Does Google Hand Edit Some of their Results?

[kidder]

I've read Yahoo and even MSN are big on hand edits in their index, does google do the same thing or do they 100% reley on their alog?

It seems to me that humans are a better tool for fighting spam than machines and maths but I guess you need to justify the cost of keeping the index clean and the value of that clean index anyway. If it's people that determine spam the lines could get pretty blurred although right now they pretty darn fuzzy.

I just wonder if at some point they will say fugit and employ a warehouse full of cheap labour to give the index an enema..

[tedster]

You may be interested in the newly awarded Google Patent -- it's all about a method for using human editors to influence the totally automated results that the algorithm generates.

Here We Go - It's Another Google Patent!
supporting editorial opinion in ranking search results [webmasterworld.com]

[kidder]

Yeah so after reading through that I guess the message remains - build usefull sites for people and not robots. I still think to the untrained a eye a good scrape will fly right past = more people = more errors. : "oh sorry sir I did not mean to delete wikipedia but it looked like it was scraped from these nice guys at waykypedia" And so the war goes on.

[texasville]

I was fascinated today when looking at my stats and following one of my referrals back to the google serp. There in the serps was my site but indexed completely different than I have ever seen. It used the official company name for the title and used one sentence from my index page that was pretty succint and descriptive. Sure looked like a human edit. And it wasn't my odp listing or any other directory I have noticed.

[tedster]

I would be very surprised to learn that human effort was going into choosing description snippets. Instead I would think that either Google's semantic logic just took a giant leap (unlikely) or (more likely) you are just a lucky site owner.

[decaff]

Yes..absolutely...for certain instances (egregius SPAM)...they definitely step in and remove sites or make adjustments...

Regarding hand editing snippets (organic SERPs)...well..the only reason to do this...is to test CTR vs. the heavily editorial controlled Adwords snippets...

Typically...one would want the Adwords titles/snippets to be spot on for best CTR...vs. muddied up organic SERPs titles/snippets (achieved algorithmically)...

It's possible...and as Google continues to tweak their methodologies for revenue...more then likely...

[mattg3]

You may be interested in the newly awarded Google Patent -- it's all about a method for using human editors to influence the totally automated results that the algorithm generates.

A fancy way to give up ... :) with a patent. Got to remember that .. Google DMOZ .. lol.

[texasville]

tedster- It's a puzzle...but really I don't prefer the way it is set. I prefer using the url as the title...the business name tends to confuse.

[dgdclynx]

I got a surprise a couple of days ago when the archives of a magazine I used to edit appeared in the listings. Someone, presumably at Google, had given them a descriptive note. I have no recollection of writing the script and it is not my usual blurb. So I believe there can be manual intervention from Google.

[followgreg]

IMO:

> Yes they do, but their moto is "all automated" so they must not have it as common practice. Probably some quality procedure here and there.

> Yahoo is the only SE having a so poor algo that they have to manually re-arrange most competitive SERP. :) >> That is just to remind them that they s*ck :)