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Google Businesses The Internet News

Google to use TrustRank for News, Possibly More 166

Posted by Zonk from the no-more-trusting-the-weekly-world-news dept.
mike slaven writes "In a follow-up to Tuesday's post about Google registering a trademark on the term TrustRank, an article on NewScientist explains how Google plans to track the credibility of news sources. The article also mentions that the patent on TrustRank is not limited to ranking just news stories: 'The patent also reveals that the same system could be roped in to rank other search results, not simply news. So sales and services could in the future be listed on the basis of price and the reputation of the company involved.'"
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Google to use TrustRank for News, Possibly More More

Google to use TrustRank for News, Possibly More

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  • I see problems coming if Google uses trust rank (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DeadSea ( 69598 ) * on Friday April 29, 2005 @02:57PM (#12386433) Homepage Journal
    From what I have read about trust rank, the basic premise is that they pick 200 or so "trusted sites". The trust rank for any page is then basically the number of link hops to the page from a trusted site.

    The problem I have with this is that there are many problems with identifying trusted sites and maintaining the trustworthiness of such sites after they have been chosen.

    From Google's point of view, a trusted site would have to have strict editorial standards and link to a lot of sites. I can think of a lot of sites with strict editorial content, but they generally do not link to a lot of sites. The open directory projects seems to me to be a candidate for a trusted site [dmoz.org]. It has editorial controls and links to a heck of a lot of sites.

    The first question to ask is: "After the trusted sites is chosen, how much would it cost to buy one?". I suppose dmoz itself would be hard to buy outright, but how much would it take to buy one of the editors, or to buy an editorial position? Probably not much. Dmoz alread has a lot of editorial fraud and it would make the problem worse. I'm not sure that its fair to expect trusted sites not to degrade to some extent.

    The second question to ask is: "How hard is it to buy links from trusted sites?". The answer has to be that it is pretty easy. Forget about corrupting the people as I discussed in the last point. Any trusted site that links to lots of pages is going to have a huge link management problem. Every day hundreds of domains that it links to may expire. You can snap those up and buy trust.

    All this doesn't even include folks who make sites look trustworthy with the sole intention of turning them to the dark side later. All of this happens currently with pagerank, but it will be much worse once the trust power is put into the hands of a few.

    --
    Exchange Rate Currency Calculator [ostermiller.org]

  • Trustrank? (Score:5, Funny)

    by awhelan ( 781773 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @02:57PM (#12386443) Homepage
    Can we know this for sure? Has google confirmed it? What is the trustrank of newscientist.com ?

  • Slashdot's News Rotation (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29, 2005 @02:58PM (#12386454)
    1. Google
    2. Apple
    3. Firefox
    4. Your Rights are being stolen!
    5. Microsoft sucks.

    Rinse. Repeat.

  • Trustranking Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lildogie ( 54998 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @02:59PM (#12386461)
    I'll be fascinated to see how Slashdot articles get ranked.

  • Good. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Telastyn ( 206146 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @02:59PM (#12386465)
    Now for the gamespy implimentation to see what servers are filled with lamers... Now that'd be useful!
    • Come on. That one is easy.

      grep "[Pp]ublic [Ss]erver" serverlist.lst

      Hordes of Lamers for your humiliation needs.

  • Some points (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sv-Manowar ( 772313 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:00PM (#12386480) Homepage Journal
    The basic ideas and principles of TrustRank:
    http://www.seobook.com/archives/000661.shtml [seobook.com]

    I can see dangers in this becoming an elitist thing though, i.e Trusted Sites only linking to other trusted sites, or creating perceptions in surfer's minds. It will be interested to see how Google develop this one, that's for sure.
    • If the sites selected as parents are hand monitored well enough then google should be able to pick up on them, for example, selling off links for profit. Seeing as there shouldn't be too many, this could be entirely possible if spread across the workforce.
    • I can see dangers in this becoming an elitist thing though, i.e Trusted Sites only linking to other trusted sites, or creating perceptions in surfer's minds. It will be interested to see how Google develop this one, that's for sure.

      Well, they've gotta learned something from the orkut (sp?) mess.

  • This Worries Me... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smug_lisp_weenie ( 824771 ) * <cbarski.4503440@bloglines.com> on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:04PM (#12386514) Homepage
    Basically what they patented (from what I gather) is the idea of taking many factoids about a news company and putting it into a balanced formula to create a "trust" number.

    However, they are not patenting the formula itself, but just the idea of using such a formula, it seems...

    This seems like another case of taking an obvious idea and trying to block the competition by patenting it.

