Google search - "automatic and objective"?

Google, it would appear, is on a bit of a charm offensive.

The question of just how the company orders the content that pops up every time you enter a search query has been bothering plenty of people for some time. Google has, it told Times Online today, taken this on board. It is now working to make its business more transparent.

"Let’s be clear here, there are no guys in a backroom smoking cigars," Douglas C Merrill, a Google vice-president who works on search, said.

Most, if not all, of us of us would probably accept this. Google wants to attract the most numbers of users to its site so it can sell advertising, right? So it makes sense for it to deliver the best possible search results – conspiracy theories would only complicate the issue.

But Google's line, that its search results are transparent because it is concentrating on making searches "automatic and objective" through the use of algorithms – complex mathematical formulas – to order information, doesn't really stack up.

First, for entirely understandable commercial reasons, Google is loath to share its industrial secrets. One of the few pieces of the search puzzle it is willing to talk about is PageRank – the one piece we've known about for some time.

Secondly, it's not Google's fault, but there isn't an algorithm out there to determine whether a piece of content is libellous, or incites racial hatred, or is peddling child pornography. It follows that Google's lawyers should – and do – have a small but important say in what results the search engine dishes up.

Meanwhile, competitors such as Yahoo! are trumpeting moves to integrate human decisions into the search equation. So why does Google have to try to pretend its results are entirely devoid of human influence?

Two thoughts:

No 1, Google sees its reputation as a neutral source of information as absolutely essential. This is understandable – nobody likes being duped.

No 2, Google has done rather well so far by pumping out very clean stories on why it exists and how it operates. Mission statements – for example "do no evil" – do better when they're left without any hint of nuance. "Automatic and objective" hits the same uncomplicated note. Whether it tells the whole tale, is another matter.

Comments

[Bob]

Why does Google choose to be so secret? Is it because they are making it up as they go? Could be.

The more Google diversifies, the more their core search suffers.

In the future I see many other ways to search than just entering text into an html form.

[Ben Wilks]

PR Stunt, the average webmaster will always be in the dark regarding Google and SEO, their business model depends on it.

[Bill Lanam]

It's a business. Proprietary information - aka intellectual property, is an asset. Sharing with competitors only reduces the asset. Google, like other behemoths, will only share the minimum to reach political and legal hurdles. What else would we expect?

[T Ray Deal]

Google is a fast-but-dumb machine that puts too much emphasis on link-related answers rather than the real answers.

Once you delete the popular and paid links it seems to be more luck than science.

Give me Yahoo! anytime.

[Robert Chapman]

It doesn't make sense for Google to tell the world too much about how it's search results work. The reason? The multitude of 'search engine optimisation' companies who in essence attempt to trick search engines into listing their pages higher than the competitions. Ultimately that benefits no-one but the SEOs as users of search engines will end up with a list of "adverts"... which of course Google already displays alongside its listings.

[Joel Katona]

How many commercially successful companies do you know that give away major parts of their secret formula for success? I haven’t seen Microsoft offering a peak at their source code into their MS Office applications like Excel, have you?

Google is walking a very fine line between giving away too much information about the inner workings of its ranking algorithm and maintaining public support, portraying itself as the likeable underdog that can take on technology giants like Microsoft.

I’d say they're doing a fine job so far, considering the scale of their operations and global reach.

[Rick Coleman]

I believe it's automatic and objective because what they don't tell us about PageRank is that they are timing people. Everyone arrives at their respective Google home pages with a unique IP number and searches a specific phrase. Let's say it's 'shoes' (they can tell from meta headings and good coding what pages are probably about to initially rank them). You get a page of results and you click the first one. You don't find what you want, you return to Google and try the second one, you stay 15 seconds. Nah, still not the one, so you go to the third one, you find what you want - so you don't return to Google with your unique IP number. The third link inches towards the top listing. You then just have to do the mathematics. Pretty simple theory... here, have $100,000 and start a company.