[Cthulhu_]

It's a bit of a conundrum; on the one side, the NHS and (in a different area) MDN are better, more authoritative, etc sources, so Google should promote those. On the other, this would mean that Google can no longer cite neutrality or hide behind "the algorithm", as has been their legal defense against a ton of lawsuits where the suers said one websites should go higher or lower in the rankings.

[gtirloni]

If it's a human curating content or an algorithm doing so, I don't see how that helps Google on a lawsuit. Unless they blame sentience.

The best algorithms adapt to feedback. Surely Google's own algorithm can accept Google's feedback to adjust for flaws in it.

[nradov]

What lawsuit? There is no legal basis for a lawsuit. As a private corporation, Google is free to rank search results however they like regardless of whether that's done by humans or algorithms.

[gtirloni]

You'd think so but Google has essentially a monopoly depending how you look at it and some countries have stricter rules than others.

[nradov]

So what? You haven't cited a successful lawsuit against Google on that issue, or even a plausible legal theory. Have you discussed this with an actual attorney?

[gtirloni]

I wasn't the one mentioning lawsuits. Check OP's message I was replying to. You seem confused.

[lupire]

Google chooses to rank "authoritative" sites based on its own notion of authoritativity (which they don't share, but they decide).

They implement it as agnostic tuning as much as possible, avoiding single human chery picking sites. They use panels of humans (mturk style) for quality ratings.

Could you imagine the outrage if Google said "The government is always the best source about everything?"

What even would be the point? Use the government search engine for that use case.

[david_allison]

Google already does this. Searching for "YMYL" (Your Money or Your Life) should produce useful results:

> For pages about clear YMYL topics, we have very high Page Quality rating standards because low quality pages could potentially negatively impact a person’s health, financial stability, or safety, or the welfare or well-being of society.

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterh...