The video goes through the process used by Google with these Quality Raters. Matt Cutts specifically says these quality raters have no direct impact on the Google search results. He explains how what they do is used in the overall Google search quality process:

• Google Quality Raters rate URLs if they are good, bad, spam and other classifications
• Then when the Google engineers changes the algorithm
• The engineers can run queries to see what changes
• Based on the Quality Raters ratings, an engineer would want to see better results ranking higher in their new algorithm compared to before
• Then engineer does a side by side (blind taste test) directed to the Quality Raters and the Raters says I like left side or right side
• The engineer then can see those test results and if the results to look better overall based on those rating they might want to expand on it
• Then Google sends out a live test to a small percent of users and run the tests on live (non raters) people

Here is the video of Matt Cutts explaining this:

More on Google Quality Raters:

• Google & Human Quality Reviews: Old News Returns
• The Google Quality Raters Handbook
• Google Quality Raters Can Rate Your Site Without Seeing It
• Download The Latest Google Search Quality Rating Guidelines
• Google Quality Raters Can’t Cause Site To Drop In Rankings
• An Interview With A Google Search Quality Rater

We could do the same again right now, because Google has tried to top itself with another round of April Fool’s Day jokes that pretty well span the globe of Google’s international properties. Below is a recap of Google’s (and a few others) pranks, and we’ll do our best to update this as the day goes along.

Google Racing: Self-Driving Cars Hit NASCAR

The main joke at the moment is Google’s “announcement” of a partnership with NASCAR called Google Racing, which brings Google’s self-driving cars to NASCAR race tracks “by the middle of next season.”

There’s also a faux news video about Google Racing (with no embed code – the cruelest joke of all!) starring Jeff Gordon and a couple other NASCAR drivers, not to mention Sergey Brin pretending to be Google’s first NASCAR driver … or whatever you call the person who doesn’t actually drive the car.

And if you go to Google.com, the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button has been renamed “I’m Steering Lucky” and there’s a link to the Google Racing microsite.

Google Maps In 8-Bit For NES

Google’s pranks began early this morning with a blog post announcing that Google Japan has created an 8-bit version of Google Maps for the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

You can relive all your favorite 1980s graphics by clicking the “Quest” button in the upper right corner on maps.google.com.

Google Street Roo

In Australia, where Google Street View cars and trikes can’t get to remote areas of the continent, Google says it’ll use kangaroos with mini-cameras mounted on their noggins to photograph the Australian outback. They’re calling it Google Street Roo. Hopefully the 1,000-plus kangaroos won’t mistakenly collect any personal data via wifi while they’re hopping across Australia.

Google China: Underwater Search

I said it was worldwide, right? Well, even Google China has gotten in the act with an underwater search gag. It’s more like a Google doodle than a prank, though.

Google’s Really Advanced Search

Speaking of search, this one will probably go over well with our audience. Google’s really advanced search page has some pretty funny options, like this:

You can also narrow your results based on what font the page uses, what textured background the page has and which “embarrassing grammatical faux pas” is found on the page. If you’re into SEO, you’ll like this one. You may even find yourself wishing that the page actually worked.

Google Search: Weather Control

Another search gag: Google Weather Control. Type in any weather-related search (like “seattle weather”) and you can make the weather anything you want it to be. You can turn Seattle into Phoenix, if you’d like.

Google AdWords: Click-to-Teleport

The AdWords team has a new extension called Click-to-Teleport that lets “potential customers to instantly teleport to your business location directly from a search ad.”

The YouTube Collection

YouTube’s annual April Fool’s Day prank is the YouTube Collection — all of YouTube on DVD. Once you order, 175 trucks will deliver the DVDs right to your door. Oh, just watch the video. Make your checks payable to “Matt McGee” if you’re planning to order.

Play Music In Google Analytics

I’m not seeing this (yet?) in my Google Analytics account, but this Aussie blog says there’s a little music icon on the Visitors Overview page in Google Analytics. You can play a piano or sitar while enjoying (or bemoaning) your website’s performance.

Google Chrome Multitask Mode

The Google Chrome team thinks one mouse/hand isn’t enough for web browsing, so they’ve launched Multitask Mode — two mice/hands at once.

Gmail Tap

Gmail Tap converts your keyboard from 26 letters to just two — dots and dashes, just like Morse code.

