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[email protected] kirjutas Pühapäev, 17. november 2019 kl 01:20:29 UTC+2:
> Stories 
> 
> How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results 
> from the I'm-feeling-unlucky dept. 
> Long-time Slashdot reader walterbyrd shared this report on "arguably the most powerful lines of computer code in the global economy," the Google algorithms that handle 3.8 million queries every single minute. 
> 
> But though Google claims its algorithms are objective and autonomous, the Wall Street Journal reports Google "has increasingly re-engineered and interfered with search results to a far greater degree than the company and its executives have acknowledged": 
> More than 100 interviews and the Journal's own testing of Google's search results reveal: 
> 
> - Google made algorithmic changes to its search results that favor big businesses over smaller ones, and in at least one case made changes on behalf of a major advertiser, eBay Inc., contrary to its public position that it never takes that type of action. The company also boosts some major websites, such as Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. 
> 
> - Google engineers regularly make behind-the-scenes adjustments to other information the company is increasingly layering on top of its basic search results. These features include auto-complete suggestions, boxes called "knowledge panels" and "featured snippets," and news results, which aren't subject to the same company policies limiting what engineers can remove or change. 
> 
> - Despite publicly denying doing so, Google keeps blacklists to remove certain sites or prevent others from surfacing in certain types of results... Google employees and executives, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have disagreed on how much to intervene on search results and to what extent. Employees can push for revisions in specific search results, including on topics such as vaccinations and autism. 
> 
> - To evaluate its search results, Google employs thousands of low-paid contractors whose purpose the company says is to assess the quality of the algorithms' rankings. Even so, contractors said Google gave feedback to these workers to convey what it considered to be the correct ranking of results, and they revised their assessments accordingly, according to contractors interviewed by the Journal. The contractors' collective evaluations are then used to adjust algorithms. 
> 
> The Journal's findings undercut one of Google's core defenses against global regulators worried about how it wields its immense power -- that the company doesn't exert editorial control over what it shows users. 
> Posted by EditorDavid 7 hours ago 
> google 
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> 83 Comments 
> Help 
> All 
> Outstanding 
> Funny 
> The Second Term (-1) 
> Anonymous Coward 7 hours ago 
> Re: The Second Term (+1) 
> Way Smarter Than You 5 hours ago 
> You should put a line break in there. It'd be easier to see. If you're going to copy paste spam troll at least do something readable. Thanks. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Interfered? (+1) 
> AmiMoJo 6 hours ago 
> Strange choice of word. Is it interference or is it the usual on-going improvement in the endless war against SEO? 
> Google has always been "interfering" with it's search results. That's why it's good. I'm old enough to remember when search engines gave you a keyword match dump and you had to carefully craft your query to filter out the irrelevant stuff and the spam by hand. Google's ability to do that for you is why it quickly became number 1. 
> Reply Share 
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> Re: Interfered? (+2) 
> lgw 6 hours ago 
> Also, in addition, and on top of that: Google adds arbitrary political bias to your results, at the whim of their engineers. They also add brand-preference bias, though that's either less common, or less interesting to report on, hard to say. But the engineers have tools to shape result to their biases, and they do use them. 
> Also, in addition, and on top of that: Google gives you personalized results similar to what you've clicked before, which sounds good on the face of it, but has the disastrous side effect of mechanically enforcing confirmation bias. You find yourself in a "search bubble" where facts that might go against your biases and open your eyes are never shown to you in search results. Some people like that, of course, it's comfortable. 
> For those more comfortable with truth, there's DuckDuckGo. 
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> Re: Interfered? 
> Anonymous Coward 6 hours ago 
> DuckDuckGo gives you retarded, irrelevant results though. And by retarded and irrelevant, I'm talking about being spammed with mom.me or wikipedia endlessly. There was a time when you could search for something and end up on a university site, state agricultural research site, someone's personal site, etc. These sites still exist, but you're never going to see them with DDG or Google. 
> 
> And I'm not going to EVEN start with Bing which gives you--verbatim--half of the results from the previous page every click... 
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> Re: Interfered? (+2) 
> AmiMoJo 6 hours ago 
> I think a lot of people mistake anti-SEO for political bias. For example one popular technique is to fine a particular phrase that isn't very popular and popularize it for political purposes. Then when someone searches for that phrase they heard used in a soundbite or on Facebook all they get are sites with one political bias, the one that popularized it. 
> Then Google notices it's just a synonym for some more common way of phrasing the issue and the advantage disappears, and people claim Google is politically biased and trying to help the other side. 
> DuckDuckGo uses Google for search results anyway so any actual political bias will be evident there too. As for bubbles, you should block cookies and site data for all sites to avoid that. Everyone should use a whitelist these days. 
