Google Algorithm Discriminates Against Bad Reviews

j_col writes "According to the official Google blog, Google has altered their PageRank algorithm to not give back linking points to bad reviews of websites belonging to online retailers, following the publication of a recent article in the New York Times describing one woman's experiences in being harassed by an online retailer she found via Google. The specific changes to the algorithm are of course a guarded secret. So considering that these changes are already live, how do we know how the algorithm determines a bad review from a good one, and whether or not innocent online retailers will be wrongly punished by having their rankings downgraded?"

Simple

[CheshireCatCO]

They look for phrases like

• ...burst into flames...
• ...still sobbing for her pet rabbit...
• ...sucked into the trans-dimensional vortex...
• ...shouldn't even have been any radioactive material IN a children's book...
• ...and that's how little Tiffany learned about death and accidental dismemberment...
• ...came to my home and set it on fire and then kicked my dog...
• ...never knew I was capable of that sort of pain...
• ...ordered the complete Beethoven Symphonies and the discs had nothing buy Justin Bieber on them...
• ..contained a live bobcat... (obligatory)
• ... would not buy again...

Oh yeah watch this:

[kwabbles]

Google is the worst company ever. They sold out and went evil. I give their company a poor review and personal rating.

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good great wonderful cheese love flowers butterflies excited appealing chocolate yay amazing cool googlicious

Re:Am I the only one...

[inputdev]

have you tried Bing? ;)

Re:Am I the only one...

[corbettw]

Actually, I've switched the majority of my searching to Bing over the last few months. I've found their results tend to be much more accurate than Google's for the things I search for.

Granted, not everyone out there is searching for transvestite-dwarf wrestling match information, but the way Bing services that niche is impressive.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, Slashdot's PageRank just dropped like a rock thanks to you...

I feel so terribly guilty now...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I wrote my favorite escort a glowing review, all about how much and how hard she sucks, and now google is going to downrank her and it will be all my fault! This is terrible...

On a more serious note, correctly assigning "positive" or "negative" to a given adjective or phrase, across a wide range of subject areas, must actually be something that would give the computational linguists a bit of trouble(or 10,000 interns a very boring time of it)... Simply parsing star ratings or "out of 10" is easy enough; but is a vacuum cleaner that sucks good or bad?