Google search quality is hiring

I wanted to mention that Google’s search quality team is hiring. We work on everything from synonyms and spell correction to core ranking, UI changes, evaluation, and yes–even webspam. The sorts of people that do really well in Google tend to be smart, personable, can work well in teams or independently, get things done, and take initiative. It helps to have a healthy balance of theory as well as the pragmatic ability to build/launch real systems.

If you’re a smart engineer who wants to work on interesting problems across the scale of the entire web, why not reach out? drop us an email? Contact joinsearch at google.com to reach the recruiters in search quality directly. The best way to apply is to through our search engineering page. If you’re a great engineer who would like to work at Google in search, I hope you’ll apply! (The majority of people in the search quality group are based in Mountain View, California, by the way.)

77 Responses to Google search quality is hiring (Leave a comment)

  1. Engineer Positions working within UK. 7 Years experience of on-site seo and analytic analysis for website owners and currently have large clientelle. 08454 293147

  2. Neat! Where are these positions located?

  3. Hi There,

    I have been working on SEO projects for years and I would like to take this opportunity to apply but i am based in London.

    Thanks,

    Turgay

  4. Any room for a summer intern?

  5. Hey Matt

    I guess you forgot to mention the location of the job at Google’s search quality team. It could be USA, Irland or may be Canada (where MWA lives and might apply for the job, who knows πŸ™‚ )

  6. Thanks, Matt, for sharing what it takes to be a strong candidate at Google. I’m working on those attributes now.

  7. I am not a smart engineer, nor do I know anything about algos, but i love playing with webspam, can I aply? πŸ˜›

  8. Is this another one of those April fools day jokes from Google?

  9. I guess you forgot to mention the location of the job at Google’s search quality team. It could be USA, Irland or may be Canada (where MWA lives and might apply for the job, who knows )

    You thought I’d be interested in a job where I have to work well with others?

    You don’t know me very well, do you? πŸ˜‰

  10. Matt,
    Is the starting salary over 6 figures?

  11. Disappointing to see people joking around about what is likely a fantastic opportunity to be directly involved at that level — right at a crucial core — of search technology and policy. If I lived in Mountain View I’d be tempted to throw my rather eclectic hat into the ring myself.

  12. Matt,

    I would love to work for your Search Team at Google, however my background is in Online Marketing (SEM & SEO), not Engineering. Are there any needs on the team for Search Marketing “Leaders” to provide direction and project management?

    Matt… when you have a moment, please take a look at my profile on LinkedIn to see if I am a good fit for the Google Team! LinkedIn.com/in/LarryEngel

  13. Require how many years of experience? Location?

  14. I’m not an engineer but I know how a lot of those sneaky black hats get their links. I bet I can offer some good tips.

  15. i also have this question:
    “Is the starting salary over 6 figures?” πŸ™‚

  16. Day 1: Orientation
    Day 2: Identify all my money-making sites
    Day 3: Remove all penalties for said sites
    Day 4: Vigorously search for paid links on my competitor sites
    Day 5: Penalize said competitor sites with wanton abandon
    Day 6: Manually promote my money-making sites to top for / and at least 3 indented listings
    Day 7: Vigorously research and understand all ranking signals for future reference
    Day 8: Quit Google, launch new sites.

    Okay, I’m ready to apply. (hehe)

  17. What an awesome opportunity. And to think, all I need to do is abandon my family and home, then somehow add another 5 or so years worth of experience to my resume and viola!

    On a serious note, anyone with the fortunate experience to work at Google is truly blessed. I am in wonder at how high in the industry Google has gotten, and then how much higher Google has raised the bar in so many areas of internet tech. To all of you at Google, thank you all for constantly making us “white hatters” work harder and harder, while continuously finding ways to make the “black hatters” do face plants! πŸ™‚

  18. Lauren: it may be a great opportunity for someone. But it’s not for everyone, and I think Matt would be the first to admit that.

