How Google Interferes With Its Search Algorithms and Changes Your Results

Long-time Slashdot reader walterbyrd shared this report on “arguably the most powerful lines of computer code in the global economy,” the Google algorithms that handle 3.8 million queries every single minute.

But though Google claims its algorithms are objective and autonomous, the Wall Street Journal reports Google “has increasingly re-engineered and interfered with search results to a far greater degree than the company and its executives have acknowledged”:

More than 100 interviews and the Journal’s own testing of Google’s search results reveal:

– Google made algorithmic changes to its search results that favor big businesses over smaller ones, and in at least one case made changes on behalf of a major advertiser, eBay Inc., contrary to its public position that it never takes that type of action. The company also boosts some major websites, such as Amazon.com Inc. and Facebook Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

– Google engineers regularly make behind-the-scenes adjustments to other information the company is increasingly layering on top of its basic search results. These features include auto-complete suggestions, boxes called “knowledge panels” and “featured snippets,” and news results, which aren’t subject to the same company policies limiting what engineers can remove or change.

– Despite publicly denying doing so, Google keeps blacklists to remove certain sites or prevent others from surfacing in certain types of results… Google employees and executives, including co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have disagreed on how much to intervene on search results and to what extent. Employees can push for revisions in specific search results, including on topics such as vaccinations and autism.

– To evaluate its search results, Google employs thousands of low-paid contractors whose purpose the company says is to assess the quality of the algorithms’ rankings. Even so, contractors said Google gave feedback to these workers to convey what it considered to be the correct ranking of results, and they revised their assessments accordingly, according to contractors interviewed by the Journal. The contractors’ collective evaluations are then used to adjust algorithms.

The Journal’s findings undercut one of Google’s core defenses against global regulators worried about how it wields its immense power — that the company doesn’t exert editorial control over what it shows users.