Google Fiber Bar

Forget that fiber optic network thing. Google Fiber is actually just a fiber-filled candy bar that helps you be up to 100 times more productive than ever before.

That’s Not All…

There are other search-related April Fool’s Day gags, perhaps my favorite of which is Google Nigeria, which jokingly asks you to input your bank account number so you can “search for inheritance.”

Don’t be alarmed: the search box just runs a normal Google search (not that you’d actually put your bank account number in there, anyway, right?) and, while this is NOT an official Google gag, it also doesn’t appear to be run by some Nigerian prince. (It’s a production from 85by55.com.)

There’s also TheGoogleButton.com, which lets you make a fake Google search result page with whatever website (and title/snippet) you want in the No. 1 spot.

Flickr has announced that all photos can now be seen in the 1980s style “Atkinson dither,” accessible via a small button in the lower right part of any photo page.

And last, and probably not least, the folks at Reddit announced “reddit timeline,” which brings a touch of Facebook to the proceedings and is pretty funny — especially when you click on “1970s” and get the animated rainbow header, along with “news” about Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the war in Vietnam.

And now that April Fool’s Day has actually begun … time to sign-off, at least until the next prank comes along.

Postscript:

As expected, we have a few more pranks to add and they all come from Google. Here you go!

GoRo: Google Mobile

Google Mobile has introduced a program called GoRo — the name is a play on the actual “Go Mo” campaign — that encouraged business owners to learn how to optimize their websites for rotary phones. Why? Because “technology is cyclical.”

Google Analytics: Interplanetary Reporting

Google Analytics jokingly wrote about a sneak preview of “interplanetary reports” that let website owners “understand visitor activities from neighboring stars and planets.”

Interplanetary reports will be rolled out in 2030, Google says, “when we anticipate local space travel becomes widespread.” Heh. Watch them be right about that part.

Google AdWords: Planetary Targeting

The AdWords folks didn’t stop just with Click-to-Teleport (see above). Oh no, there’s more. If you login to your AdWords account and edit location settings on one of your campaigns, you’ll see a joke about being able to do planetary targeting.

And yes, if you follow through and type “Mars,” for examplem, it shows up as one of the targeting options. There’s even a fake support page explaining how it all “works.”

At least I think it’s fake. Who can tell anymore?

Microsoft quickly learned about the issue on their support forums and issued a patch yesterday to address the issue. Microsoft didn’t explain it was a Google specific issue but said:

On February 14, 2012, an incorrect detection for Exploit:JS/Blacole.BW was introduced. On February 14, 2012, Microsoft released an update that addresses the issue. Signature versions 1.119.1988.0 and higher include this update.

Of course, I am sure Microsoft didn’t mind some of those Google users looking for other search engines to use for the day.

It’s kinda like the Google News “Elections” section, but with different filtering options on news content and added data related to this year’s campaigns. The new elections hub has predefined filters for the major U.S. presidential candidates (President Obama along with seven Republicans), as well as some of the primary issues being discussed (healthcare, government spending, etc.)

Google News offers similar filtering options for candidates, like this breakout of Mitt Romney news.

Where the hub gets unique is in its data and localization. With the Iowa Caucuses just a day away, the On the Ground section maps news and video content from around the state.

There’s also a Trends page that lets users compare search data, Google News mentions and YouTube video views for each of the eight candidates.

Google launched a similar hub during the 2008 presidential election, and later also launched a Onebox helping people find their local polling stations.

Postscript: Google has also created a Google+ page related to its politics/elections hub.

Search Engine Land reader Alex, who works in the hospitality industry, tipped us to this development and at least one of our SEL editors was able to replicate it on a search for “las vegas hotels.”

The Hotel Finder ad is listed as a “comparison ad” and is separated very slightly from the regular AdWords listings below it. It occupies premium space at the top of Google’s search results and pushes hotel ads and organic listings further down the page. The comparison ad invites searchers to select a hotel quality level and click a “Book hotels” button. It’s quite similar to the mortgage comparison ads that Google launched in late 2009. Comparison ads are now also available for credit cards, checking accounts, savings accounts and CDs (the money kind, not music).

Clicking on the Hotel Finder comparison ad leads the searcher to the Google Hotel Finder, an experiment that Google launched in July.

