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miercuri, 20 mai 2015

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Has Google Gone Too Far with the Bias Toward Its Own Content? - Moz Blog

Has Google Gone Too Far with the Bias Toward Its Own Content?

Posted on: Wednesday 20 May 2015 — 00:36

Posted by ajfried

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

Since the beginning of SEO time, practitioners have been trying to crack the Google algorithm. Every once in a while, the industry gets a glimpse into how the search giant works and we have opportunity to deconstruct it. We don't get many of these opportunities, but when we do—assuming we spot them in time—we try to take advantage of them so we can "fix the Internet."

On Feb. 16, 2015, news started to circulate that NBC would start removing images and references of Brian Williams from its website.

This was it!

A golden opportunity.

This was our chance to learn more about the Knowledge Graph.

Expectation vs. reality

Often it's difficult to predict what Google is truly going to do. We expect something to happen, but in reality it's nothing like we imagined.

Expectation

What we expected to see was that Google would change the source of the image. Typically, if you hover over the image in the Knowledge Graph, it reveals the location of the image.

This would mean that if the image disappeared from its original source, then the image displayed in the Knowledge Graph would likely change or even disappear entirely.

Reality (February 2015)

The only problem was, there was no official source (this changed, as you will soon see) and identifying where the image was coming from proved extremely challenging. In fact, when you clicked on the image, it took you to an image search result that didn't even include the image.

Could it be? Had Google started its own database of owned or licensed images and was giving it priority over any other sources?

In order to find the source, we tried taking the image from the Knowledge Graph and "search by image" in images.google.com to find others like it. For the NBC Nightly News image, Google failed to even locate a match to the image it was actually using anywhere on the Internet. For other television programs, it was successful. Here is an example of what happened for Morning Joe:

So we found the potential source. In fact, we found three potential sources. Seemed kind of strange, but this seemed to be the discovery we were looking for.

This looks like Google is using someone else's content and not referencing it. These images have a source, but Google is choosing not to show it.

Then Google pulled the ol' switcheroo.

New reality (March 2015)

Now things changed and Google decided to put a source to their images. Unfortunately, I mistakenly assumed that hovering over an image showed the same thing as the file path at the bottom, but I was wrong. The URL you see when you hover over an image in the Knowledge Graph is actually nothing more than the title. The source is different.

Luckily, I still had two screenshots I took when I first saw this saved on my desktop. Success. One screen capture was from NBC Nightly News, and the other from the news show Morning Joe (see above) showing that the source was changed.

(NBC Nightly News screenshot.)

The source is a Google-owned property: gstatic.com. You can clearly see the difference in the source change. What started as a hypothesis in now a fact. Google is certainly creating a database of images.

If this is the direction Google is moving, then it is creating all kinds of potential risks for brands and individuals. The implications are a loss of control for any brand that is looking to optimize its Knowledge Graph results. As well, it seems this poses a conflict of interest to Google, whose mission is to organize the world's information, not license and prioritize it.

How do we think Google is supposed to work?

Google is an information-retrieval system tasked with sourcing information from across the web and supplying the most relevant results to users' searches. In recent months, the search giant has taken a more direct approach by answering questions and assumed questions in the Answer Box, some of which come from un-credited sources. Google has clearly demonstrated that it is building a knowledge base of facts that it uses as the basis for its Answer Boxes. When it sources information from that knowledge base, it doesn't necessarily reference or credit any source.

However, I would argue there is a difference between an un-credited Answer Box and an un-credited image. An un-credited Answer Box provides a fact that is indisputable, part of the public domain, unlikely to change (e.g., what year was Abraham Lincoln shot? How long is the George Washington Bridge?) Answer Boxes that offer more than just a basic fact (or an opinion, instructions, etc.) always credit their sources.

There are four possibilities when it comes to Google referencing content:

Option 1: It credits the content because someone else owns the rights to it
Option 2: It doesn't credit the content because it's part of the public domain, as seen in some Answer Box results
Option 3: It doesn't reference it because it owns or has licensed the content. If you search for "Chicken Pox" or other diseases, Google appears to be using images from licensed medical illustrators. The same goes for song lyrics, which Eric Enge discusses here: Google providing credit for content. This adds to the speculation that Google is giving preference to its own content by displaying it over everything else.
Option 4: It doesn't credit the content, but neither does it necessarily own the rights to the content. This is a very gray area, and is where Google seemed to be back in February. If this were the case, it would imply that Google is "stealing" content—which I find hard to believe, but felt was necessary to include in this post for the sake of completeness.

Is this an isolated incident?

