Sphinn - User voting on search results could kill Google

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User voting on search results could kill Google

Went Hot: December 3, 2007 - 10:16 am
Posted By: AndyBeard 583 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://blog.oflaherty.dk)
Category: Google Searching

"Spammers, virus and malware peddlers and other such miscreants are generally organized and ahead of the curve. They’re certainly quick to find new ways to abuse a feature such as search result voting."

11 Comments

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from Lodispoto 583 days ago #

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If they actually did what the author thinks can happen, that would in my opinion make Google better. It is far easier to spam thousands of links in all of the link schemes and tricks that people now know of than to force each browser to only be able to vote once on a search result. Over time I see masses of people creating a better search engine that is less reliant on some link building people (unfortunately for many) but it can lead over time to superior search results.

from SlightlyShadySEO 581 days ago #

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Alright boyos.
This was tried once by ask jeeves, but based on # of clicks. Got spammed into oblivion. And I can tell you right now, forcing people to have an account won't matter. As we speak, if I were to fire up ICQ I could have 1000 gmail accounts for $10....
There's just no way.

from theGypsy 580 days ago #

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It's just not this simple IMO. There is far more going on in the world of User Performance Metrics than these types of methods. This is simply a single implementation of a much broader tool set. The signal that such a method would give would be near meaningless to try and Spam. What is interesting is in overt interest shown in looking at UPMs.....

from MattCutts 580 days ago #

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Wow. User votes could kill Google? If that were the case, wouldn't we just ignore them?

"Personalization could kill Google!" If that happened, wouldn't we just stop doing personalization?

Where's my "Lame" button for an overly dramatic title? :)

from hugoguzman 580 days ago #

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Haha! You beat me to it. I figure that user votes will just be another personalization feature but not a part of the main engine.

from BradleyT 580 days ago #

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Matt,

People are concerned with Google incorporating the votes into the normal serps for all users.

The problem is that spammers could release malware which gets onto 250,000 slave computers that do nothing but vote all day.

from MattCutts 580 days ago #

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BradleyT, I believe that the help documentation says that this experiment will only affect each person's own search? And even if this were to happen, Google could just ignore votes entirely. But again, I think these votes only affect your own search, and that this is a limited-term experiment (e.g. a few weeks) anyway.

So it's really getting ahead of things to speculate that "Google will die" because of this experiment. Even the original poster admits that the title is overly dramatic.

from Gamermk 580 days ago #

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Overly dramatic title... Welcome to Social Media Matt ;)

So, if user voting only for for their own search... what's the point? If I really want to vote for something or make it first in my search results, wouldn't I just bookmark it? Isn't the whole point of voting for the vote to impact the collective and not just the individual?

from MattCutts 580 days ago #

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Gamermk, this experiment gives an easy way to move up or delete results; I can it can be useful on that basis alone, and I think this experiment only affects your own rankings.

from SamFreedom 579 days ago #

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Hey Matt Cutts, as regards BradleyT's statement, couldn't the same malware still be working on target victim's computer to purposely affect each victim's search in favor of the malware author...? I don't quite see how BradleyT is mistaken... since the malware can still affect each victim's "own search."

from SamFreedom 579 days ago #

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Btw, here's my good luck wish for the 3 people who are going to understand how to use it.