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Google Tests Custom Highlights, Comments In Search
Ian Lamont writes "Google is testing functionality that lets users tinker with query results by re-ranking them and commenting on them. The reason for the commenting feature: 'We're just curious to see how it will be used,' according to a Google engineer quoted in the article. The company has posted screenshots of some of the experiments, which also involve highlighting certain results as well as stems and synonyms within results. Google declined to answer any questions about the experiments, and it's not known whether Google would factor the rearranging of results by users into the overall computation for ranking results for those specific queries. It's also not clear whether search result comments would be made available to anyone to read."
Now I can rank the advertisements lower and comment on sites that pretend to be informational and are nothing but advertising.
Let us completely block certain domains from our personal search results. ExpertSexchange would be first to go.
Now the spammers can pay people in ${ThirdWorldNation}
to rate advertisements higher and comment favorably
on them
>;k
It seems like google has found out that Yahoo maybe had a point after all when they questioned the ability of algorithms to rank results.
Google has thus far always held that the only way to deal with this problem is automation, I find it really interesting to see them turn around like this and yield to the 'wisdom of the crowds'.
In the end this will probably result in just one more element in their ranking formula, the human factor. I still very much welcome this trend.
Humans are a lot harder to game than algorithms.
MP3 Search Engine
You're helping them tune PageRank by messing with the results which, if you're building a search engine, may not be a good idea to help your competitor.
Hrm, all those masters and Ph.Ds floating around there and the best they can do is "uh... lets ask our customers?" Jesus, they could have paid some hicks @ a gas station in BFE and figured that one out.
Let me start by saying I hate Google Desktop. I think it is insidious, and sneaks its way onto computers in dubious ways. I also am not a fan of "Google Home", I think the beauty of Google is its simple quick loading single textbox and all the clutter of "Home" ruins it. That said, I love the Google search engine. The fact that they are constantly tweaking their search algorithm, layout, and features only make the product better. The new drop-down in the search box has helped me numerous times (although it draws questions to how those terms are chosen); and I can not wait to try out commenting, or website ranking (Anyone know how are they going to deal with unscrupulous rankers?)
My 2 cents.
I mentioned tinker-toys once in a post - now I'm modded down for life.
If people are actually able to make an impact on the page rank for different sites, how long until we see some websites trying to game the system. It's already possible for you to buy a front page spot on Digg for a few hundred dollars.
Google makes it fairly obvious which results are paid for at the moment, but if this system were to be implemented it wouldn't be as easy to decide if that number one search result is there due to Google's search algorithms or because the site owner paid some company to bump it up and leave dozens of positive comments. Of course the reverse is also possible where a competitor's website is bumped down the list and filled with comments about how bad or unhelpful the website was. In some cases you wouldn't even need to pay someone to do it. Any fairly large group with an agenda would be capable of unbalancing things.
The only redeeming feature is that this is a Google product and will probably be in beta for the next few decades. By then I'll be more worried about the kids on my lawn than my Google search results.
...the stupidity of the crowd.
If slashdot is any indicator of mass stupidity, the would-be-spammer are going to be buried under an even more overwhelming amount of comments of doubtful usefulness.
Like "yes" "no" "omg" "lol" "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" "goodluckwiththat"
and "ponies"....
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I personally find Google's rankings to be terrible, far worse than Yahoo's, and much more likely to have a bunch of spam sites near the top. If they were to integrate results from this project, and if they can keep the spambots from flooding the project with fake rankings, or if they could learn from my submissions that I don't want fake sites with lists of nonsense words as results, they would become a far more powerful than I can imagine.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
I can start commenting/modding search results as "+5 Informative" or "-1 Off-topic!"
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
stfu google u dont no ne thing about commants. fucktard
(Kidding, of course)
Far be it from me to RTFA, but I can foresee this evolving into a framework where, to track the quality of rankings given by individuals, the individuals in question must, to coin a phrase, "log on" to Google.
I suppose we should call the process of rating the rankings something. Let's randomly pick a word, mmmmm, say "moderate". And then, to rate the rankings given by said individuals, other "logged on" users could anonymously rate the ratings, as it were. Darn it, now we need another word, what about...mmm...me-...mega-...megamoderate..nonono...meta...metamoderate! Yes!, "logged on" users will "metamoderate" the "moderations"!
Why hasn't anyone thought of this before?
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
...the stupidity of the crowd.
If slashdot is any indicator of mass stupidity, the would-be-spammer are going to be buried under an even more overwhelming amount of comments of doubtful usefulness.
Like "yes" "no" "omg" "lol" "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" "goodluckwiththat" and "ponies"....
