6 ms·

I could absolutely believe that there is a "quality" ranking that pushes Daily Mail stories down because the domain contains such poor quality content, or that

I could absolutely believe that there is a "quality" ranking that pushes Daily Mail stories down because the domain contains such poor quality content, or that the pages are loaded down with so much crap that people hit 'back' almost immediately after clicking on one of their links. That said, and as much as it pains me to side with the Daily Mail on anything, I think there's an interesting argument to be made here that Google's "quality" ratings are entirely opaque and the public should be given better access to them.

webinvest 6y ago
Here’s a Google AMP page of a Daily Mail page that crashes on every page load for me on my iPhone’s default Safari browser. They probably need to hire a front-end developer or web performance specialist to diagnose it. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3361998/amp/Not-happy-birthday-Research-reveals-today-worst-day-year-celebrate-thanks-friends-family-partied-money-spent-Christmas.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl... Slow or failing page loads negatively affect search rankings on all search engines & 80% of users abandon your site if it takes more than 10 seconds to load.
- toxik 6y ago
  WFM
- lmm 6y ago
  Safari is notoriously the new IE. It's probably a perfectly spec-compliant page that happens to trigger a bug.
- webinvest 6y ago
  This became my most upvoted comment of all time (+22) so it must’ve gotten a lot of attention and is probably worth me following up on. The Google AMP link above now loads impressively fast in under 1.5 seconds in the same iPhone Safari browser. If you click-through the AMP link to get to the Daily Mail’s full version of the page, that loads in 9-10 seconds on the first view and about 6 seconds on subsequent (cached) views.
cortesoft 6y ago
The problem with that is if people know the exact formula for quality, sites can work to game it. Basically, once the formula for quality is known, it no longer is a formula for quality.
- deelowe 6y ago
  There are ways to perform 3rd party assessment without directly exposing intellectual property to interested parties.
  - tankenmate 6y ago
    But the point isn't 3rd part assessments, the issue is that people want transparency of the algorithms; i.e. the intellectual property is exactly what people want to see.
    - deelowe 6y ago
      Agreed and I'd be willing to bet that a significant portion of those people may have conflicting interests here.
  - ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
    Unless you think it's even in the realm of possibility to have a human being do the assessment, at the end of the day it's still going to be an algorithm that can be gamed.
- munificent 6y ago
  This is the key problem. All automated moderation is essentially a wicked mix of an iterated prisoner's dilemma and Goodhart's Law.
arp242 6y ago
> I think there's an interesting argument to be made here that Google's "quality" ratings are entirely opaque and the public should be given better access to them. It's a tricky problem, in principle I agree with you, but on the other hand more transparency also means more information for people who are gaming the system. And there are many MANY people who (try to) game Google. Never underestimate the amount of ridiculous effort some people will go to to make a buck. Arguably Google's largest value is that it's actually reasonably good in preventing this. So ... I don't know.
- gverrilla 6y ago
  Good? Are you kidding? Google results nowadays are a funfest of SEO abusers and quality is VERY LOW.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- jokethrowaway 6y ago
  The main reason I gave up Google as default search engine is that results were not good and I couldn't find material. Duckduckgo provides generally better results and has some very cool gadgets (like stack overflow answer expansion). Google is winning on businesses' opening hours and safe search on images is not as safe as Google, which is the single caveat I need to remember about before looking for something.
mustyoshi 6y ago
Why should the public be given access to that information? Google should be under no obligation to provide any of that unless we "nationalize" the idea of search engines and declare them a human right. Until then, it's a voluntary service to be consumed.
- jasonfarnon 6y ago
  Of course google isn't under such a legal obligation. But then they should be explicit: "We are ranking results on our own quality metric which we won't disclose, you'll just have to like them", and let the market react. This position can then be taught in schools to kids, and used whenever google search results are being evaluated by the public. Right now google brands its search results as being driven by the public. It's like when people say google (or fb, etc) has no [first amendment] obligation to allow freedom of speech. Fine, but then don't constantly describe yourself of defenders of free speech, say from the outset you will police speech as you see fit, drop the pretense that your policing is somehow objective, and let the market digest that.
  - detaro 6y ago
    > Right now google brands its search results as being driven by the public. Where does it do that? Google search results being an opaque algorithm is not a big secret, given how Google clearly refuses to talk about details every time this comes up.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- Guthur 6y ago
  Governments would be absolutely salivating at the prospect of such simple censorship if they owned the search engines. And be under no illusion that all without exception would abuse that power in some way or another.
- lmm 6y ago
  All limited-liability companies are government-supported entities and it's perfectly fair to impose corresponding social responsibilities on them. In this case Google is in a monopoly position which means they have a stronger responsibility to not only be fair but be seen to be fair.
zackees 6y ago
FYI Google's leaked docs on the subject: https://www.zachvorhies.com/msm_rankings.html https://www.zachvorhies.com/msm_rankings.html
- barbacoa 6y ago
  If you ever want to play censorship scavenger hunt, try to get Google to link to breitbart.com without including the word breitbart. You can search article titles word for word in quotes and the names of the authors but google will not return a single breitbart.com link.
  - quickthrowman 6y ago
    I know I’m a sample size of one, but I just searched for the string (without any quotes) ‘biden doj to investigate mpls police joshua caplan’ on Google, the story on breitbart.com was the 2nd result, the first result was the same article on ‘newsbreak.com’
    - barbacoa 6y ago
      That is an interesting observation. I can confirm I get those results too. Perhaps they are relaxing their algorithms now that elections are over. I originally tried this month (or maybe a few) ago and was unable to get any link to breitbart.com even if I googled entire paragraphs.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    Some sources aren't merely low quality they are poison. A website on fragrances isn't liable to show you which sort of toxin would make your corpse smell most sweet after you have choked on your own death. An ethical take would be trying not to spread poison is the right thing to do. Inaction in the face of evil isn't neutral its evil.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
      I'd rather decide for myself what is "evil" and "poison" rather than have that decision made for me by a search engine who's only job is to return the information I'm asking for. I could want this "evil" information for any number of non-evil reasons, it is not their nor anyone else's job to make that decision on behalf of the user.
admax88q 6y ago
> Google's "quality" ratings are entirely opaque and the public should be given better access to them. There's only so many top spots in Google search results, I'd rather those not be awarded to parties that are the most litigious.
michaelmrose 6y ago
Nobody is entitled to a particular place in ranking and making this maximally transparent would almost certainly result in people gaming them more effectively decreasing the quality of search results for all users. Furthermore what are you supposed to do with this data? If you ultimately find that one site is given one score and another is given another and you disagree with this are you going to demand that google show other people the sites you prefer in a higher rank? Nonsense. No matter how they rank showing their hands would almost certainly be harmful to google because it would allow political groups of any stripe to put pressure on them to "fix" their results on any number of dimensions. Google would in short be crazy to give this to you and you aren't entitled to it.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
  "Nobody is entitled to a particular place in ranking and making this maximally transparent would almost certainly results in people gaming them more effectively decreasing the quality of search results for all users." According to this logic, if results were listed alphabetically (i.e., based on a truly objective criteria), we would see folks naming everything beginning with "0" or "A". The above statement seems to ignore the history of search engine paid placement (people are certainly entitled, so long as they pay) which has evolved into "Ads by Google" appearing above search results. Further, the statement admits gaming occurs ["gaming them more effectively"] regardless of Google secret "solutions". Listing search results by subjective criteria while portarying this as some sort of pseudo-objective "search" is not helpful. The "web search engine" has become a front for an online ad services business. The public is absolutely entitled to an index of the public information web, not controlled by a private company selling ad services. One day, we may get it.
  - junker37 6y ago
    > According to this logic, if results were listed alphabetically (i.e., based on a truly objective criteria), we would see folks naming everything beginning with "0" or "A". This is seen in practice. The yellow pages were?(are?) alphabetical, which is why you see so many business that start with the letter A.