The Hotel Finder is a somewhat innovative hotel search tool that mainly separates itself from some other sites by letting users draw shapes on a map to indicate where they’re looking for a place to stay. From the Hotel Finder, searchers can book hotel rooms directly via Google’s Hotel Price Ads — an ad program that seems to mainly consist of third-party advertisers, not hotels themselves.

I won’t claim to speak for anyone in hospitality businesses, but as our tipster Alex said, “this is huge for the hotel industry.” These Hotel Finder ads, if and when they become more than a test, would be the first that aren’t related to the financial industry.

Cadbury posted on their Google + page a picture of their latest milk chocolate bars named “Dairy Milk+ Bars.” The Milk+ bars come in two flavors, Sergey Brin & Larry Page – i.e. the co-founders of Google.

As part of a social media experiment, Cadbury posted this on their Google + page, saying:

Remember our 1kg Dairy Milk+ Bars? We’ve had some special personalised ones made, including these delicious ones for Google founders Larry & Sergey. Whose name would you like to see on a bar?

Hat tip to WebProNews for spotting this first.

Related Stories:

• Google+ Is Slowly Invading Google’s Main Search Results
• Google + Thanksgiving Day TV Commercial
• Is Google+ Beginning To Integrate Into Google Places?
• Barack Obama Joins Google+, White House Itself Still Not There
• Oops, She Did It — Britney Spears Beats Larry Page As Most Popular On Google+
• Google Announces Shutter Of Knol, Gears, Search Timeline & More
• Google News Spotlight Now Spotlights Your Friends & Stories They +1
• Google+ Expands Search Options, Adds Trending Topics To Search Results

These are a few of about 100 ideas that Google is reportedly toying with inside Google X, the name of a “top-secret lab” somewhere in the Bay Area. The New York Times wrote about it this weekend after speaking to a dozen people that are aware of the project.

According to the Times, robots (and I don’t mean the .txt file) play a big part in Google X:

Robots figure prominently in many of the ideas. They have long captured the imagination of Google engineers, including Mr. Brin, who has already attended a conference through robot instead of in the flesh.

Fleets of robots could assist Google with collecting information, replacing the humans that photograph streets for Google Maps, say people with knowledge of Google X. Robots born in the lab could be destined for homes and offices, where they could assist with mundane tasks or allow people to work remotely, they say.

Though many of the projects are secret, the Times article mentions a couple that we’ve written about before. Those automated, driverless cars are being developed in Google X; the Times says Google is thinking about manufacturing them and using them to show ads to passengers inside.

A Google spokeswoman emphasized to the Times that Google’s financial investments in these projects “are very small by comparison” to the company’s investment in its core products.

Although most of the projects are highly conceptual, the Times found two sources who said at least one of the ideas would be released by the end of this year.

(In case the small print on the image above is too small, that’s not a real/official Google X logo. It’s an image of our own making.)

On first glance, there’s almost an overwhelming amount of information in Think Insights … thus the “data porn” reference in our headline. If you love statistics and marketing, you could pretty easily get lost in there.

It’s part of the ThinkWithGoogle.com domain and comes from the same group that debuted the Think Quarterly online magazine earlier this year.

Google calls Think Insights a “digital cheat sheet” for marketers.

Here you will find a selection of the research, insights and ideas — from both inside and outside of Google — that informs our strategies, decisions, and products. There are videos, articles, interviews, and studies designed to bring you everything from high-level inspiration to deck-ready data points. Consider this your digital cheat sheet.

There are research reports, infographics, video interviews and statistics (broken down by industry, marketing objective and more), and you get the impression that Think Insights is only going to get bigger — much bigger — over time.

It’s an interesting product and one that will likely be popular with a lot of online marketers.

Inside Google’s Time Warp

As searchers, we want fresh results, which Google usually provides. But Google also offers many other services, such as Google Docs, Gmail, and so on, that rely on much more accurate time stamping. Like most other online services, Google uses a service called the “Network Time Protocol” (NTP), which periodically checks a computer’s time against a more accurate server, such as an atomic clock. NTP also takes into account variable factors like how long the NTP server takes to reply, or the speed of the network between you and the server when setting a to-the-second or better time on the computer you’re using. So most of the time (so to speak) you can rely on Google to be spot-on when it comes to time-stamping everything you do.

