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Google Businesses The Internet

Google Tests Custom Highlights, Comments In Search 174

Ian Lamont writes "Google is testing functionality that lets users tinker with query results by re-ranking them and commenting on them. The reason for the commenting feature: 'We're just curious to see how it will be used,' according to a Google engineer quoted in the article. The company has posted screenshots of some of the experiments, which also involve highlighting certain results as well as stems and synonyms within results. Google declined to answer any questions about the experiments, and it's not known whether Google would factor the rearranging of results by users into the overall computation for ranking results for those specific queries. It's also not clear whether search result comments would be made available to anyone to read."
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Google Tests Custom Highlights, Comments In Search

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  • Sweet! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BitterOldGUy ( 1330491 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:23PM (#24766963)
    Now I can rank the advertisements lower and comment on sites that pretend to be informational and are nothing but advertising.
    • Not Sweet (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mad Bad Rabbit ( 539142 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:27PM (#24767019)

      Now the spammers can pay people in ${ThirdWorldNation}
      to rate advertisements higher and comment favorably
      on them

      • by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:36PM (#24767189) Homepage

        ...the stupidity of the crowd.

        If slashdot is any indicator of mass stupidity, the would-be-spammer are going to be buried under an even more overwhelming amount of comments of doubtful usefulness.

        Like "yes" "no" "omg" "lol" "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" "goodluckwiththat"
        and "ponies"....

        • Rating.... (Score:4, Funny)

          by BitterOldGUy ( 1330491 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:47PM (#24767335)

          ...the stupidity of the crowd.

          If slashdot is any indicator of mass stupidity, the would-be-spammer are going to be buried under an even more overwhelming amount of comments of doubtful usefulness.

          Like "yes" "no" "omg" "lol" "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" "goodluckwiththat" and "ponies"....

          So, we're to expect microsoft.com to be rated negative one hundred billion and Apple to be rated plus one hundred billion?

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by HermMunster ( 972336 )

            Thank goodness we'll be able to do that. I love ensuring that people get solid product with good ideas instead of info from who has the most money to spend on their advertising.

            And as far as anyone can rate a system the system can also be designed to watch for those people abusing the ratings. Also, over time the system will balance that out.

            • by darkpixel2k ( 623900 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @01:38PM (#24768075)

              And as far as anyone can rate a system the system can also be designed to watch for those people abusing the ratings. Also, over time the system will balance that out.

              Awesome. Google will finally have mods and metamods.

              Finally my website can be rated -1 TROLL

            • by sm62704 ( 957197 )

              And as far as anyone can rate a system the system can also be designed to watch for those people abusing the ratings. Also, over time the system will balance that out.

              I don't know, the GP and the GPP were insightful comments that were modded "funny". I've had comments I meant to be funny that were modded +5 insightful. I think overall the system works here, but there still are abuses and foolishness; like modding a comment "overrated" so as not to get beaned by a metamoderation, or modding an insightful or

          • >So, we're to expect microsoft.com to be rated negative one hundred billion and Apple to be rated plus one hundred billion?

            I'd like all the sites of my google search having a "can be opened flawlessly by Firefox" flag presented first and the IE-only ones from page 937-11000.

          • So google will just turn into a unfiltered Digg frontpage you mean?

            Lord, have mercy on our souls.....

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          Do not underestimate...

          ...the stupidity of the crowd.

          If slashdot is any indicator of mass stupidity, the would-be-spammer are going to be buried under an even more overwhelming amount of comments of doubtful usefulness.

          Like "yes" "no" "omg" "lol" "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" "goodluckwiththat"
          and "ponies"....

          Fine by me. lolcats is still infinitely preferable to any "parked" domain that masquerades as a search engine or offers dubious products or services.

        • You forgot the most applicable:

          "itsatrap"

      • The above is not funny, it is insightful.

      • Re:Not Sweet (Score:5, Insightful)

        by uchian ( 454825 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @01:03PM (#24767569) Homepage
        It could be useful for setting up individual search profiles. For instance, I search for computer stuff all the time, so if I search for "wine" chances are I'm looking for the wine, the windows emulator, rather than the wikipedia article on the difference between red and white wines.

        Or another case for me, is I quite often search for hardware reviews before I buy, and prefer reviews of independant sites rather than reviews attached to shops. If I kept promoting independant reviews to the top of my search until google cottoned on and made all my searches looking for reviews work like that... that would be a very positive way of customising individual searches.

