News Source: http://searchengineland.com
Published: Dec 10, 2008 - 02:30 pm
Story Found By: rustybrick 1620 Days ago
Category: SEO
24 Comments
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News Source: http://searchengineland.com
Published: Dec 10, 2008 - 02:30 pm
Story Found By: rustybrick 1620 Days ago
Category: SEO
24 Comments
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Comments
No surprise. As I said to my developer yesterday, " I can’t see this having a big impact on the main search results, but I can’t see them ignoring it either."
Well, once people starts using "Search Wiki"..the actions from the users are going to generate a lot of ’data’. ...Google loves data....and they will definitely try to use some of it to brush up their organic results. They are just trying to make the search rankings ’less gameable’..However It might not work out too well for them..
so basically you get a story on Digg... simply asking everyone to remove a certain or string of results from Google’s SERPS... game the system. Kinda like it’s already done anyhow. Just another area to game.Personally I don’t see this really taking off - more smoke and mirrors?
Duh?
Not trying to be an ass guys, but sphinning this is like Sphinning "Google confirms title tag to be one of the top five most important on page elements".
What are your feelings on desphinning it?
@sugarrae "Google confirms title tag to be one of the top five most important on page elements"they did? now is it wrong if i submit that comment to sphinn and sphinn it?
I seriously doubt Google would use Search Wiki to influence rankings. It would be too easy to game and we all know how google feels about that...
>>>What are your feelings on desphinning it?Joe, I didn’t desphinn it simply because it is a valid topic. While I think it’s a big bowl of obvious, I know for a fact that some people who call themselves SEO don’t know what Digg is, so.... this might also be off their radar.
Okay, I am going to reply, but I really don’t want to cause I have not "earned" a reputation here at Sphinn, but yet I am a moderator, I think. :)<div></div><div>In any event, the "big bowl of obvious" is not always that obvious to many. I spend a heck of a lot of time reading seo news, blog posts, and forums - as you know Rae. Trust me, this is not obvious. </div><div></div><div>In fact, the concept of using click data or similar things, like SearchWiki, went out the window with DirectHit (yea, that was 2001?). Ask.com actually owns them, they killed it cause it got abused. Now, Ask.com said they are using it in some form. </div><div></div><div>Anyway, including some of SearchWiki data into the overall algo is "obvious." But (1) they are not using any of that data today, as confirmed by Marissa at Google and (2) Marissa said that if you get a team of people (or a clever) bot to remove a result a thousand times (likely in a natural looking way), it can remove the result from everyone else (in the future). To say that, imo, is a bit shocking - cause I honestly don’t think the Google "Search Quality" team would agree that this would be a good method for quality, unless done with certain spam checks (which probably arent made yet).</div><div></div><div>My two cents.</div>
To start with the gang at Google (Marrissa and others) mentioned this when it came out of Beta. The ’ol - "We aren’t now - but maybe someday" - for starters the efficacy of the program is still in doubt (I don’t know many non-marketers that use it). Second, behavioral and engagement metrics are still dirty at best and likely will live on the personalized side of things, moreso than reg SERPs.Now, there are patents about grouping of peeps, meaning let’s say Google personalizes based on not only your actions, but those of your friends (on Gtalk, Reader,FriendConnect,YouTube) as well. This would also potentially make sense as a ranking signal of value. But to consider it in a larger context as any type of serious ranking signal has more than a few flaws... But hey, if we’re putting on the tin foil hats.... why wouldn’t they also use SearchWiki as a honey pot? Another layer to find spammers and SERP manipulators? (U know.. SEOs?).... the data is prolly telling from that end in a few query spaces... he he....This one to me, while feasable, lends it self to a weak signal (ranking factor) in the greater scheme of things.... but lot’s o potential on the personalization side of things... IM-friggen-O
>>>In any event, the "big bowl of obvious" is not always that obvious to many.Thus my second comment on why I only chose to comment and not desphinn :)>>>(1) they are not using any of that data today, as confirmed by Marissa at GoogleOf course not, because they didn’t fire a shitload of people, some of whom might have been in the human quality rating department, until very recently. :) Since they also can’t go off the ratings of 150 SEO’s, they need the service to start gaining momentum to have a larger dataset before they can begin to really use it.>>>(2) Marissa said that if you get a team of people (or a clever) bot to remove a result a thousand times (likely in a natural looking way), it can remove the result from everyone else (in the future)I can currently buy my competitor 100 links and then report them for linkbuying to google and have them penalized.I can currently hack into a competitors wordpress, inject links in it without their knowledge and then wait for Google to penalize them (which they 200% will).I can currently get tons of spam/crap links for a competitor and if their link count is small enough, overpower their natural links and give their site some nice, unwanted side effects in Google.Why on earth would the ability to be able to manipulate search wiki on a large scale to kill off a competitor come as a surprise. Personally, I think it is the most difficult of the bunch - for now.
