Joining Google to better explain search | Hacker News Reader

Joining Google to better explain search

dannysullivan.com

102 pointsadamcarson31 comments

Please be a proponent for veracity metrics on news stories and "viral articles" ... it's about time we as users get to see the measure of reliability and trustworthiness of search results. Cheers, may your new role bring you great happiness, and may the quality of our lives increase positively as a result.

> Please be a proponent for veracity metrics on news stories and "viral articles" ... it's about time we as users get to see the measure of reliability and trustworthiness of search results.

Google does lots of things I like, but I see close to zero evidence that they have developed the competency to act as an arbiter on any of veracity, reliability, or trustworthiness of news articles (or even less-timely information on the web.)

Relevance and my likelihood to be interested, yes. But those other things...no.

And that's even aside from the question of whether Google using its dominant search position to inject editorial commentary on search results is a good thing or, in the long term, a bigger threat than the one it would be addressing.

We built a Chrome extension to help users evaluate the quality of an article's citations and suggest better alternatives. This is Beta; the algorithm will soon go beyond citations and our recommendations will become more frequent. But I'd be grateful for any feedback you all have if you take a look. Thank you.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/civikowl/clbbiejji...

I agree.

But given the position they hold I think they need to develop this skill.

It’s very clear that ‘throw an algorithm up without thinking of abuse/negative consequences and fix it later’ works terribly.

I'd rather Google provide a framework to integrate third-party ratings; we don't need a monopoly arbiter of online truth that's also a monopoly search provider.

I wouldn't trust Google to act as "verifier", but I would trust Google to aggregate and pass on veracity metric from other sources.

For example, Google could say "68% of experts appointed by the New York Times approve of the content of this page".

Individuals could then choose which group(s) of experts they want to become part of the ranking for their personal news feed.

This types of concerns are very much part of the remit.

I echo the idea that he will try to fill the Matt Cutts role that mikkelewis mentioned in the comments. SEOs always knew to turn to Cutts when they had a question and it hasn't been properly filled since he left. I have a feeling we will be hearing from Mr. Sullivan quite a bit in the coming months. It has to be super exciting going from being an outsider (although well known and connected) to a Google insider. I wonder how others in the SEO community feel about it?

Fair to say that it'll be similar to what the public was used to with Matt Cutts? imo his departure left a hole between Google Search <-> public.

Yes and no. Matt oversaw search spam efforts and was an engineer. I won't be doing that. And I'm definitely not an engineer. Matt was also a lead on webmaster relation issues. That's not going to be my focus. There are good people who have already been doing that. Matt did often address broader search issues, and the role will encompass that. It also will be taking in feedback from the public and sources and seeing what can be done to promote change. I'll have more to share after I get through a few weeks of settling in.

Matt was also a lead on webmaster relation issues. ... There are good people who have already been doing that.

Can you suggest some?

I'm still trying to resolve a years-old issue that Matt Cutts gave me incorrect information about. You can read our back-and-forth (before he stops responding) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5418864

Ok, then. Here's what I want:

= Give me my + operator back.

= Don't "guess" at additional matches not specified in my search terms (beyond stemming). Or let me trivial, simply, and immediately specify such handling.

= Tell me the collection / last updated time of results returned, and let me actually, effectively filter based on these.

These alone should help me start to evade the massive pollution of search results that have me cringing a bit internally these days, in anticipation, every time I'm about to search for something that isn't a trivial response/result.

Thanks

I'd love to see + do what + was supposed to do and not do the guessing. Has been frustrating to me, too -- though I suspect (this is part of what I'll be learning) that for the vast majority of people, it might help. In the meantime, when you search, after doing a search, look for Tools under the search box then select "Verbatim" which is supposed to do exactly what you ask.

This is almost becoming an epidemic. I find my confidence is search quality has lowered significantly since new algorithms just keeps ignoring the terms I specify. Most of the times behavior is so stupid that I can't really believe if this is not impacting heavily internal search metrics. At least the requery related metrics should have exposed the problem. I would not be surprised if it was decided to change the metrics just so these new algorithms could be deployed.

