[google boggled]

From the BBC: "'Human error' hits Google search

Google's search service has been hit by technical problems, with users unable to access search results.

For a period on Saturday, all search results were flagged as potentially harmful, with users warned that the site "may harm your computer.

Users who clicked on their preferred search result were advised to pick another one.

Google attributed the fault to human error and said most users were affected for about 40 minutes.

"What happened? Very simply, human error," wrote Marissa Mayer, vice president, search products and user experience, on the Official Google Blog.

The internet search engine works with stopbadware.org to ascertain which sites install malicious software on people's computers and merit a warning.

Stopbadware.org investigates consumer complaints to decide which sites are dangerous.

The list of malevolent sites is regularly updated and handed to Google.

When Google updated the list on Saturday, it mistakenly flagged all sites as potentially dangerous.

"We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again," Ms Mayer wrote."


After the BBC story google updated theirs (they noted that changes are marked in blue):

"If you did a Google search between 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m. PST this morning, you likely saw that the message "This site may harm your computer" accompanied each and every search result. This was clearly an error, and we are very sorry for the inconvenience caused to our users.

What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods. We work with a non-profit called StopBadware.org to come up with criteria for maintaining this list, and to provide simple processes for webmasters to remove their site from the list."

[google algorithm]

There's an interesting article on Google's ranking algorithm and the "master" behind it, Amit Singhal, in yesterday's New York Times.

"Google often finds what users want, but it doesn’t always.

That’s why Amit Singhal and hundreds of other Google engineers are constantly tweaking the company’s search engine in an elusive quest to close the gap between often and always.

Mr. Singhal is the master of what Google calls its “ranking algorithm” — the formulas that decide which Web pages best answer each user’s question. It is a crucial part of Google’s inner sanctum, a department called “search quality” that the company treats like a state secret.

[...]

“The fundamental value created by Google is the ranking,” says John Battelle, the chief executive of Federated Media, a blog ad network, and author of “The Search,” a book about Google.

[...]

“Google has become the lifeblood of the Internet,” Mr. Battelle says. “You have to be in it.”

Good news for bloggers:

"Freshness, which describes how many recently created or changed pages are included in a search result, is at the center of a constant debate in search: Is it better to provide new information or to display pages that have stood the test of time and are more likely to be of higher quality? Until now, Google has preferred pages old enough to attract others to link to them."

Enter a new algorithm called QDF (Quality Deserves Freshness!).

"THE QDF solution revolves around determining whether a topic is “hot.” If news sites or blog posts are actively writing about a topic, the model figures that it is one for which users are more likely to want current information."