3 posts and columns on Scott Huffman

Google and the Evolution of Search II: Cheating the System

in News on June 4, 2009 at 4:30 am PT

Google’s objective evaluation and ranking of Web sites is to some extent defined by subjective reasoning of a collective human intelligence. And so it must be if Google is to continue returning search results that we perceive to be the “best” answers to our search queries. In the second of three interviews, Google software engineer Matt Cutts talks about the role of human evaluators in counteracting spam.
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Google and the Evolution of Search I: Human Evaluators

in News on June 3, 2009 at 5:00 am PT

For many years, Google, on its Explanation of Our Search Results page, claimed that “a site’s ranking in Google’s search results is automatically determined by computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.” Then in May of 2007, that statement changed: “A site’s ranking in Google’s search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page’s relevance to a given query.” A slight adjustment in wording, but an important comment on the supremacy of the algorithm that Google had touted for years.
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LIVE: Google Searchology

in News on May 12, 2009 at 10:13 am PT

The architects of Google search are holding court at company headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., this morning offering what promises to be a sort of state of the union on search. Overseeing the event, dubbed “Google Searchology”: Udi Manber, VP of Search Engineering, and Marissa Mayer VP of Search Products and User Experience. Key subjects: the challenge of solving every user problem, mobile search across multiple platforms and different UI schemes, and greater user customization through tools like SearchWiki and Google Search Options, a basket of new services just announced.
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