Huh, TIL about Verbatim. Wish there was a setting to make it the default, like you can set SafeSearch.

Thank you. That has been mentioned, previously, and I believe there is also a corresponding query string value that can be appended to a search URL to enable it.

At least that would amend itself to e.g. being incorporated into a bookmarklet for one-click access.

    javascript:void((function(){var%20loc%20=%20location.href;%20loc.indexOf("?")%20==%20-1%20?%20(location.href%20=%20loc+"?li=1")%20:%20(location.href%20=%20loc+"&li=1");})());

or, taking a bit more care:

    javascript:void((function(){var%20loc%20=%20location.href;%20if%20(loc.indexOf('li=1')%20>=%200)%20return;%20loc.indexOf("?")%20<%200%20?%20(location.href%20=%20loc+"?li=1")%20:%20(location.href%20=%20loc+"&li=1");})());

or I guess it could be modified further to change the parm if it's already present with a different value.

Modified from (because I'm lazy):

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20677974/bookmarklet-to-...

Relevant to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15301014 , which had its title changed.

I don't think that anybody deciding to work for Google, FB, Amazon from this point on can use any excuse to disassociate themselves from the actions of their company.

..Wondering about the ethics of Sullivan being at Google while still associated with SEO best practice entity searchengineland...http://searchengineland.com/about

I actually stepped down as being an advisor. They just haven't updated that part of the page. In my post, I address this. Bottom line: I don't plan to treat the company any differently.

Fair enough - thanks for all the hard work on searchengineland, great site!

Google has been working closely with all of their favorite SEO blogs.

They often work with them to mold the narrative around algo updates and best practices.

Enjoyed your previous published columns Danny, congrats!

Any chance you can push back on the recent change to how maximum daily budgets are handled that Matt Southern wrote about a couple days ago? Kind of ridiculous and experienced paid search managers are outraged at what appears to be yet another attempt to snatch control over accounts from managers.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-doubles-adwords-b...

I would think that after following Google's search endeavors so closely for so long, being invited to join Google and see it from the inside must be incredibly exciting.

If it is, congratulations! Have fun!

That something different has arrived: I’m joining Google as of Monday

You get a paycheck from Google, which is at least honest and upfront.

Danny Sullivan has been shilling for Google for over a decade, always taking their side.

> The goal is to increase the connection between those at Google who work hard on search each day and the public that depends on Google for answers. I’ll be educating the public about how search works. I’ll be exploring and explaining issues that may arise.

So this is a PR position? I don't care much about that part...

> I’ll be looking at ways to take in feedback and work for solutions to improve search going forward.

That would be interesting if anything real comes out of it, but I fear it's the first thing he'll be spending most of his time on.

It's not a PR position. I don't work for corporate communications. I work for the search team. I'll be sharing more about the role after I have more time at Google and shape it more. But it's definitely not PR.

It sounds more like Matt Cutt's external role.

If I were still at Google, I'd send you a welcome email and point you to the few things that I thought you got wrong in the past (mainly due to lacking the same context as those on the inside... now you can be the one biting your tongue). Quite a few of us paid attention to your writings. They were always among the most insightful, comprehensive and accurate, even when negative.

In some way, your hire might be a bit of a net loss, because now that you're on the inside, you're no longer going to be considered a neutral third party and I'm not sure that anyone out there writes as well as you did until June.

Thank you. On the loss part, I'd left journalism. So Google's not causing it -- I just really needed a change after 21 years of doing it. I appreciate your kind words about it. I'm also absolutely fascinated by understanding from the inside. That was always the hardest part. If you can't see fully, it's hard to explain things -- things that some times help people know if there's actually a reasonable or good explanation. I'm hoping that being on the inside, I'm going to be able to perhaps help Google share more than it has in the past.

English: "the team working on search at Google"

PR: "those at Google who work hard on search each day"

> I’ll be looking at ways to take in feedback

James Damore worked on the search team. We all know how much his feedback was appreciated by Google execs. Personally, I will not consider trusting Google again unless and until Larry and Sergey issue a public apology to James and seek to make amends. That's my feedback.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com