Voting Experiment: Google Sneezed but Keep Your Pants On
A substantial portion of the web world is turning today to look at a small experiment underway at Google, but there's no reason to believe that big changes are right around the corner. Googlified, one of several independent Google watchdog blogs, discovered a new voting feature in the Experimental section of Google Labs and promptly jumped to the click-friendly conclusion that something Digg-like was afoot.
The search company is experimenting with letting users give thumbs up to certain items on their results pages to move those items up the page, or to select an X icon to hide a result from the page. Users can also suggest a link to be included in their personal results page for the same search query again. You have to be logged into a Google account to see the results of your clicking on these icons the next time you search.
A few things to keep in mind, perhaps talking points to bring down your hyperventilating co-workers:
- There's zero indication that these personal votes will influence everyone's search results and in fact it's quite unlikely. The current algorithm reflects years of ongoing work by some of the smartest scientists in the field. Google doesn't need your and every hired fraudulent clicker's input into what's a good search result.
- This looks a whole lot like personal bookmarking, which is good to offer as many methods of as possible as there are many people in the world and thus many ways that work best for different groups of users. Is bookmarking online a straight path to manipulation of global search rankings? No.
- Voting has been around longer than Digg, so even if you see voting happening, it's not necessary to call it Digg-like. Ok? How about we only call voting systems "like Digg" if a varying number of votes, not all of which are valued equally, are required within a short period of time in order for a much larger number of people to be meaningfully exposed to what was voted on. And there are comments, which can be voted on as well. The US Presidential election, for example, is based on voting - but is nothing like Digg. Agreed? Kthxbi.
Google Operating System, a particularly smart Google watch-dog blog, concludes its post today with links to previous, similar experiments by Google - like add better search results, reorder the results and remove search results.
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All passengers, please note that should oxygen be reduced in the cabin, oxygen masks will drop from the ceiling. Put your mask on before helping others.
Nicely done Marshall.
Of course headlines can get you on digg fp :)
I agree with you Marshall. A good post.
What's wrong with using voter data like bounce rate data? Bounce rate doesn't completely dictate rankings. It informs them.
Humans can do something algorithms cannot and Google knows this. They want to see, surely, what they can do to get the good data out of the fraud data that is sure to come flying in the moment this would be launched.
I think the radical reactions to this on both ends is off the mark. StumbleUpon is no bastion of irrelevant spammed, gamed results. Google wants what Stumble has - it's powerful and it works.
As long as all they do to "organize the web" is rely on the eggheads, as accomplished as they are, they are only going to get certain results.
Put people into the mix in some way, and remarkable things can happen.
If we were truly SO afraid of spammers and SEOs no one would ever launch another daring app on the web for fear of someone gaming it!
yuck Google, very POOR customer service with them