europeforvisitors - 10:47 pm on Jul 10, 2007 (gmt 0)

This whole human-role-in-google-search thing is a farse, IMO. Google has been preaching algo driven serps for years.

Search engines don't design themselves. Humans provide basic parameters and supply input, whether directly or via examples of relevant and irrelevant or good and bad pages for a "black box." Do a search for GoogleGuy's comments on how human evaluators are used, and re-read what maximillianos a few hours ago:

"We were told our data would be used for research purposes and would not directly affect the search results."

It's also worth noting that PageRank, which was one of Google's founding principles, requires human input. (Humans, not algorithms, create the links that serve as the "votes" on which PageRank is based.)