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> Re: Interfered? 
> Anonymous Coward 6 hours ago 
> Let's all hold hands and sing Cum-on-amimojo's-face-bah-yah! 
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> Re: Interfered? (+1) 
> Mashiki 6 hours ago 
> Strange choice of word. Is it interference or is it the usual on-going improvement in the endless war against SEO? 
> No, it's direct interference at least on what the WSJ is reporting. Considering that this isn't the first claim, but rather a series of claims including from current and former over the last several years, it's more likely worse then what we know. The removal by google to honor boolean searches is why duckduckgo has been surging the last few years too. It's not exactly hard, and it's something that nearly everyone at least here in North America learns to do when they learn the Dewey decimal system. 
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> Re: Interfered? (+1) 
> Fly Swatter 6 hours ago 
> Google was good, now they filter out so much for you that it would be more useful to me just to go back to keyword searches, I actually found what I was looking for back then. Of course back then every site wasn't trying to game their algorithms. 
> Reply Share 
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> Re: Interfered? (+1) 
> Way Smarter Than You 5 hours ago 
> The article and research were explicit that certain conservative sites are simply blocked or pushed so far down as to be effectively invisible. That's not anti-SEO. The same thing has not been reported to have occurred to leftist sites. 
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> Broken beyond repair (+4, Interesting) 
> ArchieBunker 6 hours ago 
> Google is damn near worthless now. I searched for *linux step file viewer* and the first result is a page with windows only software. Not a single mention of Linux. It ignored the word Linux in my search. Fuck them. Going to try Bing next time. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Re: Broken beyond repair (+1) 
> frank_adrian314159 6 hours ago 
> That's odd, I typed in the same thing and got quite a few Linux-related results on the front page. You must do a lot of searching for Windows-based software if it's pointing you towards Windows with those search words. Either that or you're exaggerating about the low quality of your results. 
> Reply Share 
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> Re: Broken beyond repair (+1) 
> ArchieBunker 6 hours ago 
> Just tried it and this is the first link https://3d-viewers.com/step-vi... Not linux related. The second link however is https://www.freecadweb.org/ which does have a Linux version. Google gives you what is popular, not what is accurate. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Re: Broken beyond repair (+1) 
> Lonewolf666 5 hours ago 
> You must do a lot of searching for Windows-based software if it's pointing you towards Windows with those search words 
> That would be a reason by itself not to rely on Google. Perhaps GP did a lot of searching for Windows software before, but is now planning a Linux migration? Google personalizing search records based on searches in GP's past would be counterproductive then 
> Reply Share 
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> Favorite anecdotes (+1) 
> Okian Warrior 6 hours ago 
> Google is near worthless now. I searched for *linux step file viewer* and the first result is a page with windows only software. Not a single mention of Linux. It ignored the word Linux in my search. Fuck them. Going to try Bing next time. 
> My first hint was when searching for "xxx yyy zzz" (without the quotes), *all* results (!) have "missing zzz" followed by "must include zzz" link. This was not typo'ed words, those are handled (in most cases correctly) another way. 
> My second hint was searching for a word definition "define: zzz" (without quotes), the *first* page (!) of results did not have a link to the definition. 
> Anyone else have favorite Google anecdotes to share? 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Re: Favorite anecdotes (+1) 
> ArchieBunker 6 hours ago 
> Even when I do put quotes around words they routinely get ignored. Google would rather throw random shit at me than just say no results. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Re: Broken beyond repair (+1) 
> hairyfeet 6 hours ago 
> That is why I ended up switching to Bing, Google searches has become about as worthless as tits on a boar hog when it comes to finding anything other than the most generic of searches. I can look for a specific laptop battery and will get nothing but "OMFG you want a laptop? We got laptops!"...no dumb shit if I wanted a laptop I wouldn't be looking for a PART would I? I look for a specific camera for a security system because my customer wants to add another camera to his set up? "OMFG you want a smartphone? Samsung Galaxy on sale!"...WTF? What does security cameras have to do with smartphones? They both have a camera? 
> 
> 
> At least with Bing if I'm looking for something specific? Its right at the top, hell even Linux as I was looking for a low resource HTPC OS to run on some C2Q mini boxes and the very first result was "The best Linux HTPCs" with a good article comparing features and downsides. Google has been SEO'd to hell and Google themselves pushing more big corps just makes it that much more shitty, at least Bing is still small enough that the SEOs haven't shat all over it and I can find WTH I'm looking for without a billion spam links. 
