When Google Fails


cc licensed flickr photo shared by westpark

“Just Google it.” (No one ever says, “Just Yahoo it,” much to Yahoo’s dismay.)

I’m not convinced that Google’s artificial intelligence has made it out of grade school yet. To prove this, all you need to do is imagine a destructive idea—making Google have the wrong answer.

You can already see this idea being carried out on a small scale, with people learning how Google ranks pages, and subsequently getting their pages ranked higher. These pages are only intended to serve impression ads, and often do not have the information the user was looking for when they first searched. While this phenomenon is still a growing one, it has so far been contained by the narrow interest of the perpetrator.

But, what if a group of people decided that they had no revenue interest in any one particular manipulated Google result, but instead wanted to make as many common inquiries to Google return results that are completely inaccurate and irrelevant—at least within the first 10-20 listings.

This concentrated effort would show that the algorithms that Google uses could not effectively address the problem before the troublemakers would be able to adapt and evolve themselves. A band of misfits numbering less than a thousand could probably stay ahead of Google’s efforts to stop their trouble making. This is largely because Google is doing everything in house.

To illustrate, imagine a factually correct Wikipedia result that someone one day decides to alter. The mistake will be corrected in a very short period of time, relatively speaking, because each visitor is like a tiny quality control department. A page of irrelevant Google results, on the other hand, will go much longer before being corrected, given what is required for Google’s personnel and algorithms to notice the problem.

I believe a vulnerability that undermines Google Search is an Achilles heel to the entire brand. There is a threshold of error that users will collectively allow, and if Google continues to move toward this instead of away from this, users will begin to search for an alternative (pun most definitely intended.)

I’m trying to describe a way for a new service to effectively compete without giving away too much of the delicious secret sauce.

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The Beautiful Internet

This one is the graphic designer in me speaking out.

Let’s face it. A lot of the internet is ugly. Not metaphorically ugly, but from a design perspective, literally ugly. Whenever I run across a poorly designed website, I usually judge the book by its cover, and automatically assume the content, product, or service is inferior to one offered on a better looking website. For a long time, I continued to use Yahoo instead of Google because Yahoo looked better, cleaner, and more professional.

Of course, it is not always true that better design provides the best service, e.g., Craigslist; nevertheless, it is an impulse that often serves me well, and I’m not too interested in spending a lot of time challenging the assumption. I think there are a lot of other people like me, especially with regard to that last point. If it doesn’t look right, it doesn’t feel right. And if it doesn’t feel right, people move on.


cc licensed flickr photo shared by gualtiero

Well, what if we could separate the ugly internet from the beautiful internet? What if there was a search engine that had a design standard for the sites it listed? Would this offer some encouragement for sites (especially popular sites) to step up their design a bit?

Now, I don’t think everything has to be cutting-edge. There are websites devoted to showcasing the best and fanciest web site designs from around the web. This would not be that. Instead, it would set a bar that could easily be met with a minimum of effort.

Now, the interesting idea within the idea is trying to automate the aesthetic review process. I think if the offer were made, hundreds if not thousands of graphic designers would be willing to spend an hour or two a week just clicking YES or NO when shown various web sites. (They may need to pass a little visual test to demonstrate their familiarity with the basics of good design.) Each site would be shown to X number of designers, the results tallked, and if skewed significantly in one direction or the other would be considered reviewed, and where there was less of a consensus, the sites would be internally reviewed.

I think it would only take about 15 seconds to evaluate a site (on average.) That’s about 500 sites reviewed in the two hours our volunteer works every week. With just 5,000 volunteers (which I think is hardly a challenge), that’s 10 MILLION sites reviewed every month. While there are nearly 1 trillion unique URL’s, there are only about 300 million actual web sites. So, assuming zero growth, this would be a three year project.

Or you could write a program that recognizes good design …

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