tedster - 12:52 pm on Oct 5, 2009 (gmt 0)

Well, the Web spam team does have the ability to say this result is spam, so it should be demoted or penalized or pushed down in some way. But we don't have any ability to say for this query ...we think that this page should rank No. 1. We've made a deliberate choice that we don't want to.

Interesting point of view to take, and I agree that it makes sense. I wonder about two things:

1. OK, the Web spam team doesn't have the ability to say "make that url the #1 result for this query". Does any other part of the Google team?

2. How about "make this result #4, or #11"?