webinvest 6y ago

Here’s a Google AMP page of a Daily Mail page that crashes on every page load for me on my iPhone’s default Safari browser. They probably need to hire a front-end developer or web performance specialist to diagnose it. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3361998/amp/Not-happy-birthday-Research-reveals-today-worst-day-year-celebrate-thanks-friends-family-partied-money-spent-Christmas.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl... Slow or failing page loads negatively affect search rankings on all search engines & 80% of users abandon your site if it takes more than 10 seconds to load.

toxik 6y ago
WFM
lmm 6y ago
Safari is notoriously the new IE. It's probably a perfectly spec-compliant page that happens to trigger a bug.
webinvest 6y ago
This became my most upvoted comment of all time (+22) so it must’ve gotten a lot of attention and is probably worth me following up on. The Google AMP link above now loads impressively fast in under 1.5 seconds in the same iPhone Safari browser. If you click-through the AMP link to get to the Daily Mail’s full version of the page, that loads in 9-10 seconds on the first view and about 6 seconds on subsequent (cached) views.

cortesoft 6y ago

The problem with that is if people know the exact formula for quality, sites can work to game it. Basically, once the formula for quality is known, it no longer is a formula for quality.

deelowe 6y ago
There are ways to perform 3rd party assessment without directly exposing intellectual property to interested parties.
- tankenmate 6y ago
  But the point isn't 3rd part assessments, the issue is that people want transparency of the algorithms; i.e. the intellectual property is exactly what people want to see.
  - deelowe 6y ago
    Agreed and I'd be willing to bet that a significant portion of those people may have conflicting interests here.
- ApolloFortyNine 6y ago
  Unless you think it's even in the realm of possibility to have a human being do the assessment, at the end of the day it's still going to be an algorithm that can be gamed.
munificent 6y ago
This is the key problem. All automated moderation is essentially a wicked mix of an iterated prisoner's dilemma and Goodhart's Law.

arp242 6y ago

> I think there's an interesting argument to be made here that Google's "quality" ratings are entirely opaque and the public should be given better access to them. It's a tricky problem, in principle I agree with you, but on the other hand more transparency also means more information for people who are gaming the system. And there are many MANY people who (try to) game Google. Never underestimate the amount of ridiculous effort some people will go to to make a buck. Arguably Google's largest value is that it's actually reasonably good in preventing this. So ... I don't know.

