Google's Secret Lab

Voelspriet writes "The mystery behind eval.google.com should be solved soon. It's a secret lab of Google. Real people, from all over the world, are paid to finetune the index of Google, reveals Searchbistro, a new weblog of the Dutch reporter Henk van Ess. A Flash-movie shows some screens of Google's 'Rater Hub', Full details about Eval.Google will be published later this week.

Oops!

[MicroBerto (91055)]

Looks like all of those people from around the world will be getting paid for doing nothing while the site's slashdotted!

Re:Oops!

[bigbigbison (104532)]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the article say that if you don't have a password you will get a blank page?

Re:Oops!

[Eric604 (798298)]

I don't know, I suggest you reread the article.

Eval?...

[Jambon (880922)]

...I thought they said they wouldn't do any of that?

Re:Eval?...

[by Anonymous Coward]

yeah, i read evil.google.com too...

Whew!

[TripMaster Monkey (862126)]

<sarcasm>
Finally...past noon on the East Coast and still no Google Slashdot story....I was beginning to get worried.
</sarcasm>

From TFA:

What is it? It's a lab of humans from all over the world (from China to The Netherlands, from Korea to Brasil) They are paid to check search results of Google every day. Most of the employers, called international agents by Google, were recruited through universities all over the world. The aim is to avoid spam, to get the right sites at the top of the listing and to test new features, not shown to the public yet.

OK...so the best search engine is people. Well, as long as you have the scratch to pay these international agents (which Google certainly has), it seems like a great idea. If this arrangement can cut some of the spam, hallelujah, although I'm wondering just who chooses which sites are the 'right sites' to ocupy the top of the list...

Anyone know where I can put in an app?

Re:Whew!

[Naikrovek (667)]

They've had these at Yahoo! since the beginning - they're paid surfers. Their title is "Surfer".

This is just a plain-old good idea, I'm not surprised that Google is doing it, or that Yahoo! did it first.

Disclaimer: I used to work for Yahoo!

Also, the majority of the female Surfers at Y! were gorgeous when I worked there. But that's neither here nor there.

Re:Whew!

[pizen (178182)]

<Charlton Heston voice>
so the best search engine is people.
</Charlton Heston voice>

Google is the Soylent Green of search engines!

Soylent Google

[DuckofDeath87 (816504)]

Google is made from people!

Re:Whew!

[VAXcat (674775)]

What is it? It's a lab of humans from all over the world (from China to The Netherlands, from Korea to Brasil) They are paid to check search results of Google every day. Most of the employers, called international agents by Google, were recruited through universities all over the world. ...in other words, they're all on the Global Frequency.

Obligatory Matrix Tie-in

[Wattsman (75726)]

TFA:

What is it? It's a lab of humans from all over the world (from China to The Netherlands, from Korea to Brasil) They are paid to check search results of Google every day. Most of the employers, called international agents by Google, were recruited through universities all over the world. The aim is to avoid spam, to get the right sites at the top of the listing and to test new features, not shown to the public yet.

SEO employee: Our client listings got kicked from the first page of Google. I don't k

Bias?

[Saeed al-Sahaf (665390)]

It's going to turn into a Slashdot GroupThink (tm) situation. Indexing must be done without bias, something that MOST (certainly not at /.) are not.

Re:Whew!

[ImaLamer (260199)]

Well, as long as you have the scratch to pay these international agents

I assume you mean "agent" to read "sweatshop worker"

Asia and South America? Where the wages are "extreme" to say the least.

Re:Whew!

[ryanjensen (741218)]

Would you rather make $10 a day surfing the web, $10 a day working in a shoe factory for 14 hours, or $0 a day without a job? I'd say Google is doing them a favor. (wink)

The wages may be extreme, but the cost of living is also "extreme" in the same way.

Re:Biased lab.

[moonbender (547943)]

Are you kidding? He obviously knows about the phrase-feature - doesn't everybody? - the problem he describes is that it doesn't really work properly. Try the example queries he quotes. Result 2 when searching for exact matches on "montana mountain ranges" is indeed Montana's Mountain Ranges (put in bold so there is no doubt it's this phrase that triggers the hit).

Of course, this isn't so much a bug as a documented feature - Google automatically searches for morphologically similar keywords. But what typica

Evil

[by Anonymous Coward]

Thought it said "evil.google.com" for a sec then instead of "eval.google.com".

Wouldn't this look better?

[peragrin (659227)]

Secretlab.google.com ?

make sure you don't let google search it or it might be come known.

Don't you love it

[slashrogue (775436)]

When the submitter of the story writes the summary as if he were an objective 3rd party when he isn't? Far as the actual thing goes, it's interesting but so far very few details. I want to know how much these guys get paid and how long they work each day, and where do I apply if it's decent? ;)

Do no eval

[tehshen (794722)]

This is proof... Google is slowly turning eval!

</bad puns>

Proof of the Evil Bit

[sbowles (602816)]

This seems to be one of the first documented uses of the Evil Bit (RFC 3514) [faqs.org]:

eval -> 01100101011101100110000101101100
evil -> 01100101011101100110100101101100

Google has obviously turned off the Evil Bit.

Real people?

[Timesprout (579035)]

Damn I always imagined Google would have legions of tiny googlenauts or elves to do this sort of thing.

Re:Real people?

