2 ms·

>"We're obviously doing OK overall, our search share, usership, and profits are up every quarter. Let's not rock the boat by starting a war with these content m

>"We're obviously doing OK overall, our search share, usership, and profits are up every quarter. Let's not rock the boat by starting a war with these content mills, which would surely include lawsuits and congressional hearings calling attention to our market power." You do have a point there. We do get sued a lot, and in general courts have upheld our view that search results are our constitutionally protected speech, but we are a lot more lawsuit shy than we used to be. >But I think Google could spend twice as much on that search quality, and still be profitable. So, why doesn't it? I'm not sure it would help. We have a _lot_ of people working on search quality, and even more working on the infrastructure that supports it. More people would certainly let us scratch more itches and peer in more dark corners, but I'm not sure it would produce the kind of dramatic improvements you are looking for. >Also, what if Google's search quality gets monotonically better given the web it has to work with, but the overall economic impact of Google's ad programs and dominant-focal-point-rankings is simultaneously making the average web content worse? That's something a lot of people worry about. I hope that having a financial incentive to make content results in more good content, or at least more content that isn't horrible. Even the existence of content-farms is probably a net positive. For all the crap they produce, a lot of it is filling niches in which there simply isn't any content, and the stuff they produce _is_ better than nothing. >Will I ever get an advanced search operator that will filter all AdSense-carrying results out of my searches? You really want the New York Times filtered out of your searches?

gojomo 16y ago
It's not that I actually think spending twice as much on search quality is the right decision. Just that the fact that Google could, and doesn't, reminds us that some level of management at Google is trading off search quality against other values. (As a competitive for-profit entity, profitability is high among those other values.) Even without conscious intent, if there's a saturation point where greater search quality doesn't help net profitability, or even where slightly worse quality means more profits, the organization will develop certain practices and shared rationalizations which help them converge on that optimal point. These indirect mechanisms for avoiding quality when it conflicts with profitability may not seem malicious on their surface. In fact, here's what they might sound like instead: I'm not sure [spending more on search quality] would help. Even the existence of content-farms is probably a net positive. For all the crap they produce, a lot of it is filling niches in which there simply isn't any content, and the stuff they produce _is_ better than nothing. And yes, in many searches, I would gladly sacrifice NYTimes results to get rid of EHow and its siblings. (I didn't ask to eliminate AdSense sites from every results-page, just an option to do so when I'm in a MFA-polluted category.)
- LeBleu 16y ago
  I think gojomo has a really good idea here. However, there is no reason to bias it against Google's ad network. We need an advanced search option to find non-ad supported sites, that behind the scenes attempts to filter out every known ad network. The use case wouldn't be an all the time thing, it would be when you are searching and get results that are overly polluted with ad-based content. Having the option to filter to non-ad based content lets you focus on those sites that have a motivation other than page views for providing content. I imagine this would include both sites actually selling products and non-profit sites like Wikipedia and open source.
  - gojomo 16y ago
    Yes, and it could also be sensitive to the screen-area devoted to ads. As in, discard all results where >40% of the above-the-fold area is paid advertisements.

gojomo 16y ago

It's not that I actually think spending twice as much on search quality is the right decision. Just that the fact that Google could, and doesn't, reminds us that some level of management at Google is trading off search quality against other values. (As a competitive for-profit entity, profitability is high among those other values.) Even without conscious intent, if there's a saturation point where greater search quality doesn't help net profitability, or even where slightly worse quality means more profits, the organization will develop certain practices and shared rationalizations which help them converge on that optimal point. These indirect mechanisms for avoiding quality when it conflicts with profitability may not seem malicious on their surface. In fact, here's what they might sound like instead: I'm not sure [spending more on search quality] would help. Even the existence of content-farms is probably a net positive. For all the crap they produce, a lot of it is filling niches in which there simply isn't any content, and the stuff they produce _is_ better than nothing. And yes, in many searches, I would gladly sacrifice NYTimes results to get rid of EHow and its siblings. (I didn't ask to eliminate AdSense sites from every results-page, just an option to do so when I'm in a MFA-polluted category.)

LeBleu 16y ago
I think gojomo has a really good idea here. However, there is no reason to bias it against Google's ad network. We need an advanced search option to find non-ad supported sites, that behind the scenes attempts to filter out every known ad network. The use case wouldn't be an all the time thing, it would be when you are searching and get results that are overly polluted with ad-based content. Having the option to filter to non-ad based content lets you focus on those sites that have a motivation other than page views for providing content. I imagine this would include both sites actually selling products and non-profit sites like Wikipedia and open source.
- gojomo 16y ago
  Yes, and it could also be sensitive to the screen-area devoted to ads. As in, discard all results where >40% of the above-the-fold area is paid advertisements.