sucks... but copying posts from the same thread made 4 minutes earlier? http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=151336&cid=126 95793
I don't get it. Where do the pigeons fit into this scheme?
Google search is people, it's made of people!
-----------------------
You are what you think.
I just found this job posting at Monster in Canada for a job at Google's Secret Lab. Let's see if Monster can handle being Slashdotted.
They obviously read too much slashdot and thought that moderation-system was neat. So when are we going to hear about an even bigger secret of google - meta-eval.google.com?
eval -> 01100101011101100110000101101100
evil -> 01100101011101100110100101101100
Google has obviously turned off the Evil Bit.
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
So Google is creation of doctor Eval!
I think I've found all the google sites, using google:
-www -answers -directory -groups-beta -labs -investor -toolbar -desktop -adwords -gmail -news -eval -services
Bypass Compulsory Web Registration -- http://bugmenot.com/
Noooooooooooo!
did u mean omgbrbbbq?
Live, let _them_ die
A head Honchos private office complete with giant laser and shark pool. google sharks, now that would be fun.
just saying that e v a l = f u c k, look at the number/letter keys on your phone.
- Better to speak your mind than to remain silent, or someone may speak for you.
You should go check out Yahoo Mindset. Now that's some real search engine news.
What? This isn't about google? Why are you holding that knif3sdlkjflk
Seriously,
/.'s book.
Why doesn't Google do it like HotorNot.com? (You know, the famed picture rating website)
HotorNot is moderated by volunteer users, most of whom are simply bored Internet addicts, who want to feel that they are contributing to some greater good, while they kill time on the WWW.
Couldn't Google do the same thing? I'm sure many bored cubicle people would be more than happy to volunteer their down-time to contributing to a greater cause, such as Google searches.
You know, they could have user-moderated searches, taking a page out of
Or, if this is too complicated, they could simply have checkboxes that say something like "Check here if this was what you were looking for" and "Check her if this was NOT what you were looking for."
Or, maybe they could track the actual website access by IP address, kind of like Amazon does it (much to their benefit and credit, I think). They could then use this history to find out stuff like, "When people type 'Phil Lesh' into a Google search, they have mostly ended up surfing these websites more than others (in order of access popularity."
The same thing could be done for any kind of Google searches--Images, Froogle, etc.
http://augustwestproducts.i8.com
This just proved that only people or computer is not capabale enough to do the job as "searching the web". In fact, the google model of "mainly computer + less people" is better than the yahoo model of "mainly people + less computer".
To evaluate the search results.
Next thing you know they'll be putting out a spyware-ridden OS product.
I thought their corporate charter specifically said that Google should 'do no eval'?
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
We should start a campaign to save those Pigeons from loosing their job, don't let humans take over their job!
Predictions for future google sub.domains:
borg.google.comg oogle.comg le.story.google.com
total.global.dependence.google.com
mindcontrol.google.com
cmon-you-know-you-want-it.google.com
im-feeling-homicidal.google.com
tie-my-shoes-for-me.google.com
we-buy-souls.google.com
parishiltons-sexpartners.google.com
who-killed-jfk.google.com
people-unnecessarily-tasered-by-overzealous-cops.
anon.slashdot.mods.that.cant.wait.for.another.goo
Any I missed?
! He lives !
That's cool. Real cool. I love Yahoo.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Surely they've broken one of the founding rules of Google: Don't Be Eval.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
One small step away from evil.google.com
Without precision, my life would be imprecise....