[pizen (178182)]

They used to use pigeons.
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html [google.com]

There aren't many people evaluating pages

[waynegoode (758645)]

There aren't many people evaluating pages. It's page rank [netcraft.com] is only 513,258; right after the ever-talked-about talk.guns.ru.

surprise ?

[cyberfunk2 (656339)]

Is this really so surprising to people that google has a human feedback loop ?

Their pagerank system, while incredibly good, is not infalliable, and requires some checks and balances.

Did they ever say directly that they didnt use humans to check up on the system?

I dont really see what the big secret is here..

Hey, wait a minute...!

[Junior J. Junior III (192702)]

I thought Google was all about NOT being eval. What gives?

Re:Hey, wait a minute...!

[Slime-dogg (120473)]

Give a man a fish, he owes you one fish.

Teach a man to fish, you give up your monopoly on fisheries.

Give a man a fish, he owes you one fish.

Teach many men to fish, you create healthy competition, and collect on fishing IP licensing.

Secret Lab?

[grassy_knoll (412409)]

Don't tell me it's in a supposedly inactive volcano on a south-pacific island, perhaps guarded by large numbers of minions in silver jumpsuits.

'Cause while I'm sure there are many Phd's there... I'd like to think none of them went to evil medical school.

NB: Not responsible for the reactions of the humor impaired.

Re:Secret Lab?

[mbbac (568880)]

You're thinking of Google's Secret Lair.

Mirror!!!

[Cavalkaf (656724)]

Managed to get the files just before it got slashdoted :-D http://cavalkaf.frihost.net/mirror/secret_google/ [frihost.net] (Entire Page) http://cavalkaf.frihost.net/mirror/secret_google/s ecretlab.swf [frihost.net] (Flash Movie) Oh, and visit my forum http://forum.scuzzstuff.org/ [scuzzstuff.org] while you are at it ;-)

Unfortunately...

[spacefight (577141)]

... neither eval.google.com nor searchbistro.com were available for comment :P

Re:Unfortunately...

[Morgahastu (522162)]

Eval.google.com isn't down, it just doens't respond to you unless you're a known ip.

Oh My God!

[tfaust (888625)]

It's made out of people! eval.google.com is people! It's people!

A few years old

[m00nun1t (588082)]

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/11972.htm [webmasterworld.com] discusses people getting referrals from eval.google.com back in 2003, so it seems this has been around for a while.

Google, google google, google

[EpsCylonB (307640)]

Someone should create a slash google site.

$20 an hour

[Virtual Karma (862416)]

Many people are asking as to how much Google pays those international agents. The complete page of the blog didn't load (obviously /. ed) and the alternate text for the image read "... $20 per hour.." so thats how much they are paying

Am I the only one...

[Shadow Wrought (586631)]

Who read eval.google.com as evil.google.com? I figured they had taken the "be good" option to a new level and had locked all their evil stuff away to its own site;-)

Slashdotted.

[SharpFang (651121)]

Slashdotted already. Google cache anyone?

manual review...not a 'secret lab'

[mcguyver (589810)]

At first glance this looks like a portal for people to manually review serps and provide feedback for the serps that are in beta. Yahoo does this. Google has recruited people over the past year to review results (first indication of this came from a craiglist ad). If this is true then it's cool to witness how this process is accomplished. While on the subject of monitoring serps, here's a way to search on Yahoo and tune [yahoo.com] your results.

Agggh!!!

[MightyMartian (840721)]

Google searches are made out of people! They're people!

I bet their labs have more than that!

[Man in Spandex (775950)]

I bet they have a thousand monkeys working on a thousand typewriters.

Burns: It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times!

Re:I bet their labs have more than that!

[bennomatic (691188)]

Naw, all it takes is a hundred [100monkeys.org].

Secret lab discovered? Time to call in...

[IronChefMorimoto (691038)]

...Brock Samson (http://www.adultswim.com/shows/venturebros/index. html [adultswim.com] ) to kick the sh*t out of this guy running the blog.

IronChefMorimoto

Where's the beef in that?

[broothal (186066)]

Uhm... either you're all getting this wrong, or I am. Of course google has people evaluating their search index. You guys aren't really buying the pigeon thingy [google.com], right?

Of course they're evaluating their search and ranking technology all the time. It's also evolving all the time. And of course there's a site where you can log into from all over the world (google is global you know) and of course this site is restricted to those people they hired to do the job.

Re:YAGS

[c0d3h4x0r (604141)]

I'm sorry, but "Jesus Christ on a Stick" has already been patented by my company. Prepare to be sued.

Re:YAGS

[geekoid (135745)]

Who new Pontius Pilate posted to slashdot?

Re:Raters

[geekoid (135745)]

"... I want to spout off, not critique...."

So it works just fine.

Re:Raters

[dubiousmike (558126)]

my sig says it all

Re:Google Rocks!

[GraZZ (9716)]

Insightful? WTFBBQ?!

Re:Google Rocks!

[coopaq (601975)]

Insightful? WTFBBQ?!

Dude, I don't know, but shutup about it.

If the people find some infinite wisdom in it then more points for me :)

Re:Eval ~ Evil???

[ReverendLoki (663861)]

...or maybe the should create a site evil.google.com, and have it resolve to either a blank page, or in spite, MSN search. Throw in good.google.com that resolves to Google's main page, and you're set.