So, we're to expect microsoft.com to be rated negative one hundred billion and Apple to be rated plus one hundred billion?
Comments? From people? On the Internet?
Does Google have a line on a new revenue stream that involves harvesting every known variant on "CHAD IS TEH GAY!!!1!"?
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
I literally didn't notice.
If you happen to have a blog or website and google it, you'll probably find it placed in a search-magnet - you know, those sites that collect text from the most random webpages and contain no links at all, but later become frontends for sales websites.
I hate those. Hopefully I can mod them down with this new google feature.
I hope they can use the results to fuel the fire to allow user to block domains or negative rank domain park search pages. Nothing spoils a good search then a pageful of domain parked pages as results.
What about just randomly giving registered Google users 5 mod points. Then up to 5 results in a search can be moded up or down depending on what the user prefers. Might work. ;-)
-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ *** http://www.mountainfort.com *** +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-
I could see a domain parker scripting an automated "clicker upper" program to promote their spam.
The blogspot site actually got blocked by my ISP child porn filter.....
Diggle.com? EPIC FAIL!!111
I don't care if it's supposed to be snakes in the shape of a $ sign, it looks like the monkey is holding a long dildo.
I checked out this thread just to suggest this exact feature that is critically needed. I hate that expert sex change site.
Speaking of technical names that are easily misunderstood... I was studying for a certification test and had a CD for TransCender practice tests sitting on my desk. My girlfriend at the time gave me the weirdest look and asked, "Why do you have a Transgender DVD on your desk?"
I'm a big tall mofo.
Let me put in my prefs a list that always get's added to my searches...
-patent is a big one that will get rid of a crapload of garbage results. I'd like that one on by default forever.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
One thing I wish I had control over was the "Did you mean:" function. I'd like to be able to answer the question yes or no, rather than having to go into the query and putting quote marks where I want to search for a word it thinks is spelled wrong. It might do Google's algorithm some good, too, if they can get feedback on their suggestions. I would also like the option to ask for additional suggestions, especially on multi-word queries.
A better question: Why were you dating someone who couldn't even READ?
Sorry for the misunderstanding. She could read. However, she occasionally misread something. I know that's an unusual trait in humans and that most humands are perfect.
Sorry for bothering you, sir.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I doubt Google is dumb. I'm fairly sure they know exactly that people will start pushing their pages, so they will most likely require you to create an account. And behold, they already have that feature with gmail and their other services.
So people will start creating thousands and more accounts to game the results. Google will do what they already do when ranking pages: The "older" you are, the more weight you will have. So pumping a site with a billion new accounts won't do jack when someone with a 5 year old account votes you down.
And so on. Google has already quite a bit of experience with people trying to trick their algorithms, I guess they will have some sort of system at hand to secure themselves against spamsites claiming the top spots.
What I do expect from this, though, is an increase in hack attempts against google accounts...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You can get a firefox extension to do this already folks :) It lets you list certain domains to block from results. (google returns full results, the extn uses regex I think to filter before showing the result set to you.
What is the difference between this and wikia ?
How about, or is there any way to do the search without the ranking algorithms? My team uses Google for searches during our yearly Trivia contest, but some of our newer players don't know how to work around the algorithms so we don't get a bunch of junk advertisements in our results. Google was great when it first started out, I could simply type in a MS error code and get the exact results I wanted instead of some software company advertising a bundle that will fix all my MS troubles.
Forget human assistance, Google, just let me delete a link (or entire domain) from my search results forever. I'm so tired of searching for something remote only to be sent to parked domains with spam keywords, or good quality information trapped behind a registration.
Sure, I can do this in other ways on my machine - but to do it once on Google to work for all machines would be 1000x more convenient.
You're helping them tune PageRank by messing with the results which, if you're building a search engine, may not be a good idea to help your competitor.
Yes, and I'm sure that's an issue for the literally hundreds, maybe even *thousands* of people creating their own search engine. Fortunately for Google, there are still a few billion of us who aren't.
Hrm, all those masters and Ph.Ds floating around there and the best they can do is "uh... lets ask our customers?" Jesus, they could have paid some hicks @ a gas station in BFE and figured that one out.
Uh, the relevant part is how to asssimilate all the feedback into something that complements their existing algorithms (for example, PageRank). That's probably beyond the reach of your average janitor. And your average Ph.D., for that matter.
This is one of those kinds of things where if you think it's easy, you clearly don't get it.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20051009&mode=classic
The funny thing is that it was predicted Microsoft might sway search results for financial gain, but by doing this, they'd allow spammers and the like to destroy search results.
