
Google responds to NY Times article by improving its algorithms - Matt_Cutts
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html
======
CWuestefeld
Before making a non-trivial purchase online, I typically do a search for
"$vendorname sucks" and/or "$productname sucks", and this has saved me
headaches on more than one occasion.

I hope that Google's solution won't interfere with finding bad reviews in this
case.

~~~
SandB0x
How does that work though? Doesn't this method just return negative results by
definition? There are a lot of results confirming that "apple sucks" or
"toyota sucks".

Genuinely interested, because the only reliable way I've found is to spend
hours and hours reading through niche forums and reviews, and for every great
product there are plenty of bad comments out there.

~~~
praptak
Of course it returns negative results. The key is not to take them blindly.

If they mention specific facts (extra bonus for verifiable ones), do not sound
like ones written by poopheads or mass produced by competition, then it's a
very strong red flag.

Things like unfavorable terms of service or checked-by-default, hard-to-notice
checkboxes subscribing you to worthless additional services are easy to
verify, even if you give zero trust to anonymous reviews.

------
_delirium
While I can understand not giving out details, to avoid gaming, this post as a
result doesn't have much content! As far as I can tell, this is the entirety
of the description of the change:

 _we developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the
Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion,
provide a extremely poor user experience_

The explanations of what Google _didn't_ do and why are informative, though.

~~~
rudd
Well, they can't really say so clearly exactly what they did. In an effort to
stop people from gaming it, they keep their exact algorithm hidden. When
people get around it, they tweak it further, in an endless cycle.

My guess is that their solution isn't actually based on customer's true
opinions of the vendor, and thus the solution is cheatable. Hiding the
solution is probably their best option at this point.

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
The people who are trying to game google, know exactly what the solution from
google is, or will find out within weeks. The ones left in the dark are the
others, that is, the innocent, or the people who are not trying to cheat
google, who equally, can not hold google to account.

Thus, their secrecy serves no purpose but to further their own interests.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
The "cheaters" will probably have a clue at some point, but unless you are
skirting the edge this is unlikely to have much effect on you.

------
arman0
This post is a great rebuttal to those who think that Google is becoming a
lumbering giant. I wonder how long it would have taken Microsoft to respond to
a similar situation.

~~~
kqr2
One of the search terms mentioned in the NY Times articles was "Christian
Audigier glasses". On Bing, the questionable www.decormyeyes.com site is still
the 5th listing.

[http://www.bing.com/search?q=Christian+Audigier+glasses&...](http://www.bing.com/search?q=Christian+Audigier+glasses&go=&form=QBLH&qs=n&sk=&sc=1-23)

~~~
chollida1
I don't see it in the bing search results anymore.

I guess the answer to how long would it take Bing to change is, about as long
as it takes Google.

~~~
yoak
Not at all! For the reason that google explained on the blog, it is a dumb
response to remove or penalize this particular company in the wake of the
media froth. The admirable and responsible thing to do is to figure out how to
make the thing work better in general to cover the hundreds or thousands of
similar cases not in the New York Times.

This issue is complex and I don't have great overall answers. It isn't clear
how search results should bias based on sentiment. (That's discussed on the
blog and here.) One thing I am sure of is that I respect discovering a result
they consider bad and looking at the algorithms that caused the result and I
don't respect deciding that you got egg on your face for the results of your
algorithm in this case and jiggering the results.

Of course, we don't know that Bing didn't come up with algorithmic
improvements, but the comment you're replying to isn't refuted in any way by
the fact that the result has disappeared (or greatly diminished) in Bing. To
the contrary, in addition to my bias to agree with the OP on Google / Bing,
when one company says, "We've taken a look, made small improvements already
that have some impact, and we're looking to make more" and the search result
simply disappears in the other case, I'm inclined to take that as specific
evidence of the former doing the better job.

~~~
doty
Let's be more specific with our arguments.

You can't argue that Microsoft didn't respond quickly, because there has been
a change in Bing's results. The original comment asked "how long until
Microsoft addressed this problem?", and it appears that Microsoft has now
addressed it, so the point that the comment made stands.

The fact that Microsoft may or may not have addressed the problem by
"jiggering the result" has nothing to do with it. There is no evidence one way
or the other.

You may be deeply suspicious of Microsoft's behavior, and that's perfectly
fine. Let's just be clear about what we're saying. It would have been more
direct to say "Microsoft may have responded quickly, but I bet they just
cheated."

~~~
yoak
I struggle with brevity. :-)

------
patrickaljord
"But if we demoted web pages that have negative comments against them, you
might not be able to find information about many elected officials,"

Good one Google.

