caveman - 7:27 pm on Aug 10, 2005 (gmt 0)

We know for a fact that they have been hand picking some serps well before they rolled out their engine post google, and the results NEVER change for these results. EVER. The don't monitor and update them, they just rot.

Yes and it has never been particularly hard to spot.

While I am guessing that the perception of more hand coding is really an algorytmic thing - in part because it comes with the new SERP's - I suppose it's possible that they've simply added more hand edits for now, to get them through the intro phase of this new algo.

But whether it's a results of the new algo, or an overlay to the new algo, the issues of expense and constant monitoring are the other part of why I'm guessing that what we're seeing now is more algo related.

There's a lot of evidence that they've got the auth/link analysis thing all out of kilter so far. (They're also showing the wrong page from any given site for a lot of searches when the site has a better page. And the dup filters seem off a bit too.)

Tim just said two days ago in an updated weather report that there would likely be more tweaks to this (very new) algo in the coming weeks. I for one would not be at all surprised to see them trying to address some of this stuff, which may make the perception of more hand tweaking go away. I could easily be wrong though.