The role of search engine assessors in shaping search results
Our view on assessors. For professionals, nothing new, newcomers may be useful.
It is not a secret for anybody that the human factor has been playing an important role in the ranking of sites for quite a long time. Keep the staff of "manual moderators" expensive and low-tech. On the other hand, search engines have long been not just technology, but a business, and a large one (Yandex is the largest Internet company of the Old World).
So, in this article we will focus on assessors of search engines and their role in shaping the issuance.
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The main thing that commercial site owners need to know about assessors is that assessors cannot directly influence issuance - “omit” or “raise” sites in issuance. Appraisers, rather, act as certain "beacons" that give signals to search algorithms. In particular, in the new Yandex algorithm for ranking Moscow Region sites, which was introduced on November 20, 2011, parameters such as website confidence and website design are evaluated. Algorithmically, these parameters are very difficult to calculate (and you can calculate with a high error), and here the collective assessment assessment can give a quality signal to the search, which will be taken into account when ranking, but will not be a determining factor.
In other words, assessors of Yandex are only qualified users on wages, thanks to whom search engines receive signals according to subjective criteria for evaluating a site.
On the Internet, you can find a document that is issued for the instructions of the assessor Yandex.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a real instruction or a fake one. But the essence of the tasks of the assessor in this document, in general, is displayed correctly. Assessors evaluate commercial sites on a certain graded scale - from the most relevant results to spam. In more detail about all existing categories:
The “vital page” is often the only correct answer. It should be understood that there is not a “vital” answer for every request. As a rule, “vital” pages can be for requests in the form of a company name. Very often “vital” answers are given not by one link to the site on the page of issue, but by a large number of links.
But what is interesting. According to one of the requests in the form of the brand name that we promoted, there was not a vendor (our client) in the top of the issue. We made a request in support of Yandex and received the following answer: “As for vitality, we do not believe that there should be a vital site at the specified request”. In principle, everything turned out to be logical. Upon request, one of the vendor’s dealers was in the top, from the point of view of logic, he had the right to be there, respectively, the “vital” pages might not even be inquiries in the form of a brand, if there are enough vendor dealers on the Internet whose sites have all the necessary and complete brand information.
“Useful Page” is a page where you can find the answer to a question asked, useful information relevant to the request.
“Page relevant +” is a page that fully meets the request.
“Page relevant” is a page that partially responds to the request.
“Irrelevant Page” is a page that does not respond to the request.
"Spam" - the page has signs of search spam, doorway.
“Page Not About That” - this category is very interesting. In order to understand it, you need to delve a little into the principles of textual ranking of sites by search algorithms. Text ranking is essentially an attempt to search to understand "what is this page about?". Understanding this is half a step to ensure that the search determines by which queries (high or low) to rank the site. How does the search algorithm understand what the page is about? Obviously, there is some semantic analysis of the document and according to the markers the page is assigned to belong to one or another subject. Approximately on the same basis affiliation of the whole site to one or another subject is assigned. Obviously, an algorithm that works on this principle may be wrong. Having found random semantic constructions related to a specific topic in the text, the search engine assigns a page to a page, but the text can be “not about that” at all, without being spam.
The first thought that comes to mind: is it possible to influence the assessor to make a decision in favor of your site? In fact, the question is not so “funny” as it may seem at first glance, and the answer to it is not as simple as it seems. Let's figure it out.
First of all, to influence one specific assessor is completely pointless. The assessor does not control the issue directly. Signals that are created by assessors are processed by a search robot based on machine learning algorithms . Assessors are, in fact, navigators that help in the ocean of noise to catch the correct motion vector. For search algorithms, not one specific assessment of a specific assessor is important, but a collegial assessment of a large number of assessors. That is why assessors are quite a large number (although all of them are freelance employees, with the exception of the managers of the direction). How many assessors in Yandex, no one knows for sure. But according to some data, in the summer of 2010, there were about 120, in 2011, about 200, and in the winter of 2012, more than 250. By and large, it does not make sense to further increase the number of assessors. In our opinion, the further development of assessor assessments will occur not through hiring and training employees, but using data from the analysis of the behavioral factors of some high-quality user samples. In fact, any qualified Internet user can act as an assessor if the search learns with high certainty that the user is qualified and not engaged, the institute of assessor assessments will die by itself (and we have no doubt that this will happen).
Well, for now we have to learn to influence existing assessors. We have to do it. How? There is only one answer. It is necessary to improve the user characteristics of the site, to make the site useful and necessary for your target audience. Also, see the news about what is important for Yandex in terms of increasing the level of trust on the part of assessors .
