tedster - 5:27 am on Nov 16, 2011 (gmt 0)

Mike, that's not exactly the way Google uses quality raters. Even if they weren't fooled by the site, the quality rater feedback would just go to the algo team for future changes. It would not cause an immediate manual tweak to that SERP.

I have been noticing one recent shift in the SERPs that I do like. I do a lot of math research, and Wikipedia often has been dominant. So I use the footnotes on the Wikipedia page to find more in-depth references. Recently, I'm seeing Wolfram Alpha outrank Wikipedia more often. I like it - they are truly expert in math AND IN COMMUNICATING about math.

Certainly math professionals have written the Wikipedia content, but they aren't doing much except throwing out their information. Wolfram Alpha is a lot better for researching a particular math field.

I do like seeing something improve about Google Search - I wish I saw more ;(