>> Thus my second comment on why I only chose to comment and not desphinn :)<div></div><div>Good</div><div></div><div>>>> 2</div><div></div><div>I won’t get into it, but in short, using Google.com to spam Google.com, is kinda funny... </div>
I think Barry and Rae on slightly different pages. If you follow Rae at all, you know her (extremely justifiable) feelings on all the real estate owned by Google, and the logical step(s) to incorporate their information gathered into their SERPs. I mean that would really be a duh moment. I think what Barry is noting is the possinbility to have a result removed via the Wiki, and it’s impact it would have on the stance that Google keeps touting (nobody can affect your rankings negatively from the outside (which I think is BS)). I do think it a valid post. I turn a lot of people on to Sphinn via consulting/ranting, and though they are in a position which would require the attention of the SEM landscape, they aren’t as involved as someone of Rae’s calibor....calibur...level. My 1.5 cents (recession)
Whatever they are doing with SearchWiki, can we please get the off switch before the end of the year?
Well, first of all, I updated the story to reflect the fact that Google already had said this when SearchWiki came out, that this might be a factor that they might use for ranking. And yeah, it is a big bowl of obvious to me like others that the might.Measuring clicks did not go out the window with Direct Hit. I have no doubt in my mind that Google uses clickstream data as part of those many, many factors it uses for ranking, to some degree. Measure all those clicks in aggregate, look for any pages that are coming in way under or over where you’d expect them to be, that’s a good clue for human review at the very least. And goodness knows in personalized search, clickstream is a major factor.SearchWiki is similar. If you see a huge number of people spiking up (or down) a listing, you could add that as a signal along with others. A good site with lots of votes that also seems to hve above average ratings for being a quality site in other metrics (domain history, linkage, content). It provides another datapoint for reassurance. Try to X out a good site like that, the other metrics don’t support that it is bad, so I wouldn’t expect it would go. And I think overall, this would be a subtle method used, an ancillary signal.
when you are using your favorite chicken soup recipie you need the right amount of salt. Too little and it’s missing something, too much and it’s over powering, the key is experimenting and finding the right amount. salt isn’t the only ingredient you need and its not the most important but you do need it. search wiki is going to be like the salt in in your recipie for ranking.(waits for some dunderhead to come by and downvote this comment because it’s not approved by the obivious oversight division for being about internet marketing)
What I don’t see mentioned in this discussion of a "clever bot" to vote down a result is a reference to the bulking up of Google profiles. They’ve even started integrating it into new Igoogle accounts when you click "My Account". @thegypsy Obviously, a filter for the "dirty signal" would be to weigh their profile’s credibility. The more credible the account, the stronger the indicator. Common sense would indicate that TIME is a crucial part of Google’s Trust- currently with sites and domains, It would by extension indicate older profiles with regular search activity would have more weight. You’re telling me that there’s a bot out there that can get past capcha, present unique I.p. information and run a realistic pattern of searches as it ages until at some point in the future it gets triggered along with a thousand others to thumb down a wiki result?
so think it’s going to be easy to bot click your way and click fruad an ajax page to boost yourself or your kill your competition, wathc this video presentation from google from 2006http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7911940811281763038it’s 40 minutes but you might learn something ... or you could go read another 53 posts about 27 ways social media is like tiddlywinks
@graywolf I’ll take the 53 posts on socia media plz...
Sphunn more the comments here than the article itself (which is a no brainer).
@ footinmouthdisease"Obviously, a filter for the "dirty signal" would be to weigh their profile’s credibility. The more credible the account, the stronger the indicator. Common sense would indicate that TIME is a crucial part of Google’s Trust- currently with sites and domains, It would by extension indicate older profiles with regular search activity would have more weight. You’re telling me that there’s a bot out there that can get past capcha, present unique I.p. information and run a realistic pattern of searches as it ages until at some point in the future it gets triggered along with a thousand others to thumb down a wiki result?"You could create a couple hundred fake google profiles, have them filled out, used, aged and friended with some "monkeys" or interns. This isn’t that far off for a determined and evil competitor - and there are lots of those, but yet somewhat unlikely to happen. It makes sense that it’s just a small subset of a datapoint. Yet it makes me uneasy when I think about the games to be played with this type of stuff.Google has been pandering alot to social results, and relying on external sites for social approval datapoints, and it’s kinda high time a search engine made themselves look for social proof datapoints internally.However, it’s kinda scary to think about. IMO, Digg and the other sites are easily gamed, and a service like searchwiki even more so. Should i find out that there’s a point where they are using search wiki, and could "justify to myself" why my competitor shouldn’t be in the search results -and have big enough motive to screw them, it’s very possible to do - and I consider myself ethical.
Non-News Flash: Google uses collected data to determine serps.
I think this is obviously for a different kind of data collection (like when all those phonemes were collected for voice), and I think it isn’t necessarily related to SERPS. Any data in isolation is useless, it only becomes valuable when it’s combined with other data as you know. I think the most interesting aspect of it is the natural language comment area. That’s a lot of interesting strings to process!