> Reply Share 
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> Re: Broken beyond repair (+1) 
> Some Guy I Dont Know 5 hours ago 
> I don't know if Bing is actually better or not, but at least Bing pays me to trawl through their ad-ridden results to find what I was looking for. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Re: Broken beyond repair (+1) 
> Rosco P. Coltrane 6 hours ago 
> I use Google to find something for sale. I use DDG for meaningful search results. Google is just an ad farm. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Re: Broken beyond repair (+1) 
> Delicious Pun 6 hours ago 
> Google is damn near worthless now. I searched for *linux step file viewer* and the first result is a page with windows only software. Not a single mention of Linux. It ignored the word Linux in my search. Fuck them. Going to try Bing next time. 
> I like searching for solutions to my problems with Google. It lets me know that I'm the only one on the planet that has ever had the problem I'm having. Plus I love the fact that every other search engine copies the nonsense that Google shits out. I LOVE IT 
> Reply Share 
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> Re: Broken beyond repair (+1) 
> Malays Boweman a few seconds ago 
> "I like searching for solutions to my problems with Google. It lets me know that I'm the only one on the planet that has ever had the problem I'm having. Plus I love the fact that every other search engine copies the nonsense that Google shits out. I LOVE IT" Oh yeah, I love it when I have a weird problem with a popular piece of hardware or software, and I feel like I am the very first person on the planet to have discovered it because I can't find anything remotely connected to the topic at hand, no matter how well I craft my queries. As a bonus, I get weird sites such as xxxyyyyxxz.abz.zzy that display their keyword stuffing in the page summary, and I get to lists like "XXX hardcore porn, anime, furries, Autocad keygen, hot lesbian women, Windows 10 update download, XXX DVDs for sale...." I wish Google would shitcan sites that do that, or at least bury the listings so far down they never see the light of day. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Throwing stones (+1) 
> oldmac1984 6 hours ago 
> Congrats to DuckDuckGo for coming up with a more âoefairâ way of handling autocomplete for controversial searches. But is it really Googleâ(TM)s fault for not thinking of it? Googles results are no doubt influenced by good and evil forces. Just like everything else in the real world. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> I want relevant results (+3, Insightful) 
> FeelGood314 6 hours ago 
> And often times that means a big company like Amazon vs a tiny company in Nigeria. I'm also fine with the algorithm being tweaked against anti vaxxers and other science deniers. There is so much nonsense science on the internet that I'm sure a simple AI would be confused. So for things that are scientifically true or false then tweaking the weights of pages is fine. I'm also fine with burying content like child porn. 
> 
> If google does mess with their algorthms so much so that they aren't giving the most relevant results there is always duckduckgo.com or bing or anyone else who wants to create a search engine. 
> 
> One last thing, the page ranking algorithm must be secret. It is how they are evaluation web pages. All evaluations should be secret otherwise people will game them. The snowflakes who claim it isn't fair can go cry somewhere else or make their own search engine. 
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> Flag 
> Re: I want relevant results (+1) 
> Empiric 6 hours ago 
> So, you'd like the algorithm to make sure you never got to see this? 
> 
> Deceptive information can be countered by better information. Denying people information offers no such remedy. 
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> Re: I want relevant results (+1) 
> Way Smarter Than You 5 hours ago 
> It's all rainbows to block all those dumb science deniers until it's your favorite thing that suddenly ceases to exist. Maybe your favorite politician only returns negative articles until 6 pages deep and auto complete has things like "... is a [criminal, rapist, tax cheat, racist]" when it's not true. You ok with some random kid at Google burying your favorites like that? It cuts both ways and it's never ok for normal opinion based stuff. For child porn, etc, I think they should send info straight to the FBI or whoever appropriate for country of origin. That is different. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Re: I want relevant results (+1) 
> Z80a 5 hours ago 
> The problem is that if you give em this kind of secrecy, you can't check what they're actually doing and hold em responsible for it. 
> It's the ol and good "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely". 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Ugh, this is so dumb (+1) 
> drinkypoo 6 hours ago 
> Google is problematic because they're building panopticons for both commercial and government use, not because of the quality of their search results. 
> " Google made algorithmic changes to its search results that favor big businesses over smaller ones, and in at least one case made changes on behalf of a major advertiser, eBay Inc." 
> You mean they're returning results that most people actually want? 
> "Google engineers regularly make behind-the-scenes adjustments to other information the company is increasingly layering on top of its basic search results." 
> Yeah, so what? The problem is that they're piling on crap I don't want, not that they're constantly twiddling it. And I can just ignore it. It's like magic! 
> "Despite publicly denying doing so, Google keeps blacklists to remove certain sites or prevent others from surfacing in certain types of results." 
