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[2016]. Having worked at Google’s Search Quality Evaluation team, I can confirm that Google would only manually remove sites from its search results if they vi

[2016]. Having worked at Google’s Search Quality Evaluation team, I can confirm that Google would only manually remove sites from its search results if they violate its webmaster guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en Of course, there can be other issues preventing a site from showing up in the search results (e.g. site migration issues, accidentally locking out Googlebot in robots.txt, ...). In such cases, the best way to raise the issue would be to report it on the webmaster forum, which is frequented both by smart and helpful users and by Googlers working on search quality: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/webmasters

joosters 9y ago
So Google's recommended way of reporting a problem is to post on a forum that Google themselves don't officially read (or promise any kind of response)? Do you understand why some people might not think that's a satisfactory solution?
- mquander 9y ago
  One might think that how satisfactory it is depends on how well it works. The parent is asserting it works pretty well.
  - tobltobs 9y ago
    He doesn't assert it works pretty well, he just says it is the best option.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      Plus the parent also worked for Google. Hardly the most appropriate source for learning whether the option worked well for the other end.
- fastball 9y ago
  It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... I'll rag on Google's poor support as much as the next guy, but only when it's warranted. ProtonMail and anyone else that gets delisted / what-have-you is not Google's client and shouldn't expect first-class support for things like this.
  - tgragnato 9y ago
    This is not a matter of support, although I understand why it is convenient for Google to consider the issue from this point of view. $$$ The problem is that when a search engine has the overwhelming majority of the online search market, freedom of information has a strict dependence on the QoS of that engine. Since people (at least in Europe) have a legal right to freedom of information, if Google is not providing support in this regard, then it's responsible for not respecting rights of European citizens. edit: Freedom of information is part of the Swiss constitution too. > Every person has the right to receive information freely, to obtain it from generally accessible sources and to disseminate it [16.3]
    - fastball 9y ago
      That's insanity. So because Google is an information company and governments have granted a "right to information [x]" Google has to provide any information a consumer could possibly want, for free, regardless of the cost to them? [x] - which is an absurdity in itself - what information? how? when? where? This "right" is just another overreach by the EU et. al. wanting everything to be a "human right" even if it's nonsense. A right to whose information? If I have a unilateral right to information, does that mean I have a right to your medical records? Where do you draw the line? If it's just a right to my own information, which I think is reasonable, Google search results don't qualify.
      - rusk 9y ago
        Yeah, the law looking out for the best interests of her citizens is insanity. > does that mean I have a right to your medical records No, because under data-protection legislation nobody has the right to data about you, but you. More European insanity. I think GP has incorrectly categorised this as an FOI issue, it's more to do with Antitrust, which is a well worn path in the USA as well.
Retric 9y ago
It's interesting, but this is probably one of the reasons google has become so terrible. It's treating searches as a game, not something it needs to improve. Resulting in a steady decline year after year.
- f_allwein 9y ago
  I don't understand. Google is putting considerable resources and effort into improving search quality.
  - Retric 9y ago
    And yet they are failing. For any given search many websites have an economic incentive to be at the top and are willing to understand the process and jump though some hoops. However, jumping though hoops has zero correlation with quality and only minimal correlation with relevancy. It's not an easy job to find a useful mattress review website or whatever, but Google's users don't care about easy they care about how useful something is. Even worse Google's actions end up changing the websites they are linking to. It's a slow but vicious cycle that I don't have a solution to, I just finally realized what the problem was.
StreamBright 9y ago
You mean violate the political stance of Google or any other arbitrary properties they got. You can go and compare search results across Duckduckgo, Bing and Google to get a full picture how much the search results are censored. When people talk about "net neutrality" I always wonder why isn't there outrage against this, because it is definitely not neutral. Same goes to many Google services, most notably Youtube. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Concrete examples?
  - vetinari 9y ago
    This is more about youtube than google search, but it will be not that different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0c1Bph1jrQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0c1Bph1jrQ After all, it goes from the top "We're not arguing for censorship, we're arguing just take it off the page. Put it somewhere else. Make it harder to find." - Eric Schmidt
  - StreamBright 9y ago
    Christina Hoff Sommers, Dave Rubin, Prager University, all of their content is delisted and demonetized on Youtube. Non of them is illegal content.
    - jamespo 9y ago
      But it's available? Seems like your comparison with Tienanmen Square falls a little flat.
      - StreamBright 9y ago
        I was pointing out that I am very well aware of the difference between government initiated censorship vs. Google just randomly filtering something that it disagrees with.
tyingq 9y ago
"Having worked at Google’s Search Quality Evaluation team, I can confirm that Google would only manually remove sites from its search results if they violate its webmaster guidelines" Or, Google can get around that by repeatedly tweaking the algorithm on purpose to demote specific types of sites. http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/ http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/. (long read, but comparison shopping sites didn't violate any guidelines) There's also the issue of false positives. Machine learning algorithms that demote sites (panda/penguin/vince) certainly have some amount of unintended victims.
- merb 9y ago
  > but comparison shopping sites didn't violate any guidelines most comparsion shopping sites were anoying and did get ranked for everything I wanted to buy. I.e. "buy television" gave you 1. amazon, 2-6. comparsion sites. If I wanted to compare televisions I would've entered "compare televisions pricing", etc.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    If you follow the FTC link above, though, the human testers Google used liked them.
saas_co_de 9y ago
> Google would only manually remove sites What you mean is that low level employees can only manually remove sites following a set of strict guidelines. Senior management can make whatever editorial decisions they like.
oelmekki 9y ago
I think you nail it, here: the biggest problem of google is support :) This is something notorious and traversal to all its products.
- reaperducer 9y ago
  Which is interesting because the #1 way to improve your product is to listen to your customer complaints. This is Business 101 everywhere except Silicon Valley, which thinks it knows better than everyone else in the world.
  - oelmekki 9y ago
    Please, no need to be hateful, Intercom and Zendesk are from SF too :)
huhtenberg 9y ago
> which is frequented both by smart and helpful users ... as well as loud and obnoxious know-it-alls that tag team, upvote their own answers and drown any discussion in irrelevant bickering and deferrals to their own wisdom.