        Of course, you can look at this as another way to target advertising through google to use more as well.

        But in general, I would be in favour of this.
        • Re:Not Sweet (Score:4, Interesting)

          by beakerMeep ( 716990 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @01:53PM (#24768257)
          I think the commenting could be helpful if you could set up communities too. For instance, a group of python enthusiasts could see comments by other python enthusiasts. It could really reduce the blogspam if the group kept spammers out, or even kept spammer numbers low.

          How to do that though, I am not sure.
    • Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Fizzl ( 209397 ) <fizzl@CURIEfizzl.net minus physicist> on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:46PM (#24767329) Homepage Journal

      Indeed. Buh-bye expert-sexchange. Good riddance.

      • Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by MyLongNickName ( 822545 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @01:07PM (#24767603) Journal

        How so? I find lots of good stuff there. You do realize the "hidden comments" are not so hidden, right?

        • by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

          The comments are hidden for non-members. If you know otherwise, please enlighten us.

          • Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Informative)

            by MyLongNickName ( 822545 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @01:20PM (#24767797) Journal

            Scroll to the bottom of the page. You will see another copy of the comments unhidden.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              I confirm this, however, it's hit and miss.
              Either way, Experts-Exchange should not get listed if they hide the answers from the public but not the Google bot.

              • Howdy, wish I could reply quicker, but for whatever reason, I am throttled to five minutes between posts. Oddly enough, it seems to occur after I have been upmodded. After a couple down mods, I was able to post every two. odd.

                Anyhow, can you show me some links where you DON'T see the responses at the end? I have never had any trouble with using this method. However, this doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist. I'd like to figure out what the commonality is.

                Thanks.

                • Click on a google result and scroll down to their answers. There they are, all nice and helpful. Now try clicking on anything else, doing a search, etc. No answers anymore. You only get them from google search. I have even had working bookmarks stop working after a while, although a fresh google search will turn up a page with working answers.
              • by mcmonkey ( 96054 )

                Either way, Experts-Exchange should not get listed if they hide the answers from the public but not the Google bot.

                Yes, but answers seen by the bot are also seen by the public.

                If you don't see the answers on the E-E page, try the Google cache.

                • This is what I thought until I looked more closely. EE definitely seems to serve different pages to GoogleBot, and appears to serve different pages to people referred directly from Google. I believe this is a distinct violation of Google's listing policy, and to be consistent with how they treat all the other website operators Google should be immediately de-listing Experts Exchange until it serves identical pages to Google as what it serves to everyone.

                  Try installing User Agent Switcher [mozilla.org] in Firefox, the

    • Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)

      by eln ( 21727 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:50PM (#24767383)

      Now all of my search results will have comments on them with advertisements for herbal V1@gra. Sweet!

    • Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jgarra23 ( 1109651 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:52PM (#24767415)

      Great, now some spammer s going to write millions of bots to do the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you are doing thereby making the results even more useless.

  • How about this -- (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mingot ( 665080 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:26PM (#24766995)
    Let us completely block certain domains from our personal search results. ExpertSexchange would be first to go.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:27PM (#24767025)
      to bump up AmateurSexChange?
    • Re:How about this -- (Score:5, Informative)

      by InvisblePinkUnicorn ( 1126837 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:28PM (#24767041)
      Or you could use the Google cache with Firefox and scroll all the way to the bottom of their page - you'll see all the answers you need.
      • Or you could use the Google cache with Firefox and scroll all the way to the bottom of their page - you'll see all the answers you need.

        You don't need google's cache, or any specific browser. The answers are always at the very bottom of the page (below a huge, fake 'footer').

    • good point!

      about.com

      youtube

      anything that has sedoparking on it

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If you have Firefox, use the Customize Google add-on at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743 [mozilla.org]

      Experts-Exchange was useful up until a couple of years ago...

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Bryansix ( 761547 )
      My wife actually asked me what I was doing on www.mSexChange.org
      • Don't you think she deserves to know the truth? I mean, I know it's not easy and not really "socially accepted" and whatnot, and she married you, maybe (well, most likely) not knowing, but ... she's your wife, for crying out loud. She deserves to know.

        It's not easy, I know. I've been there myself. And I know that few relationships can survive such a problem. Not to mention the kids, if you have any, when their friends talk behind their backs, that their dad is "someone like THAT". But living in a closet doe

    • >Let us completely block certain domains from our personal search results. ExpertSexchange would be first to go.