    Someone would have to meet the qualifications, which are understandably strict.
    Someone would probably have to relocate.
    Someone would have to be a part of a group in such a fashion as to all but eliminate the possibility that his/her individual effort would be recognized because (s)he would be a small cog in a much larger machine.

    That’s why I think some of us are joking about it. It doesn’t suit the vast majority of us on one or more levels.

  19. I have a lot of experience at creating local map spam and I know how to identify and flag it with ease.Is google hiring for a certain locale or can a candidate work from their location?

    Thank you in advance for your time,
    I am a huge fan
    Randy

  20. I want to work in google

  21. Hopefully you get a few hundred more employees in your quality control and abuse departments. The abuse issue I presented last month has still not been addressed!

  22. Hi Matt,

    Thank you for the post, I have looked at the User Experience Research Assistant (London) and will be sending off my application today.

    Look forward to working with you soon πŸ˜‰

  23. rishil wrote: “I am not a smart engineer, nor do I know anything about algos, but i love playing with webspam, can I aply?”

    You guys should actually browse the job listings at Google. I finally had to use the search tool and look for “spam” before I could find the product quality positions relevant to Matt’s work. They’re looking for both managers and entry-level people.

    I’d be more than happy to lead the Anti-Forum Link Spam Team, Matt. I’d use my 20% time to work on true 3-dimensional search.

  24. Hi Matt, I didn’t see an a place where i could email you so i was forced to leave a comment on your webpage. i would very much like it if you would email me please. it doesn’t matter if it is you specifically, if you have an underpaid over worked intern/secretary you could have him/her email me or give my email address to someone you don’t like very much (but still works at google) and have them email me? πŸ™‚

  25. Matt,

    I suggest an ombudsman position, maybe several, like the New York Times and other news organizations and utilities. Somebody I could complain to about your making the #1 search result for one of my book titles a piracy directory that downloads malware:-)

    I’d be willing to volunteer for a part time ombudsman position at zero pay just because I feel it’s important. Split a 24/7 postion amongst a few dozen volunteers and route duplicates of complaint form responses to us so that somebody actually reads them. We could help pick out the important ones and foward them to whoever at Google is supposed to care, as opposed to the current system where nothing happens and nobody cares.

    You don’t need more insiders, you need some outsiders.

    Morris

  26. Matt,

    Note that the link in my last comment is to a YouTube video of the results, not the malware downloading site:-)

    Morris

  27. would certainly be an interesting interview – I suspect that you might get a few applicants who would be using it as a way of trying to get information out of google.

  28. Matt,

    Just watched your new video How can I make sure that Google knows my content is original?

    I’m assuming you were serious about filing DMCA complaints, so let me fill you in on the real picture.

    #1. Many article farms syndicate the articles their “community” steals, so that a stolen web page appears on hundreds of sites before the author even knows it’s been taken. I did a blog post about this titled Syndicated by the Syndicate.

    #2. Many of the sites that host stolen content are criminal in nature, hosted overseas, etc. Sending them a DMCA complaint just gets you on their spam list, and you’re lucky if they don’t steal your identity while you’re at it, given the information you have to provide.

    #3. Many of the hosts that sell space to sites with stolen content are overseas or overconfident, and do not respond to DMCA complaints, which ICAAN has no interest in.

    #4. The only enforcement mechanism for DMCA complaints is the Federal Court system. There are no copyright police. I took copyright infringement case to court back in late 2005 (because the duplicate content penalty killed my most popular page in Google) and it stayed in court for two and a half years before my lawyer settled. The legal fees he submitted to the court (which is what scared the other side into settling) were more than I’ve ever earned in a year.

    So if you really believed in your heart that DMCA is an option for content creators to combat content theft, I want you to know that you are mistaken. Google did a pretty good job sorting out who really owned what prior to Panda, the only errors I saw were when a site with higher authority (more page rank and incoming links) had a community member who took something, and those sites did respond to DMCA.