joosters 9y ago

So Google's recommended way of reporting a problem is to post on a forum that Google themselves don't officially read (or promise any kind of response)? Do you understand why some people might not think that's a satisfactory solution?

mquander 9y ago
One might think that how satisfactory it is depends on how well it works. The parent is asserting it works pretty well.
- tobltobs 9y ago
  He doesn't assert it works pretty well, he just says it is the best option.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    Plus the parent also worked for Google. Hardly the most appropriate source for learning whether the option worked well for the other end.
fastball 9y ago
It's not like you have a right to appear in Google's search results... I'll rag on Google's poor support as much as the next guy, but only when it's warranted. ProtonMail and anyone else that gets delisted / what-have-you is not Google's client and shouldn't expect first-class support for things like this.
- tgragnato 9y ago
  This is not a matter of support, although I understand why it is convenient for Google to consider the issue from this point of view. $$$ The problem is that when a search engine has the overwhelming majority of the online search market, freedom of information has a strict dependence on the QoS of that engine. Since people (at least in Europe) have a legal right to freedom of information, if Google is not providing support in this regard, then it's responsible for not respecting rights of European citizens. edit: Freedom of information is part of the Swiss constitution too. > Every person has the right to receive information freely, to obtain it from generally accessible sources and to disseminate it [16.3]
  - fastball 9y ago
    That's insanity. So because Google is an information company and governments have granted a "right to information [x]" Google has to provide any information a consumer could possibly want, for free, regardless of the cost to them? [x] - which is an absurdity in itself - what information? how? when? where? This "right" is just another overreach by the EU et. al. wanting everything to be a "human right" even if it's nonsense. A right to whose information? If I have a unilateral right to information, does that mean I have a right to your medical records? Where do you draw the line? If it's just a right to my own information, which I think is reasonable, Google search results don't qualify.
    - rusk 9y ago
      Yeah, the law looking out for the best interests of her citizens is insanity. > does that mean I have a right to your medical records No, because under data-protection legislation nobody has the right to data about you, but you. More European insanity. I think GP has incorrectly categorised this as an FOI issue, it's more to do with Antitrust, which is a well worn path in the USA as well.