> This is conceivably worrying, but is there any evidence they're doing it for any reason other than improving results? 
> "To evaluate its search results, Google employs thousands of low-paid contractors whose purpose the company says is to assess the quality of the algorithms' rankings. Even so, contractors said Google gave feedback to these workers to convey what it considered to be the correct ranking of results" 
> Yeah, no kidding? They gave them instructions? Oh noes! 
> "The Journal's findings undercut one of Google's core defenses against global regulators worried about how it wields its immense power -- that the company doesn't exert editorial control over what it shows users." 
> Let's see some evidence that they're doing any of this stuff for any reason other than producing results people will click on before we get all worried about it. The big concern with Google is who and what they're tracking, and who is viewing that data, not their search results — which are consistently high-quality, unlike any other search engine. When I go looking for things on Google, I can usually find them. When I go looking for them on other search engines, I usually can't. From where I'm sitting, it looks like what they're doing is working. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Google has both a China and US blacklist (+1) 
> Okian Warrior 6 hours ago 
> "In November 2018 The Guardian reported on group of Google employees who published an open letter calling on their employer to cancel its plans to build a censored search engine for China. Google employees were very upset that Google’s Project Dragonfly would allow the Chinese government to blacklist certain search terms." 
> "In April Project Veritas released leaked documents from a Google insider that shows The Gateway Pundit, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Newsbusters, American Thinker, MRCTV, American Lookout, Twitchy, Daily Caller, Natural News, The Rebel Media, LifeNews, BizPac Review, YoungCons and many others are being targeted, censored, blacklisted and silenced by Google." 
> "It doesn’t matter if you are pro-Tump or a Never Trumper– as long as you are conservative you made the Google list!" 
> Here's the complete list! 
> Here's the original "Wall Street Journal" article. 
> If you find that article paywalled, here's a "Daily Mail" article on the WSJ article with most of the particulars. 
> (The quotes up top are from a recent TGP post.) 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> All computer programs are objective and autonomous (+1) 
> larryjoe 6 hours ago 
> By definition, 100% of all computer programs are objective and autonomous. Of course, all computer programs are written by humans who are neither objective nor autonomous. There are humans who claim objectivity, but as I learned on the first day of my high school history class, true objectivity is impossible. The only humans who claim objectivity are either liars or fools. 
> More importantly, the people who claim objectivity are trying to hide something. They really want to claim something else that is more important and directly desirable, something like this is the the best search result for you. However, that claim is not believable, so the poor substitute of objectivity is claimed. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Break Up Google (+1) 
> WCMI92 6 hours ago 
> And Facebook 
> And Twitter 
> Sorry Microsoft, you are 1990's evil. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Re: Break Up Google (+1) 
> Way Smarter Than You 5 hours ago 
> And break Apple from the App Store. Nice to have a store but they also compete with their own developers so they make money on both ends and control the rules putting completion out of business at a whim, not by making a better app. That's the very definition of anti-trust and abuse of monopoly. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Low paid? (+1) 
> nospam007 6 hours ago 
> "- To evaluate its search results, Google employs thousands of low-paid contractors whose purpose the company says is to assess the quality of the algorithms' rankings." 
> I can do it for free. 
> Give me what I fucking asked for instead of what you _think_ I wanted! 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Personal impression: quality is no longer better (+1) 
> Lonewolf666 6 hours ago 
> ...than others. Recently I have tried DuckDuckGo again, and while its search results was quite weak a few years ago, it handles 95% of my searches just fine. Google is still better for very specialized stuff, where DuckDuckGo comes up empty. 
> Reply Share 
> Flag 
> Because user's needs change (+1) 
> stikves 5 hours ago 
> The needs of users change over time, hence the search engines do change to reflect these. 
> For example, take a simple query like "Walmart". Previously if you just returned "walmart.com" as the first result, everything was fine. Now, not so much. 
> Maybe you are looking for the local store. Then a maps result should be in the second place. If this is a mobile device, maybe it should even be first. 
> Maybe you are looking for Walmart stock information. Was it up, or down today? How many point? Why? 
> Maybe you are looking for a company profile. There comes the little info box on the right. All things, like CEO, incomes, number of stores could be listed. 
> Maybe you are looking for pharmacy hours. 
> Maybe there was a recent event in a store. Unfortunate that it is, there was a recent shooting. Even if the article might not have as many clicks as the other results, int that particular day it might be important. 
> And once you start bringing more relevant results to the first page, naturally some other older results are pushed down. 
> What matters first is satisfying the user's needs. They are the ones searching for the information. 
> [ disclaimer: I work at Google, but not at core search. This is my external observation as a user, and I see similar things at Bing, which I also use ]. 
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