
Google Interferes with Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results - sahin-boydas
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-google-interferes-with-its-search-algorithms-and-changes-your-results-11573823753?mod=rsswn
======
willyg123
Here's the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines document the article is
referencing [0]

"Expertise" is mentioned 99 times, "authoritative" 55 times, and "trust" 69
times. Of course, tweaks to generate search results favoring websites that
show expertise, authoritativeness, and trust are going to favor larger, more
established companies.

Seems like News Corp shot the arrow and then drew an 8,800-word bullseye
around it.

[0]
[https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf)

~~~
cj
Interesting to skim through the PDF.

Here's an excerpt from Section 3.1 which outlines the "most important factors"
that influence Page Quality ratings. One thing I found particularly
interesting is that raters are encouraged to search for external sources to
determine a website's reputation (one example they provide in the PDF is that
Kernel.org should receive the highest rating for term "Linux Kernel archives"
because of Wikipedia's kernel.org page vouching for its authoritativeness).

\---

\- The Purpose of the Page

\- Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness: This is an important quality
characteristic. Use your research on the additional factors below to inform
your rating.

\- Main Content Quality and Amount: The rating should be based on the landing
page of the task URL.

\- Website Information/information about who is responsible for the MC: Find
information about the website as well as the creator of the MC.

\- Website Reputation/reputation about who is responsible for the MC: Links to
help with reputation research will be provided.

------
mlb_hn
It seems to conflate search/auto-complete and then ignores the context of
search having adversarial groups consistently trying to manipulate search
rankings. While it's possible this was a good faith article, given News Corps'
broader conflicts with Google recently I'd guess it's intentional.

~~~
rdxm
We are down to like one or two remaining professional journalism shops (FT and
Economist, imho).

Sad to see once decent, thoughtful operations like WSJ, NY Times, WaPo,
basically turned into conflict generation drivel producers.

Edit to add: I don't mean to ignore efforts like Pro Publica, but they are
very small ops and don't really move the needle readership-wise.

~~~
wcunning
I would argue that the economist takes much stronger editorial stances than
other publications allow. They haven’t given any space to or said any kind
anything about Russia in the last 10 years, nor have they given any space to
the pro-Brexit side of the debate. They do great reporting inside their
editorial stance, but they’re a long ways from “Just the facts, ma’am.”

~~~
pjc50
> They haven’t given any space to or said any kind anything about Russia in
> the last 10 years, nor have they given any space to the pro-Brexit side of
> the debate.

Signs of a quality publication, surely? There's not a lot of papers saying
nice things about a mafia oligarchy state unless they've been paid to do so,
and the pro-Brexit arguments are mostly nonsense.

The economist has firmly located itself in an economic and socially liberal
policy position, but they're willing to look at other cogently argued
positions.

~~~
AndrewBissell
> mafia oligarchy state

Could be talking about Russia, the U.S., or China at this point, really.

> the pro-Brexit arguments are mostly nonsense

Well, the Economist will assiduously avoid any examination of how the common
currency & market are handmaidens for austerity imposed on the peripheral
countries to ensure bondholders are always made whole in the EU financial
core, that's for sure. Not sure what makes this point "nonsense" though.

~~~
pjc50
That argument may have been valid for Grexit, but UK austerity is entirely
native Tory policy, and the primacy of bondholders is pretty much global
doctrine (see Argentina pari passu fiasco).

Anyway, that has zero bearing on how Brexit has been conducted, and especially
on the opposition to free movement of people.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
The entire premise here is ridiculous. It "interferes" and "changes your
results" to "shape what you see." It's like me asking you a question and you
"interfering with your vocal cords and changing your response to shape what I
hear."

~~~
pochamago
People feel like algorithms are neutral and people are biased. Having people
actively intervene on something that only algorithms would have touched
otherwise feels bad if you already suspected that your results aren't what
they should be

~~~
6gvONxR4sf7o
Yeah, people who don't have practical experience with them seem to think of
algos as a kind of designed policy, like laws. Exceptions to the laws seem to
be hypocrisy. In reality, algos are just a way to scale and automate some
goal. Exceptions compensate for imperfection execution of that goal.