Author: Denis Saveliev, CEO Texterra
It is not a secret for anybody that the human factor has been playing an important role in the ranking of sites for quite a long time. Keep the staff of "manual moderators" expensive and low-tech. On the other hand, search engines have long been not just technology, but a business, and a large one (Yandex is the largest Internet company of the Old World).
So, in this article we will focus on assessors of search engines and their role in shaping the issuance.
')
The main thing that commercial site owners need to know about assessors is that assessors cannot directly influence issuance - “omit” or “raise” sites in issuance. Appraisers, rather, act as certain "beacons" that give signals to search algorithms. In particular, in the new Yandex algorithm for ranking Moscow Region sites, which was introduced on November 20, 2011, parameters such as website confidence and website design are evaluated. Algorithmically, these parameters are very difficult to calculate (and you can calculate with a high error), and here the collective assessment assessment can give a quality signal to the search, which will be taken into account when ranking, but will not be a determining factor.
In other words, assessors of Yandex are only qualified users on wages, thanks to whom search engines receive signals according to subjective criteria for evaluating a site.
Instructions assessor Yandex
On the Internet, you can find a document that is issued for the instructions of the assessor Yandex.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a real instruction or a fake one. But the essence of the tasks of the assessor in this document, in general, is displayed correctly. Assessors evaluate commercial sites on a certain graded scale - from the most relevant results to spam. In more detail about all existing categories:
The “vital page” is often the only correct answer. It should be understood that there is not a “vital” answer for every request. As a rule, “vital” pages can be for requests in the form of a company name. Very often “vital” answers are given not by one link to the site on the page of issue, but by a large number of links.
But what is interesting. According to one of the requests in the form of the brand name that we promoted, there was not a vendor (our client) in the top of the issue. We made a request in support of Yandex and received the following answer: “As for vitality, we do not believe that there should be a vital site at the specified request”. In principle, everything turned out to be logical. Upon request, one of the vendor’s dealers was in the top, from the point of view of logic, he had the right to be there, respectively, the “vital” pages might not even be inquiries in the form of a brand, if there are enough vendor dealers on the Internet whose sites have all the necessary and complete brand information.
“Useful Page” is a page where you can find the answer to a question asked, useful information relevant to the request.
“Page relevant +” is a page that fully meets the request.
“Page relevant” is a page that partially responds to the request.
“Irrelevant Page” is a page that does not respond to the request.
"Spam" - the page has signs of search spam, doorway.
“Page Not About That” - this category is very interesting. In order to understand it, you need to delve a little into the principles of textual ranking of sites by search algorithms. Text ranking is essentially an attempt to search to understand "what is this page about?". Understanding this is half a step to ensure that the search determines by which queries (high or low) to rank the site. How does the search algorithm understand what the page is about? Obviously, there is some semantic analysis of the document and according to the markers the page is assigned to belong to one or another subject. Approximately on the same basis affiliation of the whole site to one or another subject is assigned. Obviously, an algorithm that works on this principle may be wrong. Having found random semantic constructions related to a specific topic in the text, the search engine assigns a page to a page, but the text can be “not about that” at all, without being spam.
How to influence assessors, and whether to influence them?
The first thought that comes to mind: is it possible to influence the assessor to make a decision in favor of your site? In fact, the question is not so “funny” as it may seem at first glance, and the answer to it is not as simple as it seems. Let's figure it out.
First of all, to influence one specific assessor is completely pointless. The assessor does not control the issue directly. Signals that are created by assessors are processed by a search robot based on machine learning algorithms . Assessors are, in fact, navigators that help in the ocean of noise to catch the correct motion vector. For search algorithms, not one specific assessment of a specific assessor is important, but a collegial assessment of a large number of assessors. That is why assessors are quite a large number (although all of them are freelance employees, with the exception of the managers of the direction). How many assessors in Yandex, no one knows for sure. But according to some data, in the summer of 2010, there were about 120, in 2011, about 200, and in the winter of 2012, more than 250. By and large, it does not make sense to further increase the number of assessors. In our opinion, the further development of assessor assessments will occur not through hiring and training employees, but using data from the analysis of the behavioral factors of some high-quality user samples. In fact, any qualified Internet user can act as an assessor if the search learns with high certainty that the user is qualified and not engaged, the institute of assessor assessments will die by itself (and we have no doubt that this will happen).
Well, for now we have to learn to influence existing assessors. We have to do it. How? There is only one answer. It is necessary to improve the user characteristics of the site, to make the site useful and necessary for your target audience. Also, see the news about what is important for Yandex in terms of increasing the level of trust on the part of assessors .
Author: Denis Saveliev, CEO Texterra
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/143966/
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