      How about Firefox + CustomiseGoogle add-on? Works for me.

    • I checked out this thread just to suggest this exact feature that is critically needed. I hate that expert sex change site.

      Speaking of technical names that are easily misunderstood... I was studying for a certification test and had a CD for TransCender practice tests sitting on my desk. My girlfriend at the time gave me the weirdest look and asked, "Why do you have a Transgender DVD on your desk?"
      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        I was studying for a certification test and had a CD for TransCender practice tests sitting on my desk. My girlfriend at the time gave me the weirdest look and asked, "Why do you have a Transgender DVD on your desk?"

        A better question: Why were you dating someone who couldn't even READ?

        • A better question: Why were you dating someone who couldn't even READ?

          Sorry for the misunderstanding. She could read. However, she occasionally misread something. I know that's an unusual trait in humans and that most humands are perfect.

          Sorry for bothering you, sir.
  • by jacquesm ( 154384 ) <(moc.ww) (ta) (j)> on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:28PM (#24767039) Homepage

    It seems like google has found out that Yahoo maybe had a point after all when they questioned the ability of algorithms to rank results.

    Google has thus far always held that the only way to deal with this problem is automation, I find it really interesting to see them turn around like this and yield to the 'wisdom of the crowds'.

    In the end this will probably result in just one more element in their ranking formula, the human factor. I still very much welcome this trend.

    Humans are a lot harder to game than algorithms.

    • by hachete ( 473378 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:56PM (#24767487) Homepage Journal

      Oh, do be serious. I give you one example: gold farmers. Yeah, pay someone to rank the results for you. See? System destroyed before it's begun.

      • wikipedia is proof positive that you can get > 0 output by harvesting the output of a lot of users, slashdot is another proof.

        And I don't think it unlikely that google can come up with something a little bit more sophisticated than /. ...

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by teknopurge ( 199509 )

      Humans are a lot harder to game than algorithms.

      I disagree, or else the marketing industry would not exists. Algorithms can be made to become pragmatic and change over the course of use. While humans can do the same, they also have emotions. I fully expect this to give rise to a new paradigm in marketing strategy.

      • the more people invest in an environment, the smaller the chance that they'll destroy it.
        To spend time on ranking pages which can be undone by *one* single click by a google employee means that all your contributions are undoable at any one moment.

        I think people will think twice before they will invest a lots of time and money into gaming a system with such a powerful rollback mechanism.

        We have done the exact same thing with daz.com and to date I have yet to see my first spam attempt. The barrier to entry i

      • True, but the humans would just become part of the algorithm, I doubt Google would rely entirely on user input to guide the results.

        What I'd like to see, is a combination, like Rank X% of Method A before X% of Method B, or a switch, so you can search the old-school way by page title, or by Google's normal way, or by user-comment...

        Although I find it interesting, basically turning the Web into a Slashdot/Digg/etc of sorts because it could be extremely helpful if you pretend people will respect it, it will mo

    • by mdfst13 ( 664665 )

      Google has thus far always held that the only way to deal with this problem is automation, I find it really interesting to see them turn around like this and yield to the 'wisdom of the crowds'.

      Crowds aren't involved at this point. All this does is allow an individual to change the ordering of search results on a page and add comments. Presumably the individual could come back to the same search later and see the same results, but there's nothing in the description of the experiment that suggests that anyone else would see this.

      In the future, they might incorporate this as an additional input in their ranking algorithm, but at the moment, it's just for personal use.

      • Riiiigght... and surely google isn't capable of taking your and everybody elses data and aggregate that.

        Google is an expert at gathering data, and you can bet your knickers on them doing this not for your amusement or to give you a nifty feature but simply because they are harnessing your brain to do a part of their work.

        Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Image_Labeler [wikipedia.org]

        If you think that's farfetched.

  • by jgarra23 ( 1109651 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:30PM (#24767085)

    You're helping them tune PageRank by messing with the results which, if you're building a search engine, may not be a good idea to help your competitor.

    Hrm, all those masters and Ph.Ds floating around there and the best they can do is "uh... lets ask our customers?" Jesus, they could have paid some hicks @ a gas station in BFE and figured that one out.

    • Second that. This hick has been doing this for over a year now and the effect is starting to accumulate
      (see 'zataka.com' for what I've been up to).

      • by Fizzl ( 209397 )

        Protip: The clipart lady in the corner and the "zabillion links to high paying keywords"-layout make your site look like a generic typosquatting operation.

