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Cutts: Google Webspam Team Used Manual Reviews to Train Future Algorithms

Matt Cutts · Matt Cutts on the US Digital Service and Working at Google for 17 Years · Y Combinator · Dec 4, 2019 · at 17:33

Former head of Google's webspam team Matt Cutts explains how Google systematically fought search spam and structured the feedback loop between human reviewers and automated algorithms.

0:00 / 0:16exact quote · 16.9s
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“I, in general, with web spam, the philosophy was do as much as you can with an algorithm. Catch the residual with, you know, manual spam people who are, you know, well trained and extremely good at being able to catch things, and then use that as the training data for the next wave of algorithms.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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