Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, addressed concerns over Google’s ranking algorithm imperfections, saying they’re not perfect, but we’re working on it.
Air purifier review website owner Danny Ashton asked Google’s Search Liaison on X why Google ranks sites that don’t meet Google’s guidelines.
Sullivan gave an honest reply, admitting that their review algorithm should do better, and provided insights into what Google’s doing to ensure it stops ranking poor-quality sites.
Google search results under scrutiny
The conversation on X began when an aggrieved review site owner asked how Google could rank a site breaking its quality content guidelines.
Air Purify review site owner Danny Ashton tweeted:
A screenshot of the review showing where it falls short of Google’s guidelines:
Danny followed this by tweeting:
And finished with a remark that many site owners are thinking:
- “And I think I found the reason why it ranks #1… Money.”
Others on X agreed with Danny’s point, tweeting:
Google admits ranking is automated and imperfect
Search Liasion Danny Sullivan was sympathetic to Danny’s gripe, explaining he reviews all submitted feedback and discusses it with his search team.
Sullivan also explained that because of the mammoth amount of ranking sites, Google indexes trillions of content pages, and its ranking process is automated.
Search Liaison tweeted:
Sullivan admitted its ranking systems aren’t perfect and should do more:
- “That said, there’s clearly more we should be doing. I don’t think this is particularly new, as I’ve shared before that our ranking systems aren’t perfect and that I see content that we ought to do better by, as well as content we’re rewarding when we shouldn’t.”
- “But it’s also not a system where any individual reviews content and says “OK, that’s great — rank it better” or “OK, that’s not great, downrank it.” It simply wouldn’t work for a search engine that indexes trillions of pages of content from across the web to operate that way. You need scalable systems. And you need to keep working on improving those systems.”
- “That’s what we’ll keep doing. We’re definitely aware of these concerns. We’ve seen the feedback, including the feedback from our recent form. I’ve personally been through every bit of that feedback and have been organizing it so our teams can look further at different aspects. This is in addition to the work they’re already doing, based on feedback we’ve already seen.”
What is taking Google so long?
Sullivan’s statement:
- “In our experience, each rollout of the Products Review Update has shaken things up, generally benefitting sites and writers who actually dedicated time, effort, and money to test products before they would recommend them to the world.”
Didn’t go down well, especially with so many sites suffering catastrophic ranking losses because of Google’s recent core and helpful content updates.
Mike Futia called Google’s Search Liaison out on his “shaken things up” remark, tweeting:
Google going in the wrong direction
It was a valid question because surely Google should test its “system improvements” to ensure they improve the quality of what it ranks, not the opposite! However, for many site owners and creators, Google`s search results appear to be going in the wrong direction with every new update.
