Google's Search Quality Meeting Video

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Google Search Quality Video

The focus of this meeting, led by Amit Singhal, was on misspellings and how to improve spelling corrections for long queries.

A few things Google wants you to notice (via the Inside Search Blog):

• Even relatively subtle changes get intense scrutiny by our search evaluation and ranking teams. The specific change discussed in this video improves spelling suggestions for searches with more than 10 words and it impacts only .1% of our traffic. Still, you can see the scrutiny and thoughtfulness that goes into approving this change. 
• Every change has a dedicated search quality analyst assigned to study the impact. This analyst is not part of the engineering team building the change, but instead offers a separate opinion on whether the change is good for users. 
• The search team relies heavily on the results of experimental data to make decisions. During the meeting, we rely on detailed analyst reports including the results of click evaluations and side-by-side experiments. These reports can sometimes be more than 25 pages long. 
• Launch reports include specific examples to illustrate broader trends in the data. Rather than manually change one example, our engineers look for algorithmic ways to improve millions of queries. 
• Search algorithm improvements often rely on and impact many different systems, so engineers with expertise in different areas all need to come together to make the best decision for the user, balancing all the tradeoffs involved (relevance, spam, latency, cost, language impact, etc.)

What do you think of this video? Did you like it? Does it help you to know more about Google search, or what other topics would you like to see discussed by Google in these types of videos? 

sources:-http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2159546/Googles-Search-Quality-Meeting-Video-Wheres-the-Beef

Google Search Now Highlights “Latest Posts” From Google+ Pages & Profiles

DigitalMarketingContest2012

Google is showing a new “Latest Posts” section for some Google+ pages and profiles alongside its regular results, in the space where ads have traditionally resided. The format allows people and brands on Google+ to occupy more of the top-half of the search results page.

Let’s see what’s up with the latest experiment.

Google Pages & Latest Posts

Here’s an example of how things looked until recently, with a search for TV Guide:

See the two links that the arrows point to? Those were appearing as part of the Google+ Direct Connect feature, where brands can link their web sites to their Google+ pages. Do that, and you were eligible to have some of your recent posts from Google+ appear below your “regular” listings gathered from your web site.

Here’s how things look now:

The arrow points to where the new section appears. Basically, all the Google+ material that Direct Connect had been putting underneath web listings is now moved over to the right-hand side of the page. This happens regardless of whether you’re signed in or out of Google.

Personal Profiles Get New Treatment, Too

In January, Google launched a feature where personal profiles would appear as suggestions within the search box, as part of Search Plus Your World. If selected, the person’s Google+ profile would appear at the top of the results. The change now moves the profile information to the side, whether you select the person’s Google+ profile from the search box or not.

For example, here I’ve searched for Search Engine Land news editor Barry Schwartz:

You can see that his Google+ profile is being suggested. If I select that, I get this:

However, even if I don’t pick his profile, the results still appear in the same place:

The “People and Pages on Google+” section that was rolled out as part of Search Plus Your World — and which Google has taken heat over as too self-promotional for Google+ — remains. It’s just sometimes replaced by this new section.

Some brands might be happy with the change, in that it gives them much more visibility in the “above the fold” search results. However, it also means those who liked how the old format could “push down” possibly negative results might prefer the old system.

For searchers, it’s probably a gain. It allows Google+ content to be surfaced without feeling like it’s being so much pushed within the “regular” results they might be after.

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sources;-http://searchengineland.com/google-search-now-highlights-latest-posts-from-google-pages-profiles-115171