Retric 9y ago

It's interesting, but this is probably one of the reasons google has become so terrible. It's treating searches as a game, not something it needs to improve. Resulting in a steady decline year after year.

f_allwein 9y ago
I don't understand. Google is putting considerable resources and effort into improving search quality.
- Retric 9y ago
  And yet they are failing. For any given search many websites have an economic incentive to be at the top and are willing to understand the process and jump though some hoops. However, jumping though hoops has zero correlation with quality and only minimal correlation with relevancy. It's not an easy job to find a useful mattress review website or whatever, but Google's users don't care about easy they care about how useful something is. Even worse Google's actions end up changing the websites they are linking to. It's a slow but vicious cycle that I don't have a solution to, I just finally realized what the problem was.

StreamBright 9y ago

You mean violate the political stance of Google or any other arbitrary properties they got. You can go and compare search results across Duckduckgo, Bing and Google to get a full picture how much the search results are censored. When people talk about "net neutrality" I always wonder why isn't there outrage against this, because it is definitely not neutral. Same goes to many Google services, most notably Youtube. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Concrete examples?
- vetinari 9y ago
  This is more about youtube than google search, but it will be not that different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0c1Bph1jrQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0c1Bph1jrQ After all, it goes from the top "We're not arguing for censorship, we're arguing just take it off the page. Put it somewhere else. Make it harder to find." - Eric Schmidt
- StreamBright 9y ago
  Christina Hoff Sommers, Dave Rubin, Prager University, all of their content is delisted and demonetized on Youtube. Non of them is illegal content.
  - jamespo 9y ago
    But it's available? Seems like your comparison with Tienanmen Square falls a little flat.
    - StreamBright 9y ago
      I was pointing out that I am very well aware of the difference between government initiated censorship vs. Google just randomly filtering something that it disagrees with.

tyingq 9y ago

"Having worked at Google’s Search Quality Evaluation team, I can confirm that Google would only manually remove sites from its search results if they violate its webmaster guidelines" Or, Google can get around that by repeatedly tweaking the algorithm on purpose to demote specific types of sites. http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/ http://graphics.wsj.com/google-ftc-report/. (long read, but comparison shopping sites didn't violate any guidelines) There's also the issue of false positives. Machine learning algorithms that demote sites (panda/penguin/vince) certainly have some amount of unintended victims.

merb 9y ago
> but comparison shopping sites didn't violate any guidelines most comparsion shopping sites were anoying and did get ranked for everything I wanted to buy. I.e. "buy television" gave you 1. amazon, 2-6. comparsion sites. If I wanted to compare televisions I would've entered "compare televisions pricing", etc.
- tyingq 9y ago
  If you follow the FTC link above, though, the human testers Google used liked them.

saas_co_de 9y ago

> Google would only manually remove sites What you mean is that low level employees can only manually remove sites following a set of strict guidelines. Senior management can make whatever editorial decisions they like.

oelmekki 9y ago

I think you nail it, here: the biggest problem of google is support :) This is something notorious and traversal to all its products.

reaperducer 9y ago
Which is interesting because the #1 way to improve your product is to listen to your customer complaints. This is Business 101 everywhere except Silicon Valley, which thinks it knows better than everyone else in the world.
- oelmekki 9y ago
  Please, no need to be hateful, Intercom and Zendesk are from SF too :)

huhtenberg 9y ago

> which is frequented both by smart and helpful users ... as well as loud and obnoxious know-it-alls that tag team, upvote their own answers and drown any discussion in irrelevant bickering and deferrals to their own wisdom.