Google Blogoscoped

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Google’s Internal Tool to Check Search Results?

French Google blog Zorgloob has what they say are screenshots from a Google employee showing a certain “GG Score" value in action. Apparently, this value and others are displayed when a Google engineer internally looks at search results, perhaps through a certain special tool.

The full line below the snippet for www.ffp.asso.fr for instance reads (my line breaks and formatting):

GG Score: $11.68
Adv: Yes
Vertical: /Local/Regional Content
PVs: 11,088

Update: Tom in the comments explains that he photoshopped the screenshot info lines (perhaps in order to protect each site’s privacy); in other words, e.g. the number “$11.68” isn’t really the one from www.ffp.asso.fr, but it was shown below another domain.

What exactly the GG Score in dollar is, the Zorgloob blog doesn’t know either, but they do add that the screenshot was sent by someone working in connection with the AdWords department. Other GG Scores shown include $30.73 and $34.33. Commenting on the meaning of the “Adv" value, Zorgloob’s TomHTML says “We did not find a correlation between this value and the presence or absence of AdWords advertising for these sites"* (during a brief scan I didn’t spot any AdSense on e.g. www.ffp.asso.fr either that part got nullified by Tom’s update). “PVs” on the other hand, TomHTML ponders could be short for “page views.”

The screenshot Zorgloob presents also includes a navigation entry that reads “Moma” – the name of Google’s intranet.

*Translation via Google Translator.

[Image by Zorgloob, used with permission. Thanks TomHTML!]

Update 2: Google sent a clarification on above screenshot in the form of a statement by their head of the webspam team, Matt Cutts:

Our organic search results have always been completely independent from our paid advertisements. We consider the objectivity of our search results to be paramount to our success and would never compromise that in any way.

The screenshot shows a tool that is not used by the search quality team in any way. It is a tool used by members of our AdWords sales team to help prioritize new customer acquisition. We are strongly committed to maintaining the integrity of our organic search results.

(Not that this post claimed otherwise, but fair enough.)

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