        • the links are a way to refine the results.

          Not sure which clipart lady you are referring to ?

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by Fizzl ( 209397 )

            The one in... uh... zakata.com. Sorry, my bad. Generic typo link farm looks like a link farm :)

            • hehe, surprise, surprise, who would have thought that :)

              Good thing we don't have clipart then or I would not have caught it.

              There is an indian site as well, and I swear I was not aware that zataka.in is a search engine. I actually wanted to make it sound japanese and one of my favorite cartoons when I was a kid was called 'taka takata' about a (totally stereotype) Japanese soldier. Takata was already gone, hence zataka...

    • Your average janitor could tell you almost exactly what the average three-digit-an-hour consultant tells you, yet companies hire consultants.

    • You're helping them tune PageRank by messing with the results which, if you're building a search engine, may not be a good idea to help your competitor.

      Yes, and I'm sure that's an issue for the literally hundreds, maybe even *thousands* of people creating their own search engine. Fortunately for Google, there are still a few billion of us who aren't.

      Hrm, all those masters and Ph.Ds floating around there and the best they can do is "uh... lets ask our customers?" Jesus, they could have paid some hicks @

      • I understand that the leg-work to get the data into some useable form is hard work, I do similar work for a living. I was actually picking on Google for their elitist attitude when really the general solution for improvement was simple- ask the darn customer :)

        Most businesses are too arrogant to ask the customer questions and instead focus on presenting a product. This is the reason why some crazy percentage like 99% of all businesses fail in 5 years. Someone else will come along who has enough sense and hu

        • I understand that the leg-work to get the data into some useable form is hard work, I do similar work for a living. I was actually picking on Google for their elitist attitude when really the general solution for improvement was simple- ask the darn customer :)

          Elitist attitude? WTF?

  • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:34PM (#24767165)
    If people are actually able to make an impact on the page rank for different sites, how long until we see some websites trying to game the system. It's already possible for you to buy a front page spot on Digg [socialelves.com] for a few hundred dollars.

    Google makes it fairly obvious which results are paid for at the moment, but if this system were to be implemented it wouldn't be as easy to decide if that number one search result is there due to Google's search algorithms or because the site owner paid some company to bump it up and leave dozens of positive comments. Of course the reverse is also possible where a competitor's website is bumped down the list and filled with comments about how bad or unhelpful the website was. In some cases you wouldn't even need to pay someone to do it. Any fairly large group with an agenda would be capable of unbalancing things.

    The only redeeming feature is that this is a Google product and will probably be in beta for the next few decades. By then I'll be more worried about the kids on my lawn than my Google search results.
    • that site is f'ing disgusting.

    • by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @01:17PM (#24767745) Journal

      I have a feeling that this will be pivotal for web 2.1 - "computing in the crowd"

      That said, I'm sure that Google is not giving up on it's automated rankings, but rather looking for a way to implement a new source of page rank value. Strange or not, I think there there is some possibility that this can be beneficial. Knowing Google, they've been working on this for awhile, and it already does something useful. If all they manage to do is positively identify sites that should NOT be on the front page, it would improve results that I get from Google, especially when using complex searches.

      If the voting/comments help them identify sites that have risen too high in rank, such information can be used to improve the automation processes. That is what I think they are doing. Crowd-sourcing the manual task of identifying sites that have incorrectly high page rank.

  • by Colonel Korn ( 1258968 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:37PM (#24767221)

    I personally find Google's rankings to be terrible, far worse than Yahoo's, and much more likely to have a bunch of spam sites near the top. If they were to integrate results from this project, and if they can keep the spambots from flooding the project with fake rankings, or if they could learn from my submissions that I don't want fake sites with lists of nonsense words as results, they would become a far more powerful than I can imagine.

  • Finally (Score:3, Funny)

    by SirLurksAlot ( 1169039 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:39PM (#24767231)

    Google is testing functionality that lets users tinker with query results by re-ranking them and commenting on them.

    I can start commenting/modding search results as "+5 Informative" or "-1 Off-topic!"

  • stfu google u dont no ne thing about commants. fucktard

    (Kidding, of course)

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Google must have noticed what a wonderful contribution the comments on YouTube videos make to the viewing experience. Now they want to bring that level of witty repartee to the internet in general.

