sullivandanny

The Honest Results policy is that we're not going to allow advertisers or partners or any one with a relationship to Google to have an advantage in our unpaid search results.

As for ad labeling, I don't work on the ad side. I work on the Search side. My understanding from those on the ad side is that the labels are visible and do work. And ads are always labeled.

I'm Google's public liaison for Search, and I communicate on this stuff all the time. Typically I'm most active on Twitter. You can always ping me here: https://twitter.com/searchliaison

I'm looking into the thread deletion, but I believe anyone who starts their own thread can delete it. That aside, as I shared elsewhere here, this is spam, not malware. We appreciate the reports and apologize our spam systems weren't doing a better job. We're working to improve that now.

We don't show radically different results based on user account. Region, however, can make a difference, though everyone in the same location doing the same search would generally see the same things. More: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1070027261376491520

Yep, thanks -- got directed to this thread. Our spam team was already on it. It is spam, not malware. No one is infected with anything. I think things are already improving and they'll keep debugging it.

Thanks. I work for Google Search. It's spam, not malware and we are looking into this.

Quotes do work. They really, really do. Every time I look into a complaint about this, I find that the text really is on the page. It just might not be readily visible. Twitter link is in my bio here. If you ever get an example where you find quotes don't seem to be working, do pass it on.

When most people search, they're generally looking for information that matches a topic, not necessarily every single word in a query. You can imagine the number of misses that would happen if we didn't compensate for misspellings, for example. Or for synonyms or plural forms. But in no way are people prevented from searching for exactly the words indicated, if they feel that's best. Use Tools > All Results > Verbatim from the search toolbar. Or put quotes around the word or words you want exactly sought.

We wouldn't say the word is censored. It's just an indication we found a page tha that might be relevant even though it doesn't contain one or more of the search terms, and we want to help the user understand that. But yes overall, that's exactly why the approach can be useful, in case a page with the right information uses a slightly different related word. Also, that Wikipedia page is for a different Tim Lee -- a comedian, not the food vlogger.

We cater to power users. If you absolutely, positively need a word or phrase to be on a page, use quotes. "age" or "tim lee" would tell us that exact word or that exact phrase has to be on the page. Which still doesn't help with this query, given that his age doesn't appear to be known, but you can do it for others.

We show this to indicate to you that we found a page that might be relevant but which doesn't contain that exact word. And why we would conclude that is explained better if you search for ["tim lee" food vlogger "age"].

That's telling us to find only pages that have "tim lee" on it in that order, as well as the word "age" and food vlogger are nice to have but not required. And it turns out -- there's not a lot of pages. Certainly not many pages, it seems, about the Tim Lee you're looking for with his age. And that's because not everything we want is actually out there. There might not be a page that has his age.

So back to why we dropped it. By showing you some pages that don't have the word age on it, we're able to show some other pages that are generally about him, which might get you closer to the answer.

BTW, there is a Wikipedia page I've seen suggested as having the right answer for his age. But that's for a different Tim Lee -- not the food vlogger, and it also only lists his birth year, so knowing the exact age is hard

I work for Google Search. Knowledge panels are automatically created and generated. And it is possible that if we have two people of the same name, our systems might select an incorrect photo. My apologies for the concern this has caused you. I'll share more about how you can better get this feedback to us.

We allow for knowledge panels to be claimed. I checked, and yours isn't. This explains more how to do that: https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/7534902

When a panel is claimed, then when we get feedback about change requests or possible issues, we know they are coming from a verified source and can work better to resolve the issues. This explains more about that process: https://support.google.com/knowledgepanel/answer/7534842

Normally people just don't like the image we show, so we have a mechanism for them to upload a preferred image. That's very easy to use. But in your case, I understand your reasons for not wanting to have an image used at all. I believe if you had filed feedback explaining that, the image would have been removed.

I'll check on this further, but right now, I see that no image is being shown at all. So I suspect that we've gotten the feedback here somehow and taken action to block any image from showing at all. But again, I'll check on this.

The image was not removed purposefully. Images in the Knowledge Graph can update at any time. If they do, they briefly disappear. That's what seems to be happening here. We're exploring the issue more. Here's more info we posted about it: https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1272077555860824065

I'm Google's public liaison for search. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and our apologies for the inconvenience caused. This was indeed a bug that our engineers have explored, and it should be fixed now.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The title is about "Google PageRank score," not Google PageRank.

PageRank was one part of the reason we have a search as powerful as Google, the use of links to assign an authority score. Another big part was the use of link context -- which isn't part of PageRank but part of the overall search algorithm at Google.

PageRank score is when Google revealed those scores to the public for any page. That's not something it had to do, in order to use PageRank as part of it algorithm. But in doing so, it fueled an explosion in link spam.

So as the author, I'll try to clarify.

The article isn't about Google's influence on the web, as a whole. Google has had a huge influence on the web in many ways, from making it easier for people to locate information to sites considering how to speed up their content, to become mobile-friendly or to use secure connections, because Google rewards such things with ranking boosts.

The article was specifically about PageRank's influence on the web, in terms of link brokering and link spam. Before Google released PageRank scores, some of this happened. It would have happened even if scores had never been released, because it was well-known that Google leveraged links and thus, links had value.

