News Google to cut thousands of search quality rater jobs after dropping contract with Appen

tom_mai78101

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Appen, an Australian data services company that Google contracted with for a large number of its third-party search quality raters, was notified by Google that its contract is ending on March 19, 2024. Appen said it had no prior notice and the cancellation would result in a loss of $82.8m of revenue at a gross margin of 26% for the company.

What search quality raters do. Google’s quality raters assess the quality of the Google search results. They do not directly influence the search results, and quality raters cannot downgrade or upgrade a specific site in Google Search.

Search quality rater guidelines “are used by our search raters to help evaluate the performance of our various search ranking systems, and their ratings don’t directly influence ranking,” according to Google. “The guidelines share important considerations for what content is helpful for people when using Google Search. Our page on how to create helpful, people-first content summarizes these concepts for creators to help them self-assess their own content to be successful in Google Search,” the company added.

What it means. Appen is one of a few sources that Google uses to contract quality raters. It seems, based on the almost $83 million revenue, that Google contracted Appen for a couple of thousand raters. Google has written it has about 16,000 search quality raters, so those employed by Appen represent a significant portion of the total quality raters contracted.

 
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