    I don’t know if you have read through the WebMaster Tools thread that Wysz (of Google) started for site owners who were affected by Panda, I have. The primary complaint among the serious original sites, usually sites that have been aroun five or ten years, in some cases (including mine) as many as fifteen years, is that Google frequently doesn’t recognize us as the originators of our content in many cases. This is a new post-Panda phenomena.

    If you have any questions about how DMCA really works, please contact me. I have been at it off and on for six years and have been “outed” more than once on ChillingEffects as this horrible guy who doesn’t like getting ripped off.

    The question raised in the video is an interesting one, but not related to the wipe-out of original, high quality sites that Panda has wrought. It’s not just that Google has lost track of who is the original amongst verbatim copies, you’ve also lost the ability to rank the original above a thin rewrite with slight title changes, like those hosted by eHow, About, etc.

    Morris

  29. Any one that asked where the jobs are should be automatically ruled out as a candidate.
    “(The majority of people in the search quality group are based in Mountain View, California, by the way.)”
    It’s the last line of the post. Come on guys.

  30. Matt,

    Since you were just talking about date stamping, how about this. A site that stole my content five years ago:

    leecomputerservices.com/news/august/10a.htm

    is not only ranking above my original (which has been updated many times but still contains much matching text) but it’s preventing my page from appearing at all for an exact quote:

    “themselves as imminent failures”

    I have to go to the last page of Google results (Google shows 5 pages worth with 1200 matches) and hit “repeat search results” before my page shows up at all, in the fifth slot. This is typical since Panda and Google losing track of who owns what. Are you really going by on-page copyright dates? That would be insane.

    Morris

  31. Interesting. Sounds like a fascinating opportunity. Timely too as I lost my job in Search earlier this week (as mentioned in this post http://www.marketing-jive.com/2011/04/personal-side-of-search.html) due in part to a series of Google algorithm updates that resulted in a 70% loss in traffic from Google. I am passionate about Search, live in Canada and have great experience in understanding and learning about how people search from my many years at Enquiro Search Solutions. This would be a fun, interesting and important job. Any chance of being able to work remotely?

  32. Hello Matt,

    I have a problem. My website was doing well till 1st april. πŸ™ It as either on first or second page with most of my keywords like – live chat support, outsourced live customer support, outsourced chat support operators, etc. However, I checked on 1st April and my site was no where in google ranking with any of the keywords. πŸ™ I dont know what went wrong.
    can some one please have a look on my website and tell me if something is wrong with my website? Please tell me so that I can correct it. I am new to SEO, so I dont know what did i do wrong. Please help.
    my website is proonlinesolutions.com

    I am very distressed due to what happened to site. πŸ™

    Regards
    Manu

  33. Sounds like a great opportunity. Must be a really dynamic environment to work in at Google.

  34. Matt,

    I met you at SXSW (I’m the guy with the travel site). I have some more spam/link selling site to give you. Where can I send them?

    Matt

  35. Great
    Google my dream company since my col days. πŸ™‚

    wish i cud be part of it..

    ATUL

  36. Hey Matt,

    I have a solution to help improve search results by fighting spam. Why dont you boot all the “Black Hat” forums out of your index and stop giving spammers a breeding ground.

    After all, if people cant access the information on how to spam google, then that will reduce the number of people trying to spam the web to beat your algo.

    I personally would love to see the death of such forums as blackhatworld, it is a cesspool of spammers and bots.

    Do the world a favour and drop them all from google’s index.

    /rant

  37. Actually, Morris Rosenthal has a bit of a point. Not about his whole book complaint thing (I don’t see how anyone should charge $13.95 for an eBook when solutions to pretty well all computer repair issues are readily available online and at no charge)…about the idea of being able to report and resolve things that aren’t necessarily spam as such, but could still have a negative impact on search quality in that the owners of these sites are doing things that aren’t on the up and up.