gverrilla 6y ago
Good? Are you kidding? Google results nowadays are a funfest of SEO abusers and quality is VERY LOW.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
jokethrowaway 6y ago
The main reason I gave up Google as default search engine is that results were not good and I couldn't find material. Duckduckgo provides generally better results and has some very cool gadgets (like stack overflow answer expansion). Google is winning on businesses' opening hours and safe search on images is not as safe as Google, which is the single caveat I need to remember about before looking for something.

mustyoshi 6y ago

Why should the public be given access to that information? Google should be under no obligation to provide any of that unless we "nationalize" the idea of search engines and declare them a human right. Until then, it's a voluntary service to be consumed.

jasonfarnon 6y ago
Of course google isn't under such a legal obligation. But then they should be explicit: "We are ranking results on our own quality metric which we won't disclose, you'll just have to like them", and let the market react. This position can then be taught in schools to kids, and used whenever google search results are being evaluated by the public. Right now google brands its search results as being driven by the public. It's like when people say google (or fb, etc) has no [first amendment] obligation to allow freedom of speech. Fine, but then don't constantly describe yourself of defenders of free speech, say from the outset you will police speech as you see fit, drop the pretense that your policing is somehow objective, and let the market digest that.
- detaro 6y ago
  > Right now google brands its search results as being driven by the public. Where does it do that? Google search results being an opaque algorithm is not a big secret, given how Google clearly refuses to talk about details every time this comes up.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
Guthur 6y ago
Governments would be absolutely salivating at the prospect of such simple censorship if they owned the search engines. And be under no illusion that all without exception would abuse that power in some way or another.
lmm 6y ago
All limited-liability companies are government-supported entities and it's perfectly fair to impose corresponding social responsibilities on them. In this case Google is in a monopoly position which means they have a stronger responsibility to not only be fair but be seen to be fair.

zackees 6y ago

FYI Google's leaked docs on the subject: https://www.zachvorhies.com/msm_rankings.html https://www.zachvorhies.com/msm_rankings.html

barbacoa 6y ago
If you ever want to play censorship scavenger hunt, try to get Google to link to breitbart.com without including the word breitbart. You can search article titles word for word in quotes and the names of the authors but google will not return a single breitbart.com link.
- quickthrowman 6y ago
  I know I’m a sample size of one, but I just searched for the string (without any quotes) ‘biden doj to investigate mpls police joshua caplan’ on Google, the story on breitbart.com was the 2nd result, the first result was the same article on ‘newsbreak.com’
  - barbacoa 6y ago
    That is an interesting observation. I can confirm I get those results too. Perhaps they are relaxing their algorithms now that elections are over. I originally tried this month (or maybe a few) ago and was unable to get any link to breitbart.com even if I googled entire paragraphs.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  Some sources aren't merely low quality they are poison. A website on fragrances isn't liable to show you which sort of toxin would make your corpse smell most sweet after you have choked on your own death. An ethical take would be trying not to spread poison is the right thing to do. Inaction in the face of evil isn't neutral its evil.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    I'd rather decide for myself what is "evil" and "poison" rather than have that decision made for me by a search engine who's only job is to return the information I'm asking for. I could want this "evil" information for any number of non-evil reasons, it is not their nor anyone else's job to make that decision on behalf of the user.

admax88q 6y ago

> Google's "quality" ratings are entirely opaque and the public should be given better access to them. There's only so many top spots in Google search results, I'd rather those not be awarded to parties that are the most litigious.

michaelmrose 6y ago

Nobody is entitled to a particular place in ranking and making this maximally transparent would almost certainly result in people gaming them more effectively decreasing the quality of search results for all users. Furthermore what are you supposed to do with this data? If you ultimately find that one site is given one score and another is given another and you disagree with this are you going to demand that google show other people the sites you prefer in a higher rank? Nonsense. No matter how they rank showing their hands would almost certainly be harmful to google because it would allow political groups of any stripe to put pressure on them to "fix" their results on any number of dimensions. Google would in short be crazy to give this to you and you aren't entitled to it.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
"Nobody is entitled to a particular place in ranking and making this maximally transparent would almost certainly results in people gaming them more effectively decreasing the quality of search results for all users." According to this logic, if results were listed alphabetically (i.e., based on a truly objective criteria), we would see folks naming everything beginning with "0" or "A". The above statement seems to ignore the history of search engine paid placement (people are certainly entitled, so long as they pay) which has evolved into "Ads by Google" appearing above search results. Further, the statement admits gaming occurs ["gaming them more effectively"] regardless of Google secret "solutions". Listing search results by subjective criteria while portarying this as some sort of pseudo-objective "search" is not helpful. The "web search engine" has become a front for an online ad services business. The public is absolutely entitled to an index of the public information web, not controlled by a private company selling ad services. One day, we may get it.
- junker37 6y ago
  > According to this logic, if results were listed alphabetically (i.e., based on a truly objective criteria), we would see folks naming everything beginning with "0" or "A". This is seen in practice. The yellow pages were?(are?) alphabetical, which is why you see so many business that start with the letter A.