------
JangoSteve
How cool would it be if the guy behind this site did a writeup now to show
what happens to search traffic and income when you shit on customers, then get
your very own article in the NYTimes, and then Google tweaks their search
algorithm specifically to hurt you?

------
econner
I couldn't help but fix on these two sentences:

"We know that people will keep trying: attempts to game Google’s ranking, like
the ones mentioned in the article, go on 24 hours a day, every single day.
That’s why we cannot reveal the details of our solution—the underlying
signals, data sources, and how we combined them to improve our rankings—beyond
what we’ve already said."

Doesn't this sound like the exact things security people used to say before
realizing that they needed to make their mechanisms public in order to ensure
their security.

~~~
extension
Transparency works when the problem is solvable and the only obstacle is human
error. It doesn't work for rock, paper, scissors.

~~~
econner
Hmm, good point. That makes sense.

------
dcdan
This feels like mostly a PR piece to me. And reports seem conflicting.

Google doesn't seem to say what they did beyond that they "developed an
algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along
with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide an extremely
poor user experience."

Danny Sullivan claims they are "Using Online Merchant Reviews As Ranking
Signal" ([http://searchengineland.com/google-now-using-online-
merchant...](http://searchengineland.com/google-now-using-online-merchant-
reviews-as-ranking-signal-57445)).

Techcrunch claims Google "compiled a list of hundreds of merchants (including
DecorMyEyes) that provided “bad user experience” and algorithmically forced
them lower" (<http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/googl/>).

edit: typo

~~~
lawrence
Hopefully this is PR spin. If it's not, it's pretty disturbing that
allegations of one mean merchant can cause an algo change. How many businesses
will be collateral damage of this update? How many fake negative review
campaigns with this spawn? If this is a real algo change, it was done in an
extraordinarily hasty, reactionary, and cavalier manner. (Please don't ding my
site G, nothing personal)

------
daten
_But if we demoted web pages that have negative comments against them, you
might not be able to find information about many elected officials, not to
mention a lot of important but controversial concepts. So far we have not
found an effective way to significantly improve search using sentiment
analysis. Of course, we will continue trying._

Google admits, and I agree, that this is a bad idea. But then why are they
continuing to attempt it? Wouldn't neutral search results be better than those
that favored a subjectively positive or negative business?

~~~
yanw
And how would you go about ranking them then? alphabetically?

More research and trial/error never hurts.

~~~
daten
Research may not hurt. Trial and error does if the error affects the users.

If something bad is happening in the world, like thousands of people being
murdered in some remote country, and every page that links to articles about
it has a negative tone because they're condemning what's happening, should
google hide those articles?

I would be fine with alphabetical results if they would give me a regular
expression search instead of recommended results.

------
pzxc
Now if they could only get rid of BigResource.com pages. They come a lot on my
searches, especially coding specific ones, and that site has no content of its
own. It just aggregates forum threads from other forums (not its own), and
what's worse it's usually in such a broken way as to not let you read the
thread on the page you're given OR find the original forum thread it was
scraped from.

Yeah, I know, there are a lot of questionable sites cropping up more and more
as everyone is going all DemandMedia on monetizing SERPs without providing
much real value. That's kind of my point, and why I don't bother reporting
BigResource even if I thought it would accomplish something (which it
wouldn't) -- because it is by far not alone.

Google used to be so good at identifying scraped sites or made-for-adsense and
it seems more and more are not only slipping through the cracks but in fact
dominating the search results. To me this is a much more important issue than
that of people getting a ton of backlinks from negative stories/comments which
anyone with half a brain would be wary of giving money to if they actually
checked (by searching for the company itself directly and discovering all the
bad press instead of just searching for "$mycity $productname" and then giving
their credit card info). Yes, I know that's too much to expect of most people.
But really, I think google should try to help people who can effectively use
their engine and try hard to do so but get poor-quality results before people
who can't or won't bother to use it effectively.

------
ry0ohki
So can I essentially destroy my competitors search rankings by getting enough
people to disparage them on the Internet now?

~~~
brianpan
Fortunately, libel/defamation is against the law.

~~~
ry0ohki
Seriously good luck suing an anonymous person on Get Satisfaction for libel

~~~
brianpan
If Google's problem has been pushed from "people can be bad and game our
system" to "people can be bad and break the law" then I'd say they don't have
to chase the problem much further than that.

Also, you don't think ISPs can be subpoenaed[1] for the names and addresses of
"anonymous" people?

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act#Title_II:_Surve...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act#Title_II:_Surveillance_procedures)

------
kenjackson
Why not just put sentiment analysis directly in the search results?

Search for: Designer Discount Glasses and maybe this page still is on the
first page, but have a frowny face by the link, to indicate that sentiment
analysis is largely negative.