    Here’s an example…there are several offshore web design and development companies cold-calling businesses and consumers offering remote IT services, often from a VoIP line with a US number in an attempt to confuse the buyer (not that it ever really works…the Indian accent is a bit of a giveaway). My wife’s friend even received a call a few days ago where a company called her up and knew she had purchased a brand name computer and that the warranty had expired on it, which could possibly indicate that the brand name itself resold her information, although I cannot confirm that as such. They then tried to pressure-pitch her into buying a remote computer administration package for around $300 for two years.

    They get in with the IT services and then try to be all things to all people within any of the victims of this little scam. Once the initial $300 or whatever is spent, then the company can easily get thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars for little to no effort from the “customer”. Fortunately, my wife’s friend didn’t fall for it (she called me first), but there are others that probably have.

    It would be nice to have a place to report things like that, just so companies like this don’t gain any additional customers through search. Obviously you couldn’t act on one complaint, because that would be a “he said, she said” kind of thing, but if enough people complained about something in a similar manner, it could be acted upon.

  38. I must say I smiled a little when I returned to see you retracted your statement. If you are really looking for engineer, I would suggest a reality show. I can’t imagine having to make the decisions how to weight searches for Jersey. Interesting point on the URL’s however. I was curious, how will the make use of the address left in IPv4?Will they forever dedicate it, or register the domain forever dedicated to lower level service or protocol through obscure d.n.s.’s. The public will justify it as a socialist movement. Why? Who knows why? I just think of Ozymandias…

  39. Where can I apply as janitor??? same contact details ???

  40. Hi Matt,

    I wanted to know that is it okay if i submit one article to multiple directories with different anchor or URL???

    For e.g [article x 40 directories] but anchor are different like somewhere its [Dance, dance songs, dance music, dance tracks, dance dance, and so on]

    Pardon me for posting this at a inappropriate place but i thought this was the only place i could get a reliable answer from! I wanted to be aware of this so that i am not going anywhere wrong and to rectify if that’s the case…

    Please guide me with the same…
    Thanks

  41. I think getting a job at Google at this point is very comparable to winning a $250,000 dollar lottery ticket.. don’t you agree? maybe even more.. the value of having that on your resume is a lifetime of benefits.. think about it.. would matt cutts have a problem getting a job at this point? or better yet.. imagine if Matt Cutts opens his own SEO company.. can you say chi chink!!

  42. Google rocks πŸ™‚ Hey Is this April fools day jokes from Google?

  43. PJ

    “imagine if Matt Cutts opens his own SEO company”

    If/when Matt Cutts leave Google, he would be working within the education sector, I guess πŸ™‚

  44. Google has so screwed around with their serps this last year, that any alternative, quality, dependable, and reliable search engine that users can count on is going to gain share. Google has done something I didn’t think possible – they have broken the trust of the end user. While Bing has been busy showing that they are in it for the long haul and staying-the-course with a user experience that people are coming to trust.

    Google over the last year has had major changes on it’s site:
    – Google Instant (aka, the Waterfall) aka: new learning curve for users. aka: new users don’t get it.
    – Mouse overs. Nothing like random screen flashing to reassure users.
    – Useless left side menus.
    – Info Farts thrown into serps (maps, images, tweets, news, misc)
    – Four results from the same site in position 1 to 4!? Hello – wtf are you thinking of Google!? It looks broken – It feels broken – It acts broken. Sucks to have to skip below the fold to find a decent result.

    The only real bright spot here – is that if it were anyone else but Google, they would have lost another 5-10 points of share with such major disruption to user experience. If I have to learn how to use Google again, I might as well go over to Bing, where I already know how to use it.

    Bing is out Googling Google.

  45. Completely off topic, but I have noticed some screwy listings for several search terms with kind-of-horrible results coming up on the first page. Did the non-US Panda update mess some things up or what is going on?

  46. This is serious! Though i do not know how much Google pays. Any chance that people in other continents will get employed? Would like to know this before I apply.

  47. @Harith – And then i’ll go back to school! πŸ™‚
    Good luck to everyone who applied for the job!