    • Never Be Evil . . . (Score:2, Insightful)

      by kingjosh ( 792336 )
      Isn't this behavior outside their mission statement? If Google's just going to be another patent farm and start using geniuses to come up with obvious ideas, I'd hardly call that not being evil . . . but that's just me.

  • TrustRank? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yes, bow to Our skunk protocol. You will give us your food, or we'll raise git on Our handstand and point our tail at you as the O'reilly spotted skunk found only in the most dense Amazon.com forests of the United Nigerian estates of America.

    If anyone is willing to accept these money orders, may you send me a laptop computer? The one I am using is falling to peices. Please contact me at Muabobu Mitchel "MM20012127@gmail.com", and I'll send you the money orders after you send two DELL laptops to 342 Vood
  • If you just get one link from a "trusted" site to some really un-trusted site, then POW! Down goes Frasier! I guess we'll know when that happens, because the top Google news stories will be teenage sluts, casinos, and cialis.

  • Astroturf (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:07PM (#12386540) Homepage Journal
    "Trust, but verify." - Ronnie "Rayguns" Reagan

  • Idea vs. implementation... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TVmisGuided ( 151197 ) <alan...jump@@@gmail...com> on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:07PM (#12386549) Homepage

    The idea isn't exactly new...refereed and peer-reviewed professional journals have been doing something along these lines for decades. Google, as I read it, is attempting to apply some basic scholarly principles to their listings.

    Now the bad news...I don't think it will work as described. Counting "number of bureaux cited" or hops from originator isn't exactly going to keep faked articles off their listings; as someone else already pointed out, it may be a matter of shucking out the cash for a domain that suddenly gets listed as "high trust level." Then that domain can be used to post pretty much whatever they want to make people think is accurate journalism.

    Sorry...I like the concept of automating the tedious task of fact-checking, but until Google can get their clusters' AI well beyond the Turing-test phase, it's not going to happen. Humans will still need to examine articles and references and make decisions as to whether a particular submission is, in fact, valid and accurate.

    Just my two cents' worth...save up the change for a root beer or something...

  • In related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:08PM (#12386565)
    foxnews.com just disappeared entirely from the Internet.

  • Google to tell you who to trust? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:12PM (#12386622) Homepage Journal
    Do you really need Google for this? Or is Google validation going to substitute for your own common sense?

    • Re:Google to tell you who to trust? (Score:4, Funny)

      by lucabrasi999 ( 585141 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:18PM (#12386686) Journal
      your own common sense?

      Too much work. It's just easier to do what Google tells me to do.

    • Re:Google to tell you who to trust? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 2short ( 466733 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @04:59PM (#12387741)

      I don't intend to substitute Googles validation for my common sense. But when I go to Google for news, and click on one of the top few stories on a particular topic, I want to have some expectation that I'm probably getting a reasonably trustworthy news source.

      Currently I do this by scanning for one I've heard of. Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC News, hell, even Al Jazeera and CNN: All of these may have biases, but I have some idea what they are, and they can all be expected to try for accuracy about the basic facts.

      For more obscure stories, this doesn't necessarily work. So I'm perfectly glad to hear Google will be making some attempt to weed out those "news" sources which, to put it kindly, do not try for accuracy about the basic facts.

  • Links And The Linking Links That Link To Them ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by rewinn ( 647614 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:13PM (#12386627) Homepage
    ... didn't Al Franken write that book already?
  • I have heard that this time they are using chickens instead of pegions [google.com] for the ranking system. Is it true?

  • Is It in Beta? (Score:3, Funny)

    by lbmouse ( 473316 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:17PM (#12386678) Homepage
    Did they copyright "TrustRank" or "TrustRank Beta"?

  • Already been done (Score:2, Interesting)

    by costas ( 38724 )
    Well, this is (half) a shameless plug but my newsbot [memigo.com] has been ranking news sources and referring meta-news sources according to "trust" for over 3 yrs now. Findory [findory.com] (no affiliation) does something similar by ranking each individual news story.
  • How will this affect all those litigious bastards or miserable failures out there?

  • This can only be good (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Bruha ( 412869 )
    As long as the rankings are fair and handled in a responsible matter then Google stands to give consumers the power that they have lacked for a long time. Companies will take note that if their trust ranking suffers from bad consumer reports then they will begin to pay attention.

    Maybe when you search for DSL you'll see companies at the top that deserve that ranking and the companies that fall down who think they should be first would improve how they treat their customers.

    Peer pressure at it's finest.
  • Well, the New York Times is one of the most trusted publications in the country. Oh, wait it isn't any more.

