How are google search results created, programmatically or manually?

October 7, 2013 9:49 AM

Does Google manually adjust search engine results?

Working in web development and being involved with a number of robust adwords accounts, I am frequently having conversations with professionals about search rankings.

Over time, with careful inspection curiosities have shown up over the years—for instance, specific URLs dropping from front page only to return several weeks later, or vice versa, and not for obvious reasons—which could lead one to believe that Google manually affects change on specific search results.

Of course, when such a possibility was first brought to my attention, I laughed. It seemed ludicrous and contrary to common wisdom. However, recently I landed on this article from last year about raters and an actual manual and I was amazed.

Now I am not sure what to think. Has the veil lifted been lifted (at least over my eyes)? Does Google's algorithmic magic actually have more to do with the Great Oz (ie smoke-and-mirrors) than it does Skynet, or is the premiere search engine genuinely programmatic?

posted by humannaire to Technology (6 answers total)

As far as I know they use the human raters to evaluate how well the algorithms are doing. After they make a change to the search code, one of the ways that they measure whether it gives better or worse results is to have human raters score the results and compare those results to other versions of the code.
posted by jjwiseman at 10:00 AM on October 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

1) Nobody will actually tell you because Google has billions of dollars a year riding on their dominance in search, and as such their ranking algorithms are a closely guarded trade secret.

2) It's reasonable to assume that Google is continually tweaking it's search algorithms for best results and those tweaks are continually being manually (and programmatically) tested by Google's engineers and test teams.

Disclaimer: I am a software engineer but not for Google.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 10:05 AM on October 7, 2013

My understanding is that while there are human teams working to manually rate the algorithm, and possibly tweak the results for the most popular search terms, human eyes can only really touch a tiny fraction of the HUGE number of possible searches. The algorithm is, by far, dominating the overall system.

The changes you see could be the result of some "manual" tweaking, but it's also possible that what you are seeing is the result of the algorithm itself changing, updating, and getting tested at different times.
posted by tinymegalo at 11:06 AM on October 7, 2013

Best answer: You mostly answered your own question as far as you or anyone is likely to be able to unless Google gets it in their head to make a definitive statement. (Go make a sandwich while you wait.) I don't think I've ever seen anything about what you link to.

• Yes, overall the results are generated programmatically. Considering the obvious size of their index, number of users, generally good results, heavy personalization, etc., etc., etc., this is pretty much the only way that could conceivably be so.
• Yes, manual adjustments are made. Matt Cutts has repeatedly mentioned(here's one instance) his team does it. That's pretty much the only way that team could produce decent results; algorithmic spam detection will only get you so far.
• From there, it's perfectly reasonable to assume there may be other departments or reasons that also involve manual adjustments of some kind, like the people who review "sensitive content." (Anonymous story; standard disclaimers.)
• But, as tylerkaraszewski pointed out, they'll never admit/confirm anything unless they want to.

If what you're after here is confirmation of specifically the claims in that Register story, don't believe anything without some heavy citation behind it.
posted by Su at 11:07 AM on October 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

Google also does A/B testing of different algorithms and these are likely cookie-based -- meaning maybe you were in a "B" group for a test for a few weeks, so you saw things shift around, but then they abandoned that test or your cookies cleared or something, and you were sent back to the A group and things returned to where they had been before.
posted by brainmouse at 11:48 AM on October 7, 2013

Google also does "bubbling", where they customize search results based on your past activity. Since your activity changes, your search results can too. Also, using a different browser or account can give totally different results.
posted by RustyBrooks at 4:39 PM on October 7, 2013