------
theboywho
I don't get what the article means by "Google Interferes" beyond what we
already know.

I can't imagine any notion of neutrality applied to search results, except
making your search algorithm public, but then, Google is not a public service,
it's Google results you came looking for by using Google, if you don't like
them, and more and more people are not happy with the results as well,
something else will emerge and win.

~~~
tehjoker
I would point out that people made this argument back in 2005, 2010, 2015, and
now 2019 and all that's happened is is the argument has evolved from "you can
use X other search engines!" to "well even if they have a monopolistic
position, someone else will make one eventually".

~~~
theboywho
The question is whether or not Google results are relevant to your search
query. There are many alternatives to Google, you can't claim that Google
results are not relevant to what you are looking for because Google
"interferes" with them and at the same time claim they are so good no
alternative is capable of competing.

~~~
zepto
Yes, you can easily claim that the interference introduces bias for the vast
majority of people doing basic searches, even while google is indispensable
for the smaller percentage of more complex searches.

There is no contradiction.

------
mc32
Quality has gone down. Some of it due to “freshness” bias. Some due to content
farms. And now we have more explicit search results squelching.

I used to have some favorite sites with different things, some recipes, some
other technical things. I can’t surface those results anymore. They are buried
by all sorts of uninteresting results.

~~~
mr__y
There is also other reason. More and more new content is not visible for web
search engines - for instance groups on social media like facebook or
linkedin. Very often the results for a very specific query are pages from some
forums or discussion boards. Since more and more discussions are taking place
in one or other walled garden, more and more relevant content will not be
accessible through independent search engines. I'm afraid that in the future
larger and larger fraction of content will be fragmented and the ability to
use a single search engine to find everything will become a thing of the past.

------
ajna91
Similar discussion 2 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544537](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544537)

~~~
stevenicr
yes, same research, different publication spinning it, much deeper / better HN
discussions on the issues on that thread imho. They maybe should be merged.

~~~
danso
That discussion seems to be on the same WSJ article, but syndicated through
msn.com

------
braindead_in
What is my results? All results are generated by Google and i don't have a
copyright claim on them. They can show me whatever result they want. If I'm
not happy, I'll look elsewhere.

~~~
friedman23
> All results are generated by Google and i don't have a copyright claim on
> them. They can show me whatever result they want. If I'm not happy, I'll
> look elsewhere.

Google gets legal protections from claiming that they don't editorialize their
search results.

~~~
colejohnson66
Why is this being downvoted? Doesn’t Section 230 apply to them if they don’t
editorialize?

~~~
elpool2
Section 230 protects them from being liable for user generated content
regardless of if they editorialize or not.

------
vkaku
Search Quality is so hard, it's hard to make everyone happy. Wish every Search
engine had an easy to use personal option (IoC).

Not that I defend Google by any means, but it's hard to get everything right
with a system like this.

~~~
Enginerrrd
Yes! A toggle on/off button for personalization would be amazing!

I remember it used to be easy for me to find obscure things on google using
the advanced features. As they "improved" Google by giving it better results
for the average user with sort of a "dumbed down" kind of feel, my ability to
do that went way down. A few years after that, the personalized results
started to get really really good, around 2014-2015 or so. Since then, it's
gotten bad again, and I'm not sure why, but I suspect it has to do with $$.
Basically it started with the Wikipedia article not being the first result and
has continued to devolve. I never did recover the ability to get nuanced
searches like I used to. It's kind of just a luck thing now. Although I
actually am having better luck with duckduckgo now.

------
thewarrior
What I would be interested in knowing is what metrics Google uses to optimize
their systems. When rolling out a new update do they only look at click
through rates ? Do they have human moderators rate a sample of search results
?

Given the large number of people such ranking algorithms affect I foresee
regulations being passed to make them more transparent.

