Lupi

i've decided some of these airfoils qualify as blorbos

Wired had an op-ed last week that apparently accused Google of artificially modifying search queries on the back end to add keywords that would increase the number of commercial results you see. They've since redacted the entire article:

Editor’s Note 10/6/2023: After careful review of the op-ed, "How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet," and relevant material provided to us following its publication, WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed.

There's an archive of the post available. Google's Search Liason (an employee doing outreach / explanations of how search works) responded with a Tweet saying that the article was conflating ad-matching with matching for organic results, and that the systems were separate..

An ex-Googler asked Google PR to provide the referenced slide that is the source for the original article, which they did.

Without the surrounding slides or accompanying presentation audio, it's hard to tell exactly what this slide is showing. The article seems to have interpreted it as Google effectively adding brand names like "sean jean" into a search that originally didn't have any, while the slide's intent seems to be more to show that matches that happen to have brand names in them already that would have been missed because they used words like "children" instead of "kids" would now be included. Whether it's one the other depends on some baseline understanding of what a "match" is in this system.

Regardless of the answer, Google's assertion is that this whole system is only used for selecting what sponsored ad to use, and isn't at all used for organic results in the first place. The slide isn't specific enough to tell one way or the other.

for example: i can build a theme park with architecture based on the town of positano in italy and then run a roller coaster through all the buildings

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