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Google Makes Its Search System Slightly More Transparent

Posted by timothy on from the just-a-gentle-touch-here-and-there dept.

Meshach writes "The New York Times has an interesting article about how Google has revealed some of the inner workings of the Google Search service. The main change is that sites that are not in English will be translated then included in the search results. Google said it has also improved the way it recognizes official Web sites, like those published by the government, and will give those sites higher ranking in search results. Google does not usually reveal such details but the article speculates governments have been pushing for more transparancy."

28 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Summary by CmdrPony · · Score: 5, Informative
    From the summary:

    The main change is that sites that are not in English will be translated then included in the search results.

    From the article:

    One of the new changes will affect searches in languages for which there is little Web content available, including Afrikaans, Hindi and Icelandic. Google will now translate relevant Web pages written in English and show those results, too.

    Complete opposite direction. Go Slashdot!

    1. Re:Summary by AvitarX · · Score: 2

      No, but it's hard to believe that a machine generated translation should be high (or even included) in the results, for languages where there is very little content though, it kind-of does.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    2. Re:Summary by stephanruby · · Score: 1

      Don't be so hard on him. Even Google Translate (to Hindi, and back again) makes the same mistake. If Google can't write a good bot for this, what makes you think Slashdot can do any better.

      Afrikaans is a language for which there is little web content, including Hindi, and will affect the discovery of new changes in Icelandic. Google translation of the relevant web pages will be written in English and to show those results, too.

    3. Re:Summary by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Search is about finding and returning high-quality results. I don't want my first page to be polluted with confusing and hard to read results.

      I'm skeptical that there is a good enough algorithm to determine translation quality, or even accuracy. I don't care the original language, I care about the quality, and if a search engine is giving me machine translated quality results, I will find a different search engine.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    4. Re:Summary by MPolo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They've actually been doing this for a while, and it is hurting my search experience. I prefer to read content in English, but I live in Germany, which means that if I want to buy something online, I want to buy it from a German (or at least European) company to avoid having to go in to the customs office to pay taxes on everything I buy (and so as to receive the products in 1-3 days instead of 2-4 weeks).

      I used to be able to achieve this very easily by using the German name for what I needed, and if that name was the same as the English term, adding "kaufen" (buy) to the search. But with the translation technology, that means that I get all the first results in English, wanting to sell me products out of the U.S.A. I haven't found a really good way around this. Admittedly, I could change the settings for what language I want every time I do such a search, but that is a lot of trouble for me. If there were an option to turn this behavior off, I would do so.

    5. Re:Summary by tr897 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Have you tried using google.de instead of google.com? I expect google.de would give priority to German shops, especially if you search in German.

  2. Re:What! by masternerdguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe if your clients actually did their jobs they could have a higher rank. The government gets it done so they deserve more exposure!

    --
    To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
  3. Re:What! by CmdrPony · · Score: 1

    That has been the case for years. It's also why government sites tend to get so much seo spam and hacking attempts. Google supposedly devalued it after governments started complaining about it.

  4. Re:What! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    It isn't Google's fault your clients chose a poor SEO consuntant.

  5. Re:What! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    lol @ government doing its job.

  6. Government Transparency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    the article speculates governments have been pushing for more transparancy

    Governments have been pushing Google for more transparency?? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

    1. Re:Government Transparency by PPH · · Score: 5, Funny

      Actually, what they said was, "We can see your nipples through your blouse". But Google Translate came out with the "pushing for more transparency" line.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  7. Re:tracking by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 2

    That is a privacy setting you can turn on or off.

    If you turn the tracking off- then offically* they are no longer tracking you.

    * Disclaimer, they are probably still unofficially tracking you.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  8. Re:tracking by CmdrPony · · Score: 1

    That "search history" setting only hides the search history from you. They still log all that data.

  9. The real question by anonymousNR · · Score: 2

    Does anyone have a choice in accepting or rejecting what Google does to their search engine? Businesses and Individuals are so dependent on its services, search being the primary one, everyone will just "get on with it", instead of looking into details.

    --
    -- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
    1. Re:The real question by babywhiz · · Score: 1

      I sometimes miss the days when I could use Google to find all kinds of neat stuff, user generated silliness. I sometimes miss the Google of 1999. I do like the fact that it knows all about WoW search terms, and puts them at the top.....one thing I complained about a lack of back when The Sims was the game of the moment. Of course, back in 1999, I complained about the lack of finding places to shop. Of course, sometimes, it's not a lot better...take the search terms "diet mt dew delivery". I get the 'rankup' promotion of the moment, and for whatever reason Mazzio's 50th. The first result is BeverageUniverse, and Drsoda. The 3rd result is the Wikipeida entry...and from what I can tell, there isn't anything on the Wiki page that tells me exactly where I can purchase Diet Dew...so why is it even in the result? Oh I see, cause I chose 'Everything'. So I click Shopping. I am met with Info.com and yahoo.com ad at the top. Everything else is Die Cast vehicles. I just want to know how I can purchase cases of Diet Mountain Dew and have them delivered to my door. No, I don't want to go thru Amazon, have you SEEN those prices per case? $19.99 a case-$31.58 a case. Even 3 cases for $36.00 is too freaking expensive.

