Google Admits Manual Editing of Search Results

Google this week admitted that its employees have the ability to select what appears in its search results.Google has always claimed that its search results were chosen by a computer algorithm. The disclaimer lives on at Google News, where we are assured that:

“The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.”

Google explained that its algorithm “relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. ”

This week Marissa Meyer explained that editorial judgments will play a key role in Google searches. A report by Tech Crunch proprietor Michael Arrington observed:

“Mayer also talked about Google’s use of user data created by actions on Wiki search to improve search results on Google in general. For now that data is not being used to change overall search results, she said. But in the future it’s likely Google will use the data to at least make obvious changes. An example is if “thousands of people” were to knock a search result off a search page, they’d be likely to make a change.”

With this in mind, how sure can the SEO industry be when battling for positions using tried and tested methodology, that a Google SERPS editor will not undo all their work for the sake of a clean, preferential top ten.