I'm not sure if people recall, but Google wasn't the first, or the biggest search engine with the internet was first catching on fire. You'd mess around with sites like Altavista, Lycos, Excite, etc. and rarely find what you were looking for. You'd search for sports scores and come across a Gillian Andersen fan page. Then again at the time, 80% of the internet consisted of Gillian Andersen fan pages. However, Google's strength was solid search results. You found what you were looking for right away.
I'm not sure allowing jerk-offs to screw with the results with help in the least. I know I would attempt to abuse the situation to increase my pagerank.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Now we can call our coworkers idiots on all their Google hits & keep them from ever getting hired again.
So we can rate our Google search results +5 Insightful?? It's like perpetual mod points for those who have none :)
Where is this free beer everyone on Slashdot keeps talking about?
This looks very similar to what wikia search has been doing for some time now: http://re.search.wikia.com/ Wikia search is a search engine that uses user crawlers, user rankings, comments, and highlights (which sounds very similar to what google is going to do). Check it out. The results aren't up to par with google yet, but if you search for something using a search phrase that others have used in the past, the results are reasonably good. They also have a firefox extension that allows you to rate/add articles directly from google search results: http://re.search.wikia.com/toolbar/download.html
http://www.tuxguides.com
This is what I thought until I looked more closely. EE definitely seems to serve different pages to GoogleBot, and appears to serve different pages to people referred directly from Google. I believe this is a distinct violation of Google's listing policy, and to be consistent with how they treat all the other website operators Google should be immediately de-listing Experts Exchange until it serves identical pages to Google as what it serves to everyone.
Try installing User Agent Switcher in Firefox, then browse to this URL. If it's like me, you'll get no comments at the bottom, but as soon as you switch to mimicing GoogleBot, you'll get a heap of responses.
EE is definitely serving different pages to people referred directly from Google. Try clicking through to a result from Google and you'll get the comments at the bottom. If you open a blank tab, though, and paste the same URL into that tab, you won't get the responses (unless you're pretending to be GoogleBot again). This is definitely what happens for me, anyway.
There's also something weird happening in the Related Solutions section of EE pages, which is probably to do with EE giving Google different URLs to crawl. eg. Take a look at the "Related Solutions" section of this page on EE, and look closely at the URLs. (I reached this EE page using the top result of the Google search that someone pointed out elsewhere in the thread.)
When I look at the URLs in the Related Solutions section, they all point to what first looks like static HTML, but with "?eeSearch=true" appended to the end of the URLs. If I then go to the Google Cache edition, it looks similar but doesn't pass the eeSearch=true parameter.
I'm not sure what effect this has because with or without appending '?eeSearch=true', I still get the same behaviour which is to show comments on the page if I'm pretending to be GoogleBot, and not show them if I'm not. It's almost certainly something to do with tricking Google, probably to make Google think that they're static HTML pages when they're actually not.
As far as I can tell a user's ranking and comments are private and cannot been seen by anyone else outside of Google. No doubt that Google will analyze users' ranks and comments and use it to improve their results though. Perhaps they may also include comments as part of a result when the same (or very similar) comment has been made by a large number of people. Google may even choose to use the most common customized rank for a specific query.
If this ever happens then I can see new Google bombs being formed with the aim of increasing/decreasing (or even removing) the rank of a result and/or ensuring a comment gets published with a result...
This would ruin google for me. The last thing I want is the first result of every page I visit to have comments by random 12 year olds.
I only hope that the new Google comments will be as sharp and insightful as the ones found on YouTube.
If they can tell the difference on the size of the "plus box", imagine what Slashdot would measure with this new comment format that is slow to scroll! (And can't be turned off???)
Slashdot is on its way down.
Customize Google is one of my favorites, alongside Goolepedia which gives you a mini-sized frame with the relevant wikipedia entry on your google search. You can click on a link to show or hide the almost seamless frame from your google search.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Bryansix, don't listen! Hide it!
There are plenty of plugins that will let you interface with real mail servers. Citidel, Zimbra, Kolab, they've all got plugins and one click installers; not even your admin has to know. Think of your children, man!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Even worse: you're searching for a particular/obscure combination of hardware/software/error/hardhack, knowing that someone before you has scratched that itch before and has surely posted the way they got it to work. You blow off the obvious CXO sites with whitepapers and make a line drive for a geek forum. Luckily you find a forum where someone is discussing the exact model of $hardware that you're trying to get working/break/overclock, only to find out that they've got the piece of hardware as their sig on the forum. Someone else has the other hardware/software/whatever in their sig, and you only had to search through a three year old, five page thread to find this out.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.