Google Revamps to Fight Cheaters
By Amir Efrati
Google Inc., long considered the gold standard of Internet search, is changing the secret formula it uses to rank Web pages as it struggles to combat websites that have been able to game its system.
The Internet giant, which handles nearly two-thirds of the world's Web searches, has been under fire recently over the quality of its results. Google said it changed its mathematical formula late Thursday in order to better weed out "low-quality" sites that offer users little value. Some such sites offer just enough content to appear in search results and lure users to pages loaded with advertisements....
"I've never seen Google be attacked on the relevancy of their results the way they have these past couple of months," said Danny Sullivan, editor of a widely read blog about the field called Search Engine Land.
The debate about Google's results was sparked by a recent blog post by Vivek Wadhwa, a former technology executive and a visiting scholar at [the School of Information at] the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote that his students had trouble finding basic information about the founders of start-up companies on Google.
"The problem is that content on the internet is growing exponentially and the vast majority of this content is spam," or of little use, he wrote. "Google has become a jungle."
On Friday, Mr. Wadhwa said in an interview that he had previously "written Google off" but is now "optimistic they may well get this under control," though it will take time to see whether there are improvements. "It's not rocket science; they know who the bad guys are, they compensate the companies" by letting them post Google ads and share revenue, he said....