sullivandanny

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Dec 10

Google's public liaison of Search, helping people better understand search & Google better hear public feedback: https://twitter.com/searchliaison

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Comment · 4 years ago

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.

Comment · 4 years ago

What was tweeted isn't what the page says. I work for Google Search. That's about our Honest Results policy, which means we don't allow people to buy better rankings in non-paid Search results: https://www.google.com/about/honestresults/

Like many newspapers separate ads and editorial, Google has a strict separation between our Ads departments and our Search departments -- and our results. Buying ads will not gain you any better ability to rank in the non-paid Search results. Nor will it get you any special support.

That's what the page explains. It never says we don't have ads that show at the top of the page and, in fact, acknowledges that we do: "While advertisers can pay more to be displayed higher in the advertising area." Nor is it true that at the time, we only had ads that appeared on the right-side of the page. Google's first ads appeared at the top of the page way back in 1999.

In addition, we continue to keep ads separated from Search and labeled so they can be identified.

I totally get that some people would like to see fewer ads. I don't work on the Ad side of Google, but I know that feedback has been heard.

Comment · 4 years ago

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.

Comment · 4 years ago

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

Comment · 4 years ago

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.

Comment · 4 years ago

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

Comment · 4 years ago

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.

Comment · 4 years ago

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.

Comment · 4 years ago

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.

Comment · 4 years ago

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.

Comment · 4 years ago

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

Comment · 5 years ago

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.

Comment · 6 years ago

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

Comment · 7 years ago

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.

Comment · 9 years ago

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.