Google’s Project Owl and Its Implications
Project Owl is an internal name given by Google to its latest update for its tirade against offensive searches. Since quite some time now, the search engine giant has been flooded with concerns regarding disturbing news, offensive/incorrect answers and search suggestions which sound derogatory and appear at the top of its search engine results.
Google knows that it has a quality issue regarding its search features and ‘Project Owl’ is a gigantic attempt by the company to address these prime issues as per the latest announcements. Therefore, this new announcement has been introduced to keep a check on the quality of its search results. Here are the three main steps which it is taking for working on the quality improvement:
New Feedback form for Auto Suggestions Feature
Since time immemorial Google has a feature through which an online searcher gets autosuggestions when they start typing in the search box. Google is now permitting users to report inappropriate, objectionable, and offensive autosuggestions. Since suggestions are based on real things which people have already searched on Google, it can reflect different kinds of beliefs that people might have or controversial/offensive topics they might be researching on.
Now, with the introduction of Project Owl, a new link which says “Report inappropriate predictions” will henceforth appear. By clicking that link, a form comes up which allows people to select autosuggestions with issues which enables them to report them within several categories. A SEO Company and in any part of the world needs to be in sync with various new updates which Google introduces during its official announcements.
Feedback form for ‘Featured Snippets
Since long, Google has been criticized for elevating a particular search result above the others in the form of a special display. One of the primary ways Google is trying to solve this problem is by fighting out the issue by using a feedback form which is associated with Featured Snippets.
Google does have a ‘Feedback’ link already in place for it but with the new update, the form will have various options. The new options feature allows the person to cite the reason for not liking an answer. The ultimate goal which Google says is to find out various ways to keep such controversial/problematic snippets from showing up.
Focus on Authoritative Content for Improving Search Quality
Google actually plans to improve upon its search quality by showing more quality and authoritative content for queries. This change will certainly help in getting quality search results, not just generate better snippet quality. Also, it is making all efforts to make changes two fold, Firstly, it is developing better ways to determine content which appears authoritative, but in reality it is not.
The search engine giant has been giving more weightage to such pages which seems to have a better contextual match, though they lacked a high authority. Through ‘Project Owl’ it also seems to make all efforts for ranking contextual content better when pitted against contextually explicit content. In the past, Google might have such websites ahead in their results which supplied incorrect/offensive info but were quite popular.
With the introduction of their latest update, Google plans to resolve this issue and put ahead such websites which are truly authoritative and have quality content. Websites with offensive and derogatory content will appear lower in the search results. Google will give more weightage to authoritative pages. It is the basic responsibility of any Web Designing Company to be in conformity with web designing principles and best practices. Well-designed web pages will have better SEO rankings on search result pages.
Conclusion
Though Google has started working on different parameters for improving various aspects related to searches, it has publicly announced its efforts quite recently. It has been crusading against offensive and misleading information for giving its users a better user experience on its search results so that derogatory suggestions don’t come up. It has also been making efforts to tie up with news agencies such as Associated Press to weed out offensive and fake news. It is very much possible that this may take some time to be effective as more and more people offer their feedback.