  48. What about Slovenia? πŸ™‚

  49. Hey Matt
    I heard that recently several google search quality engineers left google to join Bing
    Could you comment if it’s true?

  50. Maybe they could hire someone to sort out Google Places, suddenly every dodgy spam website has hundreds of reviews that are obviously spam. Why include such an easy to spam component in part of the places algo, even trusted reference sites are suddenly getting hundreds of reviews for companies that never had a singe review last month!

  51. Hi matt,
    I guess Google aren’t recruiting engineer from whole world, just them living in USA, is correct?

  52. Hello Matt,

    The job is very interesting, I have the experience about web spam, content scrapers, black-hat SEO, etc. I understand this case because I am self-taught from blogging, but my educational background are less fortunate, how Matt?

  53. Google Search Quality needs HELP, in my view. I am completely disappointed in the latest algo update. I have seen a number of my sites…in some cases, INDISPUTABLY the best sites in the niche…get absolutely KILLED in the rankings.

    This kind of thing is a real disincentive for webmasters to build quality web sites…since, by dropping us, you’re just yanking money right out of our pockets.

    I hope this latest update is under serious review…because it was NOT good. You caught way too many good fish in your attempt to purge the lifeless ones.

    If you’re interested in hearing more, please feel free to contact me for examples.

    best,
    c-

  54. Sounds like a sweet opp, but I’m in Atlanta.

  55. Matt,

    Here is a critical piece of feedback for you and your team to consider; YOU DON’T NEED MORE ‘QUALITY’ PROGRAMMERS, you need a lot more quality judges, like millions more! The human eye/mind can assess quality (on a consensual basis) in a matter of seconds, where an army of programmers will ultimately fall short after hundreds of hours of tweaking an algorithm. I know this goes against the holy grail of Google’s search success, but if you truly want to sift out the rubbish sites, turn to democracy. Instead of hiring ever more ‘search quality engineers’ why not add a feature to Chrome, a randomised pop-up ‘5 question’ quality survey, soon you’ll have all the data you need to determine if a site is genuinely impressing the user (not the spider). It would be difficult for someone to manipulate surveys if they’re randomly served on a global basis once per IP, per site.

    As the monopoly in search you have a responsibility to the 25% of good sites that trip up in each update, rather than getting 75% of the results improved. Think of how your users are being short changed when a genuinely decent site disappears from the rankings, that’s something for your new ‘quality search team’ to chew on.

  56. For the URL removal or using no-index, here’s a question for you… If a site is using a lot of no-index or removed URLs, is that used as a signal that the site may not be that good? For example, we want to syndicate a lot of content with the author’s permission, but because it’s duplicate content, we want to no-index those pages so that Google doesn’t label us a content farm.
    However, if we disallow or remove what will become a large portion of our site, will Google then assume that something fishy is going on? I could see logically how a site with 60% disallowed or removed content would be suspect. However, it’s one of these cases that we are doing so with good intentions for our users… any comments? Tx!

  57. I noticed the term “engineer” is being used but some of those tasks seem quite easy to do or at least learn. Why not split up the jobs and make it available to “Engineers-to-be”? I’m sure there is some great talent out there that may not have tons of experience.

  58. Can I say I was referred by Matt Cutts?

    Oh btw – (And I will also ask on Webmasters) why do I see “This site may harm my computer” in search results?
    Why isn’t it removed from the index and then checked on until it’s deemed ok?
    Maybe Search Quality people really are needed.

  59. Kaya

  60. I am sure its a fantastic opportunity for someone and its to google credit that they advertised the positions so openly. I wish the person(s) that gain the job my best wishes. The job unfortunately is beyond me.

  61. Let’s hope you’ll hire only the best.. PHDs and programming experts, because it looks like you really need a good team to keep this spam under control:) till now, you’re doing a pretty good job;)

  62. Jonathan Hatch

    I’m not one to go blowing whistles, but I think your webspam team missed one: howtogetridofstuff.com

    Wow. Just wow. Good luck with the hires. If I weren’t busy trying to make the internet, I’d apply for a position to help organize it. πŸ˜‰

  63. imo the application is missing LEGO engineering. That is, Google Chrome has a nice one but Google search….