Don't hide anything, but make how the site is relevant more apparent.

~~~
thefool
They seemed to say that such an option was still on the table.

------
martincmartin
When the NY Times article first appeared, the merchant still showed in
Google's and Bing's results, but interestingly not in Duck Duck Go's.

~~~
ntulip
the duck missed it

------
tomger
I don't understand why people think the internet works any different than real
life.

You don't just buy products in a dodgy shop, even if it's the first shop you
see.

Google is as responsible for this as a phonebook company would be for giving
you a bad phone number.

~~~
NikkiA
> Google is as responsible for this as a phonebook company would be for giving
> you a bad phone number.

Generally, I agree, except that there is an important distinction to be made -
the phonebook generally doesn't rank businesses into any order other than
alphabetical. Yes, the phonebook has 'paid listings' in addition, which are
bigger and more prominent, but google has these too, and like the phonebook
these are labelled as such.

But the general google listings are sorted into a form of meaningful order,
people expect (rightly or wrongly) that the higher up in the general listings
a result is, the better it is likely to be because more people use it.

I'm not sure what the best solution to the issue is, perhaps just to accept
that google isn't the best resource for finding reputable businesses, and try
and educate people on the alternatives.

------
skm
Would anyone else like sentiment controls in google's search tools sidebar?
Three settings I'd use would be: • Show more results about which people talk
positively • Show more results about which people talk negatively • Show
results which generate strong opinions, both positive and negative

Alternatively, a "show sentiment for this search" which added a small
indicator next to the search results might do the trick. (Just to be clear,
I'm not proposing adjusting the ranking of pages based on the sentiment on the
page itself, interesting though that might be, but rather based on the
sentiment in the text surrounding links to that page.)

From Google's blog: _As it turns out, Google has a world-class sentiment
analysis system (Large-Scale Sentiment Analysis for News and Blogs). But if we
demoted web pages that have negative comments against them, you might not be
able to find information about many elected officials, not to mention a lot of
important but controversial concepts. So far we have not found an effective
way to significantly improve search using sentiment analysis. Of course, we
will continue trying._

------
ankimal
Rule number one in online retail is looking up the vendor before you buy
anything, no matter how much money you are saving. I dont see why any one
should blame Google for this. Next thing you know, people are gonna want
directions on google maps which others recommend as opposed to other metrics.
If I got car jacked on a certain route, blame Google, it gave me directions.

------
adammichaelc
Seems to have worked (not like I was expecting it not to). This search term
used to show DecorMyEyes on the 1st page, but no longer does:

[http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=...](http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Christian+Audigier+glasses&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

~~~
chintan
And they are still on the Index

[http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=...](http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Christian+Audigier+glasses&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&source=hp&q=Christian+Audigier+glasses+decormyeyes&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=3f2d83e828bdfbc)

------
jeffreyrusso
This was an artful response. Google took what was essentially a piece of
negative press from the New York Times and used it as an argument against the
call for transparency in the algorithm that so many major media sources are
pushing for lately.

------
subbu
_And thanks to Google Earth, he can faux-stalk his customers without leaving
his house_

Add google streetview and their latest Google Earth 6
([http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/introducing-google-
ea...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/introducing-google-earth-6the-
next.html)), it makes it even more easier to stalk people without leaving your
chair.

------
jalpino
I wonder if Google took into consideration their own customer service into the
equation? Non-existent support is just as bad as being a douche.

------
shasta
I wonder if they're going to apply this filtering technology to their
sponsored links. There are paying scammers, too.

------
mixmax
derefr actually proposed using sentiment analysis in the discussion on the
original NY Times article. Not a bad call.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1949064>

------
TotlolRon
_"A wise old owl sat in a Valley,

The more he saw, the less he believed,

The less he believed, the more he saw,

We never ask: what is the last straw?"_

\-- @taylorbuley in TC comments regarding something else, 2010

------
mcritz
Google’s headline is “Being bad to your customers is bad for business”.

I always thought “being bad” was analogous to “evil”.

------
aristidb
"Improving algorithms" now involves writing a blacklist? Blacklists are fine,
but please don't call them algorithms.

~~~
joshuacc
"we developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the
Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion,
provide an extremely poor user experience."

The implication seems to be that they've found a way of programmatically
identifying these offenders.

~~~
aristidb
I originally read it the way that they feed the list of merchants manually.
But it is possible that I understood that wrong, yeah.

~~~
arbitrarywords
Algorithm Psuedocode? If website in manually fed list Then demote.

------
Google_franke
Now mute google conversations the smarter way. The unmute feature added to
More Actions on Emails. <http://bit.ly/gX0roM>