  • Now Google is starting to go too far. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kin_korn_karn ( 466864 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:25PM (#12386764) Homepage
    So Google wants to be the web's authoritative source on what sites can be trusted? I don't think I like the sound of that. No one entity should have that job.

    Ideally everyone would use common sense, but so few people have that anymore that it's almost quaint to suggest it.
  • Sooooo....

    What is the trust rank of CBS? Of 60 Minutes?

  • Trust in the eye of the beholder (Score:4, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:26PM (#12386773)
    Given that ALL news sources or sites have some bias, isn't trust in the eye of the beholder in many cases? Although the objective facts of some situation may be undisputed (usually these are disputed, too), the interpretation of those facts is subjective and highly dependent on the viewpoint, world model, etc.

    Perhaps Google will need to introduce right-wing and left-wing versions of TrustRank. If it does not, then it will be an example of tyranny of the majority when Google asserts than the majority's bias is trustworthy.

  • Trusted by whom (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hey ( 83763 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:27PM (#12386776) Journal
    Reblicans trust The Free Republic [freerepublic.com] but distrust The Nation [thenation.com].
    Democrates are exactly the opposite. What should TrustRank do about that? I don't see any way to reconcile stuff like that.
    • I think if "trust rank" was user specific sort of the way search history works that would be ideal. You clicked on the link from the news which means 1) the article interests you and 2) you trust or are interested in what the source has to say.

      For me thats the true power of google's massive database, what do I look at, and how can I find things I need faster. Give me USEFUL information from sources similar to those i have used before.

      • think if "trust rank" was user specific sort of the way search history works that would be ideal. You clicked on the link from the news which means 1) the article interests you and 2) you trust or are interested in what the source has to say.

        The problem I see with self-selecting the news you get is that you're soon only going to be getting facts which validate your prejudices and confirm the decisions you've already made. Of course, we're already headed there with Air America, Fox News and soforth.

    • Google will give the higher TrustRank rating to the site that the government tells them to give it to.
  • one step closer to whuffie...

    now where do I back myself up?

    ref is to here [amazon.com] for those not down with the ad hoc's
  • so that means no more slashdot on news.google.com? with all the duplicate stories, inflamitory and incorrect analysis, and bogus stories, slashdot has to be near the bottom of the heap.

  • Algorithm for Trust (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wronski ( 821189 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:31PM (#12386822)
    There are two main ways of ranking news (as well as websites and whatnot): Popularity or Quality. Popularity can be easily quantified, but with news you will probably end up with big and well known media source dominating the ranking. Regardless of what one thinks about CNN or BBC, they are not what I look for in googlenews (or I would just type www.cnn.com). I want news sources that I was anware of, to give me a fresh perspective.

    Quality on the other hand is very hard to measure, and any definition will surely be controversial. The metrics they are proposing will also benefit large well knwown news sources.

    What I would really like though is a rank that gave the widest possible perspective. Some algorithm that would take a news event and define some broad categories of news sources (say, on news on Iraq, conservative american media, liberal american, iraqi, arab, etc.). Then one or two representatives of each category would be displayed in the ranks, choosen among the cotegory by the metrics described in the article. The trick of course is to define the categories, but I think one could do that by looking at how different sources 'cluster' together. Sources in one country link overwhelmingly among themselves rather than abroad. Conservative news sources tend to cite and link to other conservatives, ditto for liberals or any other category. This is even more true for blogs, which wouldn't be much cited in the rank itself, but are a sort of glue that binds ideological and national categories together, and thus provide useful information to help classify the news source.

    I hope I'm making sense here. Just my 2cents...
  • I use Google a LOT at work and at home. Google is a great search engine that most people use every day. We're going to read about the new functionality on their site when they implement it. I don't understand the obsessive need that some people feel to follow everything that Google does. This is like writing a new article every time a car manufacturer adds a new feature. "The New Corvette to feature a digital clock on the dashboard...".

    This kind of blind horn blowing for a company is why Google's stock is
    • Google is important because millions of people use it multiple times per day. Many people don't even type URLs into their browsers directly anymore... they just enter website names into the google toolbar or homepage.

      So in short, knowing about what makes a #1 result a #1 result is critically important. We are moving from a phase where relevance & the work of hucksters looking for higher rankings drove search ranks to a new era, where "credibility" and political considerations will drive the results.
  • how much you trust google

  • You Want Prior Art? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by lofi-rev ( 797197 )
    I got your prior art http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=116588&cid=986 5259 [slashdot.org]">right here.

