Not seen this before

**drivetowin** · 07-01-07

Anyone else noticed these type of urls in your referrer logs?

https://www.google.com/evaluation/se...?task=46776371

I've had four of these on my top site overnight (all with different task numbers)

Kind of implies to me it's some kind of manual rating system but I'm not sure.... (if you put that url in the browser it just redirects to the Google account log in screen)

Did a search on Google and it appears to be linked to Google eval but no one seems to really know what it's all about

**HarveyC** · 07-01-07

I've heard of these on W webmaster world - there's a full story/speculation here

**Elaine** · 07-01-07

just had a quick scan through my last 30,000 searches and haven't spotted this one,

but I have heard of Google using international students to manually check the top listings - and I have a theory that this accounts for some affiliate sites attracting a 30, 60, 90+ penalty (fall in the serps), as, obviously, each of them will interpret the 'thin affiliate' guidelines differently - and probably some will just slap a 30+ penalty on any affiliate site they come across.

Now the problem is do you risk using the Google inclusion request for these fallen pages? yes GG could say these pages have value and unique content and are not 'thin affiliates' and restore the original rankings, or

on the other hand, GG could say 'whoa this is a 'thin affiliate' site' and slap a site wide penalty on?

tricky problem

**skywalker** · 07-01-07

Interesting stuff - i used your url and then logged into my Google adwords account and got the following message:

Forbidden

The user xxxxx@fxxxxx.com is not a member of EWOQ. Please ask your EWOQ contact for access.

Now what on Google Earth is EWOQ - any guesses?

**Reno Dakota** · 07-01-07

I'm guessing it's similar to an Ewok, only less cuddly and more malicious. Not to mention detrimental to revenue, but tell that to the folks who pay the landspeeder bills...

**essdeekay** · 07-01-07

EWOQ - furry creature native to the forest moon of Endor

(sorry - not very productive but it's late and I need to sleep!)

Si

**csn** · 09-01-07

Not sure how much of this to believe:

http://www.searchbistro.com/secretlab.html

(Flash video)

**Atomic** · 09-01-07

Originally Posted by csn

Not sure how much of this to believe:

http://www.searchbistro.com/secretlab.html

(Flash video)

Thats pretty interesting, I have had had a look and can't find much else out. There must be a lot of staff though to review the internet!

**3wdl** · 09-01-07

Originally Posted by Atomic

Thats pretty interesting, I have had had a look and can't find much else out. There must be a lot of staff though to review the internet!

There is a bit about it on SEOBook and WMW too.

The basis of it seems to be as such:

When google make changes to their algorythem, there are evaluation teams that look though some example rates and say if they seem to be improved or not.

Based on this research google may or may not go though with the changes.

A "human" research panel is a very good idea I think.

**Supercod** · 09-01-07

Copyright notice says 2005 (so could be old, made up, no idea)… also if your using Google to search for info on this and they don’t want us to know about this, would they not just hide the listings???

I can see how manual review of the say top 1,000 search terms could be of value and easy to do, and with the money Google has maybe they taken that to the next step and they review 100,000 or a million as part of keeping the quality up. However I don’t know, have too much to think about to add something I have no control over in to the mix and so I will just keep doing what I am doing and hope for the best as I honestly can't see them giving a crap about me and my sites, if they did “care” it would be on an automated basis only, I would imagine, but could be very wrong who knows, someone at Google for sure but they not about to tell us