Problem: Leap years. Of even more concern: Leap seconds. As Christopher Pascoe, Google Site Reliability Engineer writes on the Google blog, “It turns out that being on a revolving imperfect sphere floating in space, being reshaped by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and being dragged around by gravitational forces makes your rotation somewhat irregular. These fluctuations in Earth’s rotational speed mean that even very accurate clocks, like the atomic clocks used by global timekeeping services, occasionally have to be adjusted slightly to bring them in line with ‘solar time.’”

For most of us, that second of flux is something that (if we even notice it) is irrelevant. But for Google, which may process thousands or even millions of events during that transitional second, this can lead to major problems.

According to Pascoe, “Our systems are engineered for data integrity, and some will refuse to work if their time is sufficiently “wrong.” We saw some of our clustered systems stop accepting work on a small scale during the leap second in 2005, and while it didn’t affect the site or any of our data, we wanted to fix such issues once and for all.”

Google’s solution? Adding what they call a “leap smear,”—injecting code that would effectively “lie” to its own servers during the day that a leap second was taking place. Pascoe again: “We modified our internal NTP servers to gradually add a couple of milliseconds to every update, varying over a time window before the moment when the leap second actually happens. This meant that when it became time to add an extra second at midnight, our clocks had already taken this into account, by skewing the time over the course of the day.”

Lest you think this was a trivial patch, Google actually developed some serious math to solve the problem, and performed two “smears” (one going back in time, the other pushing into the future) and tested them using about 10,000 servers, comparing “standard atomic time,” their own servers and a variety of public NTP clients.

The result? Google has figured out how halt the ravages of time (at least in this case). For more of the science and math behind the fix, check out the official Google blog post.

Telephone support for AdWords was first announced earlier this year in April and it saw some coverage. However since that time Google has been silent about it. I spoke to Brougher roughly a week ago and was surprised to hear how large and sophisticated the operation has become.

A Thousand Reps Servicing 60 Countries

Google has invested heavily in building an organization that can address calls from 60 countries around the world. The company has more than 1,000 Google-employed customer service people divided between email and phone support. The phone reps are now handling “more than 10,000 calls a week,” according to Brougher. The reps are located in several regional call centers around the world.

Google is learning a great deal about its customers through these phone calls. This may seem an obvious point but it’s giving Google more insight into advertiser needs and issues than in the past. And many of these insights can be used by marketing and product development people. This offers a kind of virtuous cycle or loop between customer care and marketing and product development. Too many companies treat their customer care organizations purely as a “cost center” and fail to see customer service as a strategic asset with a wide range of organizational benefits.

Brougher understands very clearly the benefit of this organization for Google. She lobbied the executive team to make significant investments up front that now appear to be paying off.

“People Like to Talk”

One of the surprises for Google is the nature of the inquiries it’s receiving on the phone. Google has had email-based support for AdWords for a long time but the calls coming in are qualitatively different. Calls are more expansive, friendly and less pointed. “People like to talk,” Brougher joked. Beyond this, she explained, calls coming from different countries are also quite different from one another, reflecting various cultural differences.

Google is encountering numerous first time small business advertisers who want education and help. (Roughly 20 percent of the calls Google is receiving are from new advertisers.) With telephone calls Google is in a much better position to provide small business support than with email and online tools exclusively.

Brougher is also the one who leads the group that manages AdWords reseller relationships, Google’s network of publishers and partners that sell to small businesses. As with Google’s move into direct small business sales (Offers, AdWords Express) — the customer support reps don’t do any outbound sales — the creation of this customer care organization reflects a “cultural shift” and maturation within Google.

I asked why Google didn’t simply outsource customer service to a third party, as so many US companies do. She said that Google is able to deliver a much higher level of quality and service by having all the reps in house.

Positive ROI from Customer Service

Beyond the fact of its existence and size, most impressive perhaps is the rigor with which Google is tracking the ROI of its customer service investment. I asked Brougher about ROI because service is often a “fuzzy” and intangible thing that doesn’t map directly to the bottom line.

She outlined several ways in which Google uses data and analytics to track the efficacy of its individual reps and overall customer service effort. According to her, Google is definitely seeing a positive ROI and spending lift from advertisers touched by Google AdWords customer service.

Postscript: Google contacted me to clarify that the 1,000 reps include email support people. Accordingly, they’re not all dedicated to phone support.