  • My Trustrank algorithms... (Score:4, Funny)

    by GPLDAN ( 732269 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:41PM (#12386918)
    IF author = 'Enderle' THEN TRUST=ZILCH AND BONEHEAD = 1.

    IF author = 'DiDio' THEN TRUST=NADA AND MICROSOFT_SHILL = 1

    IF topic = 'SCO' THEN RELEVENCE TO ANYONE = RELEVANCE TO ANYONE - 1000

    IF quoted_source = 'Marc Andressen' THEN WHO_FUCKING_CARES = 1

    IF news_organization = 'FOX' then BULLSHIT_IS_AFOOT = 1.

  • Isvestia nye Pravda, y Pravda nye Isvestia (Score:3, Informative)

    by John Hasler ( 414242 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:46PM (#12386983) Homepage
    From the article I conclude that the old Soviet Union's news services would have ranked very high.

    Oh, well. Google News was nice while it lasted.

  • we need something like this (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Qwavel ( 733416 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @03:51PM (#12387045)
    The internet provides us with such unlimited info that the problem is no longer finding information, it is deciding who to trust.

    Everyone probably has some internal list of sources they trust, but maintaining such a list is very hard.

    If TrustRank could be done and done right (???) then it would be a wonderful service.

    But, can any corporation be trusted to do this? Surely they would eventually start to 'sell' higher trust ratings? I 'trust' google, but it is still a corporation and it's job is to make money.

  • Political implications (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Heraklit ( 29346 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @04:08PM (#12387225) Homepage Journal
    There will be political implications of this new ranking system. I bet nobody has really thought this through...

    What "trust rank" would you give Al Jazeera, for example?

    It is a state-owned, but journalistically largely independent big satellite network with a lot of staff and a huge audience. Just from an area of the world that might have different views.

    • MOD PARENT UP. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by HishamMuhammad ( 553916 ) on Friday April 29, 2005 @05:08PM (#12387838) Homepage Journal
      This will be a very interesting thing to watch.

      I always paid attention to which news sites does the Google algorithm chooses to use as a primary source to a news item, and they are, more often than not, American sites. Anyway, news.google.com has been an useful source, since you can click on "all 1,777 related" and browse through the headlines and see the varying oppinions around the world. Example: this one was picked as a headline:

      Bush Promotes New Plan for Social Security as Benefit to Young

      In the other headlines, you see other views:
      • Bush Speech Fuels Capitol Debate Over Social Security's Future
      • Bush on offensive as ratings hit floor
      • Bush Plan Would Cut Benefits
      • Bush pitches plan to fix Social Security finances
      • For first time, Bush backs benefit cuts to help bolster Social ...
      • Bush vs. The Press
      And from here you can read articles from the various dissenting views. To me, that's the main utility of news.google.com. I wonder if TrustRank is going to start favoring sites such as CNN... after all, they're "America's most trusted news source" (according to themselves, at least).

      In the end, nothing beats reading the news from a number of different news sources. Unfortunately, most people don't do that.

  • Sites that I trust (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sapped ( 208174 ) <mlangenhoven@@@yahoo...com> on Friday April 29, 2005 @04:27PM (#12387403)
    How about over time Google learns which sites I trust and modifies the ranking according to that. We could give each site a thumbs up or down rating like you do on a TiVO.
    • How about over time Google learns which sites I trust and modifies the ranking according to that.

      But that wouldn't solve the problem of people who just put out shite and are effectively unaccountable for it. Sure, YOU get your news from the sources you want and believe to be true, but I'd also like to be able to see what "TrustRank thinks is valid" as an indicator. Not that I'd trust it alone but it might be a good source among 2 or 3 to determine validity.

  • The number of times I have used Google News and clicked on the top link only to get some barely literate ramblings are too many to count.

    Recently it seems that some San Francisco Real Estate site was getting high ranks for its barely literate ramblings on news topics that had nothing to do with real estate. This isn't about squashing the small guy - this is about getting a news story that is literate. I, for one, will welcome a day when I don't have to scroll down to the 153rd link on a story to find some

  • I have concerns that trustrank will limit the variety of news we get from Google News search, but I'm wondering if it will get rid of parody search results at the top. A few weeks ago, I did a google news search on John Kerry, and got several parody articles near the top...with all due respect to their sense of humor, I think there are more important articles than that.

    Instead of only selecting news from the top 200 or so sources, wouldn't it be better if Google did the opposite and filtered out known unre
  • http://www.advogato.org/trust-metric.html [advogato.org]
    Is Google implementing the same algorithm?

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