Companies should be required to publish audits about whether their algorithms
are biased towards protected categories and other things like their
competitors or big companies.

------
cyrksoft
[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/google-search-
re...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/google-search-results-have-
more-human-help-than-you-think-report-finds/)

------
daphneokeefe
Nobody has mentioned StartPage.com. I believe that uses Google Search in the
background, while not sending your personal data or returning a bunch of
advertising garbage.

~~~
SalimoS
There is a story about startpage earlier this month

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21371577](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21371577)

------
jojothehobo
The written rules and algorithms are only half the story. The other half is
how seriously and with what integrity the criteria applied. The Soviet Union
had a more liberal Constitution than the US, but it was interpreted by the
Communist Party to allow the Gulags and controlled news and academic writings.

------
jojothehobo
A follow-up to my earlier post about algorithms being only half the story. I
follow the Google news aggregation feed. Despite the algorithm and their
"Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines" their news feed is still a left-wing
propaganda rag. It isn't a place to go to get an accurate model of what is
going on in the world. That should come as no surprise because, based on the
news coming out of Google, their employees are always demanding that Google
not work for certain DoD programs, not work with ICE and support most
Politically Correct causes.

The first thing Google needs to do to improve their news and search engine
quality is to hire and train people who have quality and integrity as their
guiding principles. Leftist ideologues need not apply for these functions
although they can contribute in most other parts of the company.

------
hownottowrite
Alternative Headline: "News Corp Interferes with Its Journalists and Changes
Your Context"

~~~
zepto
Are you saying we should expect Google results to be as biased as news
outlets?

------
timvisee
I need to subscribe to read. I won't.

------
codingslave
I posted this in another thread about this, and my opinion is such:

The American people arent this stupid. Really arrogant of google to think they
can get away with controlling information at this scale. The forces of
capitalism will eventually surface another search engine that will compete
with them

------
friedman23
I think this is a good article. People should be aware that the information
they are being exposed to is being controlled.

Most of the complaints about the article are purely political.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I'm not sure that's entirely fair. Most of the complaints about the article
are coming from people who know enough to understand that there's no
alternative to interfering. There's no magic "correct results" machine at
Google HQ; there are only strategies for better results, and sometimes the
best known strategy involves manual intervention. So they see an article
that's saying something obviously true in conspiratorial tones; I don't think
it's political to be annoyed by that.

The best argument I see in favor of the WSJ article is that many people
actually do think Google has a magic machine. If so it's fair to publish
stories about how that's not true. Yes, it couldn't work any other way if you
think about it, but the point of a newspaper article is to get people informed
enough to think about it.

~~~
friedman23
>Most of the complaints about the article are coming from people who know
enough to understand that there's no alternative to interfering

Except Google claims they don't interfere, which is why this is news.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
As far as I know, Google has never made any general claims that they don't
interfere. Of course they interfere. They just claim that there are specific
reasons they won't use to justify interference and specific interference
methods they won't employ.

(The WSJ article does contain some claims that Google's interfering in ways
they previously denied, and that part is unquestionably news if true, but it
really doesn't seem like the main point they're trying to get across.)

~~~
friedman23
You are really trying to twist this in google's favor. The fact is they claim
they don't editorialize and they do.

~~~
x0x0
Any choice of results to produce is an editorialization, barring the existence
of an oracle to tell us the one true answer. Thus your complaint about
editorializing reduces to nothing but google chose the results they produce.
About which, well, duh; that has been true since the very first search result
they served.

------
drallison
>rdxm 8 minutes ago [dead] [-] We are down to like one or two remaining
professional journalism shops (FT and Economist, imho). WSJ, NY Times, WaPo,
basically turned into conflict generation drivel producers. Edit to add: I
don't mean to ignore efforts like Pro Publica, but they are very small ops and
don't really move the needle readership-wise.

This comment was marked dead but seems cogent and on point. The article being
commented did not add much of anything to the discussion of search engine
algorithms.

~~~
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