At Five Blocks, whenever we see these anomalies in search results, we try to compare the term in question against others like it. This is a categorization concept we use to bucket individuals or companies into similar groups. When we do this, we uncover some incredible trends that help us determine what a search result "should" look like for a given group. For example, when looking at searches for a group of people or companies in an industry, this grouping gives us a sense of how much social media presence the group has on average or how much media coverage it typically gets.

Upon further investigation of terms similar to NBC Nightly News (other news shows), we noticed the un-credited image scenario appeared to be a trend in February, but now all of the images are being hosted on gstatic.com. When we broadened the categories further to TV shows and movies, the trend persisted. Rather than show an image in the Knowledge Graph and from the actual source, Google tends to show an image and reference the source from Google's own database of stored images.

And just to ensure this wasn't a case of tunnel vision, we researched other categories, including sports teams, actors and video games, in addition to spot-checking other genres.

Unlike terms for specific TV shows and movies, terms in each of these other groups all link to the actual source in the Knowledge Graph.

Immediate implications

It's easy to ignore this and say "Well, it's Google. They are always doing something." However, there are some serious implications to these actions:

The TV shows/movies aren't receiving their due credit because, from within the Knowledge Graph, there is no actual reference to the show's official site
The more Google moves toward licensing and then retrieving their own information, the more biased they become, preferring their own content over the equivalent—or possibly even superior—content from another source
If feels wrong and misleading to get a Google Image Search result rather than an actual site because:
- The search doesn't include the original image
- Considering how poor Image Search results are normally, it feels like a poor experience
If Google is moving toward licensing as much content as possible, then it could make the Knowledge Graph infinitely more complicated when there is a "mistake" or something unflattering. How could one go about changing what Google shows about them?

Google is objectively becoming subjective

It is clear that Google is attempting to create databases of information, including lyrics stored in Google Play, photos, and, previously, facts in Freebase (which is now Wikidata and not owned by Google).

I am not normally one to point my finger and accuse Google of wrongdoing. But this really strikes me as an odd move, one bordering on a clear bias to direct users to stay within the search engine. The fact is, we trust Google with a heck of a lot of information with our searches. In return, I believe we should expect Google to return an array of relevant information for searchers to decide what they like best. The example cited above seems harmless, but what about determining which is the right religion? Or even who the prettiest girl in the world is?

Questions such as these, which Google is returning credited answers for, could return results that are perceived as facts.

Should we next expect Google to decide who is objectively the best service provider (e.g., pizza chain, painter, or accountant), then feature them in an un-credited answer box? The direction Google is moving right now, it feels like we should be calling into question their objectivity.

But that's only my (subjective) opinion.

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marți, 19 mai 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Another Perspective on Today's Strong Housing Numbers
Robots on Verge of Replacing Human Anesthesiologists
Housing Starts and Permits Surge Most in Seven Years

Another Perspective on Today's Strong Housing Numbers

Posted: 19 May 2015 09:59 AM PDT

Following today's better than expected housing numbers (See Housing Starts and Permits Surge Most in Seven Years) Doug Short at Advisor Perspectives pinged me with these comments.

Mish – I started tracking these for the first time today – complete historical data. These are two of the noisiest series of all time.

Take a look at the charts, especially the population-adjusted versions. You'll see why you need at least a 3-month moving average to get an idea of the real trend direction and slope. And check out where the latest data points put us relative to the total series.

Starts: New Residential Housing Starts Surge in April
Permits: New Residential Building Permits Rise 10.1% in April

Bottom line: take the April data with a grain of salt … maybe a tablespoon full.

Privately Owned Housing Starts

click on any chart for sharper image

Housing Starts as Percent of Population

The above from Doug Short

Here is a chart and comment I posted yesterday in Home Builders Optimistic Despite Decline in Traffic; Housing Market Index Declines.

NAHB Housing Market Index

If you ask the builders, sales conditions are very good with a score of 59. Sales expectations rose to an excellent score of 64. Meanwhile, actual lookers score a very poor 39.

Average it all together and you get the totally useless chart above.

Housing Market Index Components

Yesterday afternoon I asked the NAHB for the subcomponent data. Here is a chart I put together today from that data.

Note the actual traffic of prospective buyers vs. sales expectations six months out.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Robots on Verge of Replacing Human Anesthesiologists

Posted: 19 May 2015 06:59 AM PDT

Those in medical school pondering career specialties need consider which fields may soon vanish to robots. Anesthesiology is one field in the robotic spotlight.

Please consider this Washington Post headline quote: "We are Convinced the Machine can do Better than Human Anesthesiologists".