But PageRank scores were an accelerant. They allowed people to use Google's own scores to assign value to pages, value that could be translated into monetary value. It really did reshape the link economy, to the degree that we had a court case with a First Amendment ruling on Google's search results (amazing, when you think about it) as well as an entire new standard to restrict the credit links could pass, nofollow.

I doubt Google anticipated this. Showing the scores, as the article explains, was meant as an incentive for Google Toolbar users -- "Hey, enable this feature, and we'll show you how valuable a page is deemed to be." Google's gain, of course, was that anyone enabling this sent their browsing patterns back to Google, so it better understood what was happening on the web outside of its own properties.

The unintended consequence was that PageRanks scores fueled an explosion in link buying and selling, as well as link spam.

Also, I didn't say the web was better before Google. It had plenty of problems, though it wasn't "pretty much un-navigable pre-Google," as you say. Many people used many of the search engines that were bigger than Google successfully for years. If it were really that bad, by the time Google came along, people would have given up on the web.

Google, of course, was a huge improvement in search and for the web as a whole. The article wasn't that Google was bad for the web. It really was just focusing on one aspect that didn't help the web, how releasing PageRank scores ironically fueled some of the spam Google has to fight (and which it fights well) as well as the spam third-parties have to deal with.

You're reading things into this that I didn't write, I'd say.

When Google arrived, it was a huge advance in search. It offered an obvious improvement in relevancy, which is why so many serious searchers switched to it from AltaVista and then users of other search engines moved over.

Nothing I wrote suggested that Google was bad, didn't offer great relevancy or anything like that.

My story is about what happened when Google revealed PageRank scores for pages across the web. That fueled an explosion in link buying and selling. It allowed people to attach Google's own score to a page, a value if you will that Google itself placed on those pages, which made it easier to then assign a monetary value.

In turn, that lead to many of the woes that the web as a whole has to deal with today: understanding how to use nofollow to block links, to stay in Google's good graces. Spam mail pitching links, trying to buy links. Link spam

I'm sure we'd have had some of this even without PageRank scores ever having been revealed. Perhaps it would have been as much, even. After all, it was well-known that Google was leveraging links as part of its ranking algorithm. The market would have been there.

But I do think that releasing the PageRank scores accelerated market faster than it would have done otherwise.

Back to the gaming -- again, it feels like you're reading stuff I didn't actually write. I'm certainly not saying that Google itself introduced the ability for people to try and game search engines. That was happening even before Google existed. Of course, Google initially thought it was immune. In 1998, Sergey Brin even said this on a panel that I moderated:

"Google’s slightly different in that we never ban anybody, and we don’t really believe in spam in the sense that there’s no mechanism for removing people from our index. The fundamental concept we use is, you know, is this page relevant to the search? And, you know, some pages which, you know, they may almost never appear on the search results page because they’re just not that relevant."

Google soon changed its view and introduced extensive spam fighting efforts. Those were inevitable. As you say, it was prey that would attract predators. And even with the link selling, it has done an admirable job fighting off the spam. It's not always perfect, but it's a very robust system.

Nevertheless, the spam attempts will continue regardless if Google actually blunts them because, as the article explained, there's simply so many people with misconceptions that they'll chase anything anyway. PageRank scores fed into this, that's all.

The marketers are the ones savvy enough to understand that Google has deliberately continued to leave a gaping hole in that privacy protection for its paid advertisers.

Buy ads; you get the data. So it's increased privacy until it hits Google's bottom line. Then, it's not.

Of course, for personalized results, Google+ activity can have a huge impact on rankings. At times, it can trump any other factor. For personalized results. Important caveat, but then again, we're probably at the point where more people see personalized results than don't.

No, it's not. What little we've had about super-secret legal requests isn't that companies have to lie about them. It's that they can't acknowledge them at all.

So the answer they give when asked, and they do get asked, is "no comment."

If they were voluntarily part of PRISM, and legally required to keep that quiet, I'd expect them to say "no comment."

Doing the opposite make so little sense. It means they're having to flat-out lie to their users, something very hard to recover from.

SEO is not about an unfair advantage. If that were the case, then Google itself wouldn't offer a free guide to SEO.

That's simply an unfortunately common and ignorant misconception. It's like saying that knowing HTML design requirements is an unfair advantage in making web pages.

Actually, scratch that. You shouldn't be getting a referrer at all. We'll check further, but you should check with Google searches.

Good point. I've edited the headline to make it clearer.

You need to test it with a search. It's not that you don't get referrer data. It's that you don't get search referrer data. Do a search on Google, see if you get the terms you searched for embedded in the referrer. That's what we tested; that's what was removed.

It is a huge deal and has been since Google stopped passing referrers for signed-in users last October. That's because...

1) If it's a privacy thing, then Google is happy having a leak by giving these terms to advertisers

2) The data is not provided in a way that can be used by third party ad retargeting terms, giving Google a competitive advantage

3) Publishers can't use the data to better target with landing pages

4) Google Webmaster Central data only goes back for a short period of time, and if you haven't constantly been downloading your data, all your historic traffic information related to a term has gone poof.