    2. Re:The real question by mattack2 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that's ridiculously expensive. If you have several grocery stores around you, simply look in the weekly ads. It seems like ALMOST every week, one of the stores has Coke and/or Pepsi products on sale, for $1 per 2 liter or $3 per 12 pack, if not lower.

      Stock up, and you'll never have to pay "regular" price for soda, even if you only buy name brand. (For some of the flavored versions, e.g. diet vanilla, I've never seen generic versions.)

    3. Re:The real question by Tyrannosaur · · Score: 1

      duck duck go is amazing; it's what I use exclusively.

  10. Re:What! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    More like, aside from basic best practices, SEO is a degenerate trade to begin with.

    The whole concept revolves around gaming a system we'd all prefer worked properly.

  11. Re:tracking by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

    Probably because thats been their business model for about a decade now?

    Personally, Im more suspicious or wary of a service who does not seem to have a business model. How do you know DDG isnt logging your info? How do they fund their operations, if they dont get advertising revenue and its free?

    At least Google is transparent about what they collect (and why), I have some reasonable expectation that theyre being truthful (due to their high visibility), and I can expect that their doors will still be open in a year (because they have a viable business model).

  12. Re:for google, a great side show by LordLimecat · · Score: 1

    What information is the Chrome browser collecting that IE9 with google suggestions doesnt collect? Or that other browser's malicious page detection, or translation services dont collect?

    As for "more secretive",...
    Wrench -->Options --> under the hood. Uncheck the top several checkboxes, and turn off anything which offers a cloud-based service (cloud print). Grats, all of those "secretive" tracking features are now disabled.

  13. Re:What! by Dishevel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I feel so bad that you as an SEO guy are going to look bad.
    Really I do.
    I am not even giving a thought as to how most SEO is out there to ruin a perfectly good internet and I am also not taking into account
    how on normal days I believe that people in the SEO field are complete scumbags.
    You know, the kind of people that should be put out to sea in a small boat that is on fire.
    SEO consultants, lawyers, spammers, politicians and union organizers.

    Because of my ability to overlook all of that ... I feel really bad for you.

    --
    Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
  14. Re:What! by CmdrPony · · Score: 1

    Yeah, because it is obviously really bad to help companies make their websites work better for both robots and human visitors.

  15. Re:What! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    No they do not.
    What they do only needs to be done because of the shit they pulled earlier.

    In the beginning Google could search.
    Then came SEO.
    Then came changes to the algorithm to make search work again.
    Then came more SEOs.
    More changes.
    More SEO.
    Now everything is a cluster fuck.
    And it is the fault of those who originally sought to appear as if they had what you were looking for.

    I shall say it more plainly this time.

    Fuck SEO.
     

  16. Oh good by Trogre · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Does this mean they'll be bringing the + operator back some time soon? /wishful thinking

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  17. Re:tracking by yahwotqa · · Score: 2

    I do not care about the tracking itself, but I do care about the "search bubble" they create by trying to customize search results based on my past searches. Already I am getting better results at DDG for most technical, as well as non-technical queries, and I only get back to google (via awesome goosh.org) for image searches or quick translations.

  18. location based results by Tyrannosaur · · Score: 1

    "The main change is that sites that are not in English will be translated then included in the search results." Was this really a problem after Google made location-based searches MANDATORY? http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web%20Search/thread?fid=7777da521339a9b40004ab2af2c53153&hl=en http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Web+Search/thread?tid=03bbc6e63646c7e1&hl=en I use duckduckgo.com

  19. Re:Nope. It's worse than that. by cbope · · Score: 1

    To be honest, a huge proportion of "review" sites in Google searches are not review sites at all, but online retailers that have managed to get their site indexed as a review site.

    Just search for "productname review" and see what you get. In most cases you can skip the first 2-5 pages, since all results will be online sellers selling productname, with questionable "reviews" attached to the items. Reviews probably written by employees of the online seller.

    Why not give the manufacturer of productname better ranking in the results? Not all companies are just putting up advertising... they usually have useful information there as well, support options, updates and downloads, etc. I make it a point to not download updates from non-official sites anyway, how do you know the file is not tampered with? However, I can place more trust in a file downloaded from the manufacturer's site.