      (Insert ref to that YouTube comic at xjdk^h^h^h^hxckd^h^h^h^hkxhd^h^h^h^hxjxd^h^h^h^hdamitdamitDAMIT)

  • Far be it from me to RTFA, but I can foresee this evolving into a framework where, to track the quality of rankings given by individuals, the individuals in question must, to coin a phrase, "log on" to Google.

    I suppose we should call the process of rating the rankings something. Let's randomly pick a word, mmmmm, say "moderate". And then, to rate the rankings given by said individuals, other "logged on" users could anonymously rate the ratings, as it were. Darn it, now we need another word, what about...mmm

  • by szquirrel ( 140575 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @12:53PM (#24767427) Homepage

    Comments? From people? On the Internet?

    Does Google have a line on a new revenue stream that involves harvesting every known variant on "CHAD IS TEH GAY!!!1!"?

  • I hope they can use the results to fuel the fire to allow user to block domains or negative rank domain park search pages. Nothing spoils a good search then a pageful of domain parked pages as results.
  • what about... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by k31bang ( 672440 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @01:04PM (#24767583) Homepage

    What about just randomly giving registered Google users 5 mod points. Then up to 5 results in a search can be moded up or down depending on what the user prefers. Might work. ;-)

  • by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @01:16PM (#24767737) Homepage

    Let me put in my prefs a list that always get's added to my searches...

    -patent is a big one that will get rid of a crapload of garbage results. I'd like that one on by default forever.

  • Did you mean: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by orgelspieler ( 865795 ) <w0lfieNO@SPAMmac.com> on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @01:18PM (#24767775) Journal
    One thing I wish I had control over was the "Did you mean:" function. I'd like to be able to answer the question yes or no, rather than having to go into the query and putting quote marks where I want to search for a word it thinks is spelled wrong. It might do Google's algorithm some good, too, if they can get feedback on their suggestions. I would also like the option to ask for additional suggestions, especially on multi-word queries.
    • Re:Did you mean: (Score:5, Informative)

      by sm62704 ( 957197 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @02:30PM (#24768763) Journal

      One thing I wish I had control over was the "Did you mean:" function. I'd like to be able to answer the question yes or no, rather than having to go into the query and putting quote marks where I want to search for a word it thinks is spelled wrong.

      You already can. For instance, say you are looking for "FUBAR". For "no", you just use the results it gives you on the page where it asks "did you mean FOOBAR?" as if it didn't ask. For "yes", click the word "FOOBAR" and it will give you listings of "FOOBAR" with the search term changed to "FOOBAR".

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @01:36PM (#24768049)

    I doubt Google is dumb. I'm fairly sure they know exactly that people will start pushing their pages, so they will most likely require you to create an account. And behold, they already have that feature with gmail and their other services.

    So people will start creating thousands and more accounts to game the results. Google will do what they already do when ranking pages: The "older" you are, the more weight you will have. So pumping a site with a billion new accounts won't do jack when someone with a 5 year old account votes you down.

    And so on. Google has already quite a bit of experience with people trying to trick their algorithms, I guess they will have some sort of system at hand to secure themselves against spamsites claiming the top spots.

    What I do expect from this, though, is an increase in hack attempts against google accounts...

  • grob (Score:3, Informative)

    by kkffjj ( 1339025 ) on Wednesday August 27, 2008 @01:45PM (#24768161)
    You can get a firefox extension [mozilla.org] to do this already folks :) It lets you list certain domains to block from results. (google returns full results, the extn uses regex I think to filter before showing the result set to you.
  • How about, or is there any way to do the search without the ranking algorithms? My team uses Google for searches during our yearly Trivia contest, but some of our newer players don't know how to work around the algorithms so we don't get a bunch of junk advertisements in our results. Google was great when it first started out, I could simply type in a MS error code and get the exact results I wanted instead of some software company advertising a bundle that will fix all my MS troubles.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rkanodia ( 211354 )

      So you're saying you want to see every single page that includes the text you searched for, ordered randomly?

  • http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20051009&mode=classic [userfriendly.org]

    The funny thing is that it was predicted Microsoft might sway search results for financial gain, but by doing this, they'd allow spammers and the like to destroy search results.

    I'm not sure if people recall, but Google wasn't the first, or the biggest search engine with the internet was first catching on fire. You'd mess around with sites like Altavista, Lycos, Excite, etc. and rarely find what you were looking for. You'd search for sports

  • Now we can call our coworkers idiots on all their Google hits & keep them from ever getting hired again.

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