If those screens are real its a bit scary. I always thought the system was just set up for evaluators to make sure that some english site doesn't pop up in Japanese results, for example, because of Japanese link text. Maybe it still is, but some of those tools in the screens look people's rankings can be in the hands of a few others who aren't "that" skilled in the art.

Do they give 'em all pointy white hats when they start the job? ;)

Yes, anyone in travel should take look at that.

Interesting that they believe that affiliate links in themselves may be enough to damn a page (take a look at the site they cite, iagora.com )

They would appear (for better or worse) to be edging towards a DMOZ banning of any affiliate site.

Make me re-look at some of my pages!

The oldest mention on a forum i can find is April 2003
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/11972.htm
even gets a reply from GG

Started appearing in stats at least as long ago as September 2002
http://www.projecto-oasis.cx/stats/www/ref_200209.html

Guidelines from google for their reviewers:

Detecting Spam (word doc)

Rating Results(pdf)

there's a bit of me that finds it hard to believe that Google are issuing unprotected word docs with wonky formatting, not using any type of corporate identity (wrong font, no branding), using words like 'punished'(even if it's "quoted"), and with no secrecy statement or disclaimer on them.

Most of me believes it.

well either it's so bad it's genuinely true or it's a fake (which of course doesn't mean the person publishing it doesn't think it's entirely genuine) or it's ultimately deniable spin. I'm not betting against any of those at the moment :)

Whatever it is there's one 'fact' in there even I could prove is wrong, and was wrong 12 months ago.

Hes posting about copyright issues at WMW.. lol

So far at WMW he has only attacked Henk, not the validity of the documents.

Now, this is a fun dance to watch.

..its wasn't me, but I do agree with it.

Its all a bit the "good old days" of the divine right of kings, when kings considered themselves to be deities and above mere motrtals.

That's the most fun WMW thread I've seen for ages!

They advertised these jobs lately in the UK, been trying to get my mate to sign up...

after reading some, (and knowing it's the hip thing to hate Google lately) here's my two SERPs:

* i don't think it's that big of a deal for Google to pay people for quality control. from what i've read, that's all it is - people look over SERPs and grade them. those results are given to engineers to tweak the algorhythm

* as a journalist, if these are copyrighted, internal documents, they shouldn't have been posted. it'll be interesting to see how/if Google goes after Henk van Ