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Google Explores Re-Ranking Search Results Using +1 Button Data
tekgoblin writes "Google plans to use data from its +1 button to re-order search results and keep spammers at bay. While this would bring Google’s search engine into the social networking era, it would also create a new avenue for blackhats to manipulate search results. From the article: '"Google will study the clicks on +1 buttons as a signal that influences the ranking and appearance of websites in search results," a spokesman wrote. "The purpose of any ranking signal is to improve overall search quality. For +1's and other social ranking signals, as with any new ranking signal, we'll be starting carefully and learning how those signals are related to quality."'"
This is a bad idea. The summary itself explains a lot of what is wrong with this. But it isn't just spammers who will be a problem. Normal people will be more inclined to then post links they like on their G+ accounts and ask friends to add to them. At that level this may be an a deliberate attempt to get people to use G+ since this way if you have a website or set of websites you care about, this gives you an additional incentive to both be on G+ and get people you know on G+. But, I'd be very worried if I were Google about diluting their very good flagship product to give a boost to G+.
However, it's just one more service Google Apps customers ( you know, us paying folks ) can't use.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
... they also provide a -1 too. I'd like to mod a page down as a method of balancing.
I'm truly impressed at Google's ability to makes us work for them without most people even noticing it. This is yet another example of that. Then I hear non-tech people in awe of how smart Google is, and then say to myself, that is one hell of a business model.
It's a research project into how useful this metric would be. The article makes it clear that they haven't made any plans to actually implement it until they know how well it works. At this stage, blackhat activity would lead that project to a negative conclusion, and the feature wouldn't be implemented, and it couldn't be manipulated.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Changes to any system will elicit unpredictable changes by forces acting upon said system.
+1 data is a good thing if you accept that it is delivered by people who have been vetted by Google. What's to stop Google from then only listening to those that represent Google's interests? From a fiduciary perspective they would be foolish not to listen to those they revere the most.
The +1 data is useful, but is it useful enough? Not without a -1 button, imho. But in the big picture, +/- is just a perspective from a subjective opinion. It doesn't reflect real objective perspectives. There is a better way.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier to have web pages flagged as spam and ranks lowered rather than trying to crazy +1 thing that most people won't use, even if they liked the link?
That's what I want: a search engines that gives me pictures of cute cats unrelated with the keyword search when I type "apache", and not pictures of helicopters or native americans, or webserver logos...
You know this will result in any site with cats being the top ranked search result no matter the topic.
"Thbbft!" - Bill the Cat
I've never seen one of these, maybe because I am not allowed to go to google.com any more, and get redirected to google.co.uk without being asked. What is this fabled +1 button of which they speak, and how do I get to see it? Does it mean that Americans will be deciding the order of our great british search results from now on?
Better than that - they're actively leveraging the search engine to collect identity profiles. Join G+ or your page falls down the search.
They're actually willing to compromise the search to collect profiles.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I don't know about anyone else, but I sort of (logically) assumed (no ass jokes, please) that this was the case.
In other words, imagine Google and what "it" does. Imagine the amount of money they take in on a daily, monthly, yearly basis. Now tear it down into its components and don't just assume the logo is what makes it all happen; where does all of this money come from. Data - data that's sold.
What happens when a company (extended context: a person, a country, anything that involves a Human) do when it reaches its peak of success and solidarity? It tries to gain more... From boredom? From lack of affirmation? From aggression? That's how I see it - LOGICALLY - not emotionally. This is not troll material, just observation.
So where does Google make more money if they aren't just doing it with Ad data - get some more data. How do you get more data? There are lots of ways to do it.... but if you want to get data that's hard data and not assumed data in any way, where would you gather it through the WWW? Interface. Everything a user does on their computer that can be recorded should be recorded. Easiest way with the least malware (in the proper respect to its name) is clicks. Anything that's clicked is recorded as data.
The data can be used for something, it can be sold, or it can do both. Logically, why would Google not do both? Better "products" created using acquired data for better demand, and more data to sell.
Win, win. Logically. /logic :)
One way to mitigate the influence of the SEO asshats is to purge +1's that are associated with accounts and/or IPs that are seen to offer a lot of +1's for known spam/linkfarm pages.
Will be the top result for every search.
Google has had a number of algorithms to rank search results over the years. Some people liked some better than others. Why not have one default algorithm, but also have alternate algorithms (including one that takes into account +1 data) as part of their Advanced Search options? That way I can try Algorithm #2 or 3 if Algorithm #1 isn't giving the results I want.
HotBot did this back when... you know back when people still knew about a search engine called HotBot. They had a ranking system where you could add a point to the sites that you felt most resembled what you were looking for.
that would do just fine. all this manipulation & overt 'engineering' smells like censorship & prejudice against 'just folks' who the vast majority of whom are not + anything.
What Google really needs is a small number of trusted volunteers who have a special Death To This Site button which appears in their browser window so they can nuke those damn link farms and equipment manual sites.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Yeah, sure, we're just unpaid employees - until their copyrights expire!
Holy Crap
The +1 idea is not bad, it is bad only if you don't have any controls. +1 doesn't have to be a static value, it could just be a place to start. For a person that "likes" everything, their +1 doesn't mean as much as someone like me who only +1 on rare occasions. Likewise, a +1 from a "new account" is probably worth less than someone like me who's had their account for years.
All this means is that the +1 is weighted by several factors that prevent skewing results by link farmers and blackhats..
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This goes for things like locksmiths, car engines, and other goods and services. All too often the top links are not the quality service, but those who have paid specialists to insure that they are the too links. How is the '+1' going to help this? How many people can you hire in third world countries to create proxy accounts that appear to originate from first world countries and '+1' your firm? Google just made the link farm easier to manipulate.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I spend an hour each day deleting the spam comments and links left on my site. The software has a 'killspam' option that allows me to mark spammers plus I how have moderation installed. But it doesn't seem to be stemming the flow of crap left on the site. They need an API installed that DOWNGRADES spam links and comments. That way the incentive offered to spammers will be eliminated. By building an API developers can add the capability into multiple platforms (such as Blogger, Wordpress, and Typepad) making it easy to discourage this type of behavior.
As the saying goes, if you build it they will come. If Google develops the API others will make use of it.
This was fairly obvious to anyone who has observed the evolution of Facebook, the Facebook Like button and sites like StumbleUpon.
Letting people choose the best needles in a haystack based on their likes is just too invaluable for any search engine with a huge haystack. Clearly, G+ and the +1 buttons on the search page (and on other sites) play their part in curating Google's data. As far as abuse goes, people have tried to abuse every variable in the page rank formula, and succeeded at times. But, it's like always playing catch-up: it's time consuming and not a sustainable model in the long run.
Now back to the Facebook Like buttons. Facebook's disadvantage was they didn't have a search engine at hand to exploit the data they were getting. If I were them, I would have tried to sell it to Bing or Yahoo. Maybe Bing/Yahoo weren't interested. But, as far as I can tell, there are more Facebook Like buttons on websites now, than there are +1 buttons (though this is changing rapidly). Perhaps now Bing will be interested in Facebook's Like button data, if Google's ranking system benefits a lot from their own +1 data (and I assume it will).
I don't really want my search results to be skewed by some arbitrary actions, for instance, clicking +1 on some random articles I found mildly interesting. Will my search results forever rank animal-related pages above tech-related pages because I like to +1 a bunch of silly pet trick videos?
Have gnu, will travel.
every time I click it I get asked to sign up for yet another google account. it already constantly fuck up the 2 I have why would I want yet another for +
If I search for something and find what I want, I'm satisfied, and I'm not going to bother pressing +1. On the other hand, I have seen some bad matches turn up; I would rate them -1 but there wasn't an option for that.
This is just like failbook's like button, a massive privacy issue. Nothing to do with improving search results and everything to do with sucking in even more users' behavioral data. Disgusting!
If I google "Rick Parry" the first two hits are correctly about Colbert. If I google with bing (hehe), Microsoft's not-too-much-information-engine, the first Colbert result is a third of the page down. Instead they talk about a guy I never heard about "Rick Perry"with an e. But someone else who is friends with that Perry guy might find that result to be the better one.
If I type in "cups" I probably look for the web-page of my printing system, and not for sippy cups. But with the +1 button all the young moms will ruin my search. This is "correcting results" by majority opinion. If you are looking for something specific, you won't find it anymore. If everyone is interested in Homer Simpson, the two people looking for the other Homer won't find anything. If there is a popular consumer item with the same name as some scientific term, good luck. Worse, sometimes I look for something technical and very specific, and the next day for a completely different item with the same name. What should I give +1?
It would help if the advanced search had a topic field: Cups, software vs Cups, kitchen vs Cups, sport
Google uses hundreds of signals to determine search rankings. They're researching adding one more. I'm pretty sure they have a good concept of signal-to-noise and spammers gaming the system by now. It's what they do for a living.
I'd be surprised if they aren't testing this already. Aren't they always running hundreds of tests? I'd also be surprised if they don't intentionally mix it up a bit (outside of +1) just to keep you searching longer - the longer you're on their page, the more chance you'll click an ad. End of the day, their algo will not be adjusted to deliver the best search results, it will be adjusted to whatever makes them the most $. Those two used to be the same thing. Not sure they are anymore.
"Crowdsourcing" search is a very bad idea, because crowds can be sourced.
Google shot themselves in the foot this way last October. They used to count reviews on Yelp and Citysearch in determining placement in Google Places, which, until last October, only affected the search engine for Google Maps. Since few people used the search engine for Google Maps to look for businesses by category, it wasn't spammed much.
Then, in October 2010, Google merged Places results into web search. Within two months, Places spam had overwhelmed search. The SEO efforts had become blatant. (Over-the top promotional video). The mainstream press picked up on the issue, and Google looked really stupid. Around November 2010, Google started de-emphasiziing Places results in web search, and stopped counting Citysearch and Yelp results. That brought the problem down to a merely annoying level.
Then in 2011, Page announced that Google employee bonuses would be dependent on Google getting into "social". So now "social" had to be built into everything. Hence "+1", followed, inevitably, by a market in "+1" boosts. See any black hat SEO forum to buy.
So, to fix that problem, Google has to have more information about Google account holders. This, as Eric Schmidt points out, can be obtained by insisting on real names and mining the user's social data.
Maybe they're doing it wrong.
A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about why the +1 Button can't work. I still think that it's doomed to failure, especially if it is used for ranking. It's also probably safe to say that the majority of people who search the web are interested in finding results, not ranking them. What this means is that most regular users won't pay attention to the +1 button on the search results page. Honestly, why go back to the results page after you've found what you're looking for? Most of the +1 users will almost certainly be spammers.
I recommend this GM script. I wonder how many people will +1 this. ha ha ha.
Chances are that you won't return to the search results when you find the "good one", you stay there and forget about google. So the +1 button is really useless. If you went to a bad result you will just go back to keep searching and that's when you can give more useful feedback.
This is exactly what they said +1 wouldn't do.
When they rolled out +1, it was...
See +1s and get more relevant results/reviews/etc.!
But I don't want to see other people's +1s, and I don't want them to see mine.
You'll only see your friends's +1s, and you can choose not to share your own.
But I don't have any friends on Google, or a Google profile.
No problem, when there aren't enough +1s from your circles, sometimes we'll display +1s from people outside of your circles.
I don't want that shit at all.
Don't worry, the +1s are just extra information, they don't affect the search rankings! ...
Fast forward to today:
+1s affect the search rankings! Enjoy the SEO bullshit!
Google's problem is that they are fundamentally in a conflict of interest with themselves. To provide better search results, they need to throw out the bullshit. To sell ads, they need to tell sites how their voodoo rankings work. Google's method has been to provide a grey box - telling people what kind of shit affects their ranking, but not divulging the specific details, and then constantly changing shit. People who spend big money on Google's ads get some extra "support" with regards to getting their results higher. People who don't buy Google's ads have to trudge through the swamp that is the ever changing indexing and ranking scheme and hope for the best, or hire a "SEO" person/company to do it for them, by hook or by crook, and then pray for the best.
Page Rank was thrown out because people were gaming it.
+1 is Page Rank without the down direction. Just like Facebook Likes without Dislikes.
+1 will have the same problem as Page Rank, but it will stick around because:
Without a -1 option, advertisers and big sites won't be able to attack each other by -1ing competitors, thus they'll claim to have "solved" the problems with Page Rank.
By introducing +1 as a social feature, Google wants you to think (and thus marketers will think) that it has some inherent value.
By rolling out Google Plus, +1s are further ingrained into the users's minds.
Get them used to seeing +1.
Get them trained in clicking +1.
Get them conditioned to trust +1.
Indirectly sell search rankings by making +1 affect search rankings.
Since Google already sell ads / page impressions / clicks, they're indirectly selling +1s clicks. Furthermore, they allow and encourage content from Twitter / Youtube / Facebook / etc. to be funneled in to Goolge Plus, thus all that content gets exposed to +1s without directly exposing the user to the originating site (and their ads). If you want the top spot on Google, you'll need +1s. If you want +1s, you'll have to spam, buy ads, and hold contests telling users to click +1.
The bottom line is that allowing user clicks to affect search ranking is the single best method of determining relevance.
But allowing those clicks to be tracked means the sites can, and will, game the system.
Bing tracks user clicks and uses them in their weighting algorithm. They do a great job of filtering out spam clicks (as evidenced by Google's recent attempts to poison their results). Google will always fail when they try to incorporate user clicks into search rankings. They will fail because they are in the business of selling clicks. The degree to which +1 will affect rankings, and the degree to which users are willing to put up with it, remains to be seen. Google will be adjusting the weighting to achieve a precarious balance between sites and advertisers whining and users getting fed up with spammy search results.
In the future, page rankings will be mostly crowd-sourced. The +1 button is just the beginning.
The financial stakes of a high ranking are large enough for SEO experts to make search results increasingly meaningless by propelling their irrelevant page high up into the ranks by whatever means they can possibly think of. It is an arms race and I'm sure Google must have a lot of resources devoted to keep this problem under control.
For me it was immediately obvious that improving the ranking algorithm was the whole point of the +1 button.
My karma ran over your dogma
I wont work another second for Google for free anymore. From now on
i demand to get payed to click thier buttons. And get a Google Account etc.
If they want to collect any data from me, then shoooow me the moneeeeeey.