New Interview with Google Engineers about Algo

[aristotle]

The interview can be found at

[msn.finance.com.my ]

Here is a quote:

Proposed changes to Google's formula are first tested on a separate set of computers that imitate real-world search.

Those deemed worthy are next sent to evaluators around the world who act as online searchers and rate the relevance of results in various languages and regions.

Google then does live testing, with promising algorithm enhancements carefully blended into results served up by the main search engine.

"At any given time, some percentage of our users is actually seeing experiments," Huffman said.

[koan]

but in the end the little guy that does it not only for money but also because he invested lots of time, energy,love and passion would stick it out, while the thin content spinner would move on?

Spammers don't put much time or money into one site because it can get nuked any time. Their sites are low maintenance, they don't work on it everyday, and they're ready to start over. The little white hat guy that put everything into making a quality site will become very disheartened if traffic disappeared for 6 months without any hope and might close doors and move on, to the disappointment of loyal users.

I don't know what exactly "straight" webmasters could have done

I would have been excited to see spammers lose their sites and content farmers forced to shape up, but I wouldn't have done a thing because I thought my sites were fine and user oriented.

But I also don't think they ever had even an informal definition for "evil".

I always interpreted it to mean "don't become microsoft". A wishful ideal that you can become a big companies without walking all over the little guys.

[aristotle]

People shouldn't need for Google to tell them to create high-quality sites. I've always tried to make my sites as good as possible anyway, just because that's what I believe.

[tedster]

I would have been excited to see spammers lose their sites and content farmers forced to shape up, but I wouldn't have done a thing because I thought my sites were fine and user oriented.

Exactly. Even with a warning, everyone who thought their site was fine would have done nothing until the day their rankings disappeared and traffic dried up.

[crobb305]

I would have been excited to see spammers lose their sites and content farmers forced to shape up, but I wouldn't have done a thing because I thought my sites were fine and user oriented.

That would have been wonderful! It would have been a beautiful day with a feeling of justice served. Alas, we're all relegated to redoing our content, sending DMCA notices, and doing other means to help Googlebot know who the original owner is, and that is really becoming an overwhelming and impractical task.

[Reno]

Even with a warning, everyone who thought their site was fine would have done nothing until the day their rankings disappeared and traffic dried up.

I generally agree with this, but there's something to be said for "you have been warned", and the fact is, if Google had given a reasonably complete explanation of what they call "quality" (without divulging algo specifics), it would have forced a lot of webmasters to look with fresh eyes at old sites ... something to be said for that too.

...................

[Leosghost]

If they gave out warnings of things to come then the spammers and content farms would merely put up a "fall back model" ( or models ) in case the first one got hit ..to an extent that is what happens already.

It reminds me of speed cameras ..how people slow down in the area if they are warned ..and speed up again once they see they have passed the camera ..and complain when they are not given any warning if the cops are using "mobile speed cameras"..I prefer the no warning version ..because then people are more likely to drive at a reasonable speed all the time.

[CainIV]

They are not rigging the actual organic results, they are displacing them.

In all fairness, depending on how displacement is done, it can be accurately described as rigging in a very real sense.

[crobb305]

If they gave out warnings of things to come then the spammers and content farms would merely put up a "fall back model" ( or models ) in case the first one got hit ..to an extent that is what happens already.

I'll admit I didn't pay close attention, but I thought there was a bit of a heads up a month or so prior. When I saw planned updates coming, I think I shrugged it off because how on Earth would it affect me? I wasn't a scraper, a content hub, or anything else that was being used to describe the "12% of searches" that would be affected. I know I am generalizing and paraphrasing, but my point is -- anyone who heard the heads up would have likely ignored it, as I did. Never in a thousand years would I have guessed that my site would get outranked by scrapers and that I would be penalized.

Even with a warning, everyone who thought their site was fine would have done nothing until the day their rankings disappeared and traffic dried up

Just saw this, and I agree.

[tedster]

I thought there was a bit of a heads up a month or so prior.

Yes, on Hacker News. One of the engineers involved with the project posting under the name "moultano" gave a pretty clear warning that a major algorithm shake-up was imminent. See our thread Big changes promised shortly at Google [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: tedster at 8:44 pm (utc) on Apr 18, 2011]

[Leosghost]

What they could not do was to "hint" too heavily as to what it might entail .although he did "hint" that sites that existed solely to get ad revenue was something they were looking at...amongst other criteria ...most people at the time read "ads" to mean adsense ..inspite of all the evidence that it meant ads in general..

MFA can just as easily mean "made for ads"

[Reno]

Yes, on Hacker News. One of the engineers involved with the project posting under the name "moultano" gave a pretty clear warning that a major algortihm shake-up was imminent.

I guess we could call that a heads-up, but it was certainly well hidden to most siteowners, being on "Hacker News". What I'd like to see is a clearly worded message in every GWT account and at their official blog ~ if anyone missed it thereafter, they'd have no complaint.

And regarding ignoring it, yeah maybe one time. But after an experience like Panda, those messages would be taken very seriously.

...............

[aristotle]

1. Unless Google has a way to "warn" the owner of every website, they shouldn't warn any site owners at all. It would be unfair to warn some but not warn others.

2. Why should should anyone need to be warned about improving the quality of their sites anyway? You should already be working to make your sites as high quality as possible.