However, none of these statements are true, according to an extensive investigation from The Wall Street Journal. It appears “Google keeps blacklists,” the engineers manually make “algorithmic changes,” including making “behind-the-scenes adjustments” to results on the search pages, and Google “boosts some major websites” over other smaller websites. The Journal writes that these actions “have increased sharply since the 2016 election.” Google made 3,200 changes to its algorithms in 2018, an increase from 500 in 2010.
Engineers change all the other parts of Google search results regularly, including “knowledge panels,” “featured snippets,” and news results. Admittedly, these are not part of the basic search result algorithm. But they affect search results all the same.
Google also “keeps blacklists,” reported The Journal, which in the United States include sites that feature child abuse or spam. But the company would never publicly admit to this. In fact, a Google spokesperson told the Journal, “We do today what we have done all along, provide relevant results from the most reliable sources available.” There is a blacklist of terms from the auto-complete function that initially simply left out terms that related to pornography. The current list of terms is not known...<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...