“My gripes with Google is when I becoming collateral damage in Google’s business strategy, which I believe is messing up their search algorithm.”

Totally agree … they are forced to create a steady increase in income, but as google’s market share is already as huge as it can be, they are forced to compromise their intial idea of the “perfect search engine” in order to produce new income streams.

Amen John! Preach!

Matt,

I appreciate your responses. Its great to hear your side of the story on this post and others. I tend to keep things simple and after doing seo for years it seems Google tends to do the same; provide a good search experience (relevance from credible source), provide value on your site/blog, ie unique content like this post, and everything else is fluff & filler. But hey, I understand all the speculation, cloak and dagger, yada, yada, its always been around, and will always be around.

Jennifer,
thanks again for this post. I almost laugh at all the speculation and interest this post has generated. “Note to self”, write about Google Raters so my blog can get the same attention as potpiegirl. I think your post has generated more back and forth discussion than everything this month other than Tim Tibow. ; ) Well done

“Matt didn’t have to stop by and say ANYTHING. ”

What do you think Matt’s REAL job is? It’s not fighting webspam, it’s spinning for Google.

He isn’t doing you or me any favors, he is doing what he thinks it’s best for the company that pays him all that money. Never forget that, he lies and spins for money.

MattCutts said: “you don’t want to spamfight on the data you use for metrics, or else you’ll get skewed metrics.”

Fine, but what’s stopping Google from using this the after the algo goes live?

NOTHING. See my nickname

This is an absorbing thread and my thanks to potpiegirl.com for initiating and Matt for engaging. Just so I can feel good about making those student loan payments on my Jesuit education…Google quality raters do not impact search results, they can influence algorithm changes at Google, algorithm changes at Google influence search results. Wouldn’t Aristotelian syllogism conclude that the raters do have a distant influence on organic results?

Like many folks here, I have had a handful of my quality sites get banged around Google due to the Panda algo and “testing” of algo’s. I get it, but as of right now the search results seem dated (like 2002-2006) when searching for obviously new stuff.

There is a difference between “selling” and “spamming” as everyone has their own opinion about it. But it’s Google’s opinion that matters most, right?

Regardless, I’m still glad Matt stopped by. Man, what that guy opens himself up to each time he opens his mouth…like these kinds of comments I’ve seen here. This is his job. At least he tries to answer questions, but he still has to protect the company, ya know?

Not everyone listening to him has GOOD intentions – and that, by itself, is good enough reason to chose your words carefully.

Just my 2 cents.

Jennifer

Most likely no one will =)

Jennifer

No one ever said they even come close to rating ALL query spaces. That is impossible – especially since 15-20% of all queries each month are NEW phrases that have never been used before.

They (raters) evaluate small samples then that small dataset is reviewed. If they (the algo team decides to move forward with testing the algo tweak then feeds out to a small sample of live Google traffic. LOTS happens before it becomes an official change in the algo.

Jennifer

Hiya Scott…

True, there is most likely more to the story and things NOT being said.

BUT, based on what I had posted, Matt’s clarification was that Quality Raters cannot directly change the rank of a web page.

I personally find it hard to believe that NOTHING is done with that data.

For example, what if a rater comes across a webpage that is spreading a virus? Nothing is done about that (ie, it’s just left out there in the wild)?

Sadly, this happened to me last night… I hit a web page and my computer went INSANE. Spent most of the day trying to get back to right. So annoying.

My point is, that is so much data accumulated from HUMAN eyes… I can’t believe nothing is done with it. Well, it goes back to the algo team – perhaps the human feedback leads to footprints/things in common amongst the spam ratings – and then churned out in the NEXT algo upate…and then naturally, there are casualties…and on and on.

I’m still not convinced, but that doesn’t matter. The man has spoken so I’ll accept it and move on (ok, I’ll still ponder it…lol).

Matt didn’t have to stop by and say ANYTHING. Heck, there’s lots of bad info all over the web, why bother with my little “sneaky feeling”, ya know?

All in all, I just think @mattcutts wants folks to know that one human rater cannot push a button and pop your site. I’m not saying NO ONE can do that, I’m just applying that statement to the abilities of the work-from-home outsourced Quality Raters.

Knowing that the outsourced Raters don’t have that ability IS good to know. That is a terrifying thought after reading all through their forum.

However, what ELSE happens to that data is another story… and something we probably will never know the exact details about.

Jennifer

Very true Charles!

No matter WHAT Matt Cutts says, there is the group of us trying to learn from it to be better…and there’s the group that wants to find how to game it.

Saying too much can be very dangerous, I suppose.

Jennifer

Kinda wondered that myself… thought this was all “old news”….lol!