I wrote recently about Sedasys, a machine that automates anesthesia. It's a first-of-its-kind device in the United States. Only four hospitals use it for now. It's restricted to colonoscopies in healthy patients.

But Sedasys, in development for 15 years, is no longer on the true cutting edge of what's possible with automated anesthesia.

A machine with the clunky name of iControl-RP is. It's an experimental device that pushes the boundaries of how much responsibility is turned over to technology. It monitors brain wave activity. And it's even been tested on children.
One of the reasons that Sedasys was approved by U.S. health regulators is that it's a conservative leap forward. The device is innovative, but it doesn't decide alone how much anesthesia to give to a patient.

It's an open-loop system. The initial dose is pre-determined based on a patient's weight and age. And Sedasys only reduces or stops drug delivery if it detects problems. Only a doctor or nurse can up the dose. That gave regulators a level of comfort.

But the iControl-RP makes its own decisions. It is a closed-loop system.

This new device, being tested by University of British Columbia researchers, monitors a patient's brain wave activity along with traditional health markers, such as blood oxygen levels, to determine how much anesthesia to deliver.

"We are convinced the machine can do better than human anesthesiologists," said Mark Ansermino, one of the machine's co-developers, who works as director of pediatric anesthesia research at the university's medical school in Vancouver.

Sedasys dips its toes into what's possible. The iControl-RP dives right in.

Anesthesia is tricky. It's often compared to flying a plane – keeping a patient hovering in just the right plane of consciousness. It's called depth of hypnosis. Surgeons don't want patients writhing on the table. And patients don't want to be aware of the operation. Of course, no one wants patients to die, a distinct possibility if too much of an anesthesia drug is delivered.

The iControl-RP aims to thread that needle by using an EEG to scan a patient's brain waves to make sure the sedation is adequate. And it looks at heart and breathing rates and blood oxygen levels to make sure the patient is not slipping too deeply into sleep. The machine's algorithm makes all the medical decisions that a doctor usually does.

Ansermino said anesthesiologists are not very good at maintaining just the right amount of sedation. This is especially important in children, where studies show that deep sedation can have negative longterm cognitive impacts on infants and toddlers.

The iControl-RP team says it has struggled to find a corporate backer for its project. Ansermino, the anesthesiologist in Vancouver, thinks he knows why.

"Most big companies view this as too risky," he said.

But, he said, a device like this was inevitable.

"I think eventually this will happen," Ansermino said, "whether we like it or not."

Anesthesiology Robots Coming Like It or Not

I side with Ansermino. These devices will happen, like it or not. Look for approval in Canada first, then Europe. The US will then be forced to catch up.

Meet iControl-RP Your New Anesthesiologist

The iControl-RP, which fully automates anesthesia for operations, stands on the right. On the left are traditional anesthesia monitors that would be used by a human doctor. UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA PHOTO

Clinical Trials in Canada

iControl-RP is in Clinical Trials in Canada. The study is currently recruiting participants.

It's increasingly important to choose your career wisely. Healthcare in general may be a good choice, but select fields in healthcare will go to robots.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Housing Starts and Permits Surge Most in Seven Years

Posted: 19 May 2015 06:03 AM PDT

In one of the few economic bright spots recently, housing starts surged beating Bloomberg Consensus Estimates.

Highlights

There were hardly any indications before today, but the spring housing surge is here. Today's housing starts & permits report is one of the very strongest on record with starts soaring 20.2 percent in April to a much higher-than-expected annual rate of 1.135 million with permits up 10.1 percent to a much higher-than-expected 1.143 million. Both readings easily top the Econoday high-end forecast of 1.120 million for each. The gain for starts is the best in 7-1/2 years with the gain in permits the best in 7 years. Today's report is an eye-opener and will re-establish expectations for building strength in housing, a sector held down badly in the first quarter by severe weather.

Recent History Of This Indicator

Housing starts & permits have been some of the most disappointing data on the calendar, underscoring how weak the new home market really is. Excuses were abundant during the heavy weather of the first quarter but those excuses won't apply to the latest report which is for April. Both starts and permits are expected to show big gains from depressed levels.

Housing Starts

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Damn Cool Pics

Man's Finds Something Incredible In A Nintendo 3DS Case

Posted: 19 May 2015 02:43 PM PDT

This guy bought a Nintendo 3DS case at Goodwill for only $2.99 but he got something worth so much more. He heard something rattling inside and that's when he decided to do some investigating.

He found this 3DS case at Good Will for $2.99 and could hear rattling inside but no way to know for sure.