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.

Comments

Whew!

[TripMaster Monkey]

<sarcasm>
Finally...past noon on the East Coast and still no Google Slashdot story....I was beginning to get worried.
</sarcasm>

From TFA:

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.

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?

Re:Whew!

[Naikrovek]

They've had these at Yahoo! since the beginning - they're paid surfers. Their title is "Surfer".

This is just a plain-old good idea, I'm not surprised that Google is doing it, or that Yahoo! did it first.

Disclaimer: I used to work for Yahoo!

Also, the majority of the female Surfers at Y! were gorgeous when I worked there. But that's neither here nor there.

Re:Biased lab.

[moonbender]

Are you kidding? He obviously knows about the phrase-feature - doesn't everybody? - the problem he describes is that it doesn't really work properly. Try the example queries he quotes. Result 2 when searching for exact matches on "montana mountain ranges" is indeed Montana's Mountain Ranges (put in bold so there is no doubt it's this phrase that triggers the hit).

Of course, this isn't so much a bug as a documented feature - Google automatically searches for morphologically similar keywords. But what typically is useful can be annoying when you really do want exact matches and nothing else.