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m22f-77nK3c

  64. I wish I was young enough! What is the hiring age limit?

  65. Hi Matt

    I’m curious about the new roll out for Google’s redesigned search results that include more white space. Here’s the thing. In reality, after looking at different results, this seems to mostly benefit Google and your PPC program. The reason being, the top 3 organic results as you are fully aware, get most of the clicks. Now, by moving them down further and even inserting related search results between the paid ads and the organic results, you will ultimately get more clicks on the paid ads.

    Good for Google, but really bad for the organic search results, since they are below the fold in many cases now. The result, bad bad for internet marketers period.

    Some day, you know, Bing and Yahoo, will get their act together and it might surprise Google. Until then, we are stuck with Google. Too bad, there is a lack of competition for now at least. Facebook – hmm…that should provide for some interesting things in the future with over 600 million plus users and over 250 million daily users. I think, they can actually compete with you. We shall wait and see.

  66. Hi Matt,

    I am looking to talk with someone knowledgeable about SEO, not for business purposes. Can you be hired as a personal consultant, or is there anyone who you could recommend for the job that is very knowledgeable about the general practices.

  67. Matt, I can see people applying for this job no matter what their background of employment is in. I can say this sounds like an extremely intelligent creative thinking type of job. Google seems to be the company people want to work for, afterall everything Google has seems to turn to gold. I use Google for nearly everything I can in my real estate business.

  68. Where in the UK are Google offices? I am sure it is London but not sure…

  69. Garry has the right idea, haha. Day 1- intro Day 2- move all my sites to the top of serp’s
    Day 3- get on private jet with sergei & matt

  70. Thanks matt i am currently working for seo job and i want to apply for it.

  71. Hi Matt,
    I was searching the term “search engine” on google.co.uk the other day, I wondered why dogpile was first, then bing, then wikipedia,4th altavista and 5th Google.co.uk

    It seems like you need a little help with seo ? lol

    Seriously I was wondering why ?

  72. Wow an amazing opportunity for someone with the skills Google require, I am off to the UK offices in London tomorrow on a one day seminar and tour of the buildings, really looking forward to it.

  73. Naresh Bharat

    Hello Matt! I need to contact you via email to discuss some suggestions I am having with you regarding spam. Is there any way to do this?

    Please consider replying. I have so many ideas to improve the quality of Google search results.
    I even tweeted on your twitter account with @nareshbharat. But no reply. Of course I know you may receive thousands of @mentions daily. So it may not be possible for you to reply every tweet. Hence I thought communicating via email.

  74. I consider myself pretty smart and think working at Google in the Search World would be AWESOME! I am quite familiar with SEO but yeah I do not possess a Ph.D unfortunately. A man can dream can’t he. Hey Google should do some sort of social media thing where they look for the next Search Position….kind of like the Apprentice. I would watch!

  75. Imagine the non disclosure paperwork!

  76. having google on your cv must be one of the best things you could ever have on there lol

    saying that i dont think you would ever need to add google to your cv because once you start working for google i dont think you would ever need to send your cv out ever again anyway ha

    PS: YEAH YOU COULD HAVE A PROGRAM LIKE THE APPRENTICE BUT WITH GOOGLE FOR FINDING THE BEST SEO CANDIDATE…BUT INSTEAD OF SAYING “JOHN…YOUR FIRED” GOOGLE SHOULD SAY

    “JOHN… YOUR SANDBOXED”

    LOL

    paul

  77. Two years later, and it appears that black hat tactics are largely unpunished by Google.
    Please recruit staff to police your search results, to respond to emergency calls, and take immediate action against illegal and immoral websites.
    Once the news gets out, the clean-up rate will improve radically.
    You’ll even find volunteers like me, to do some hours every week for free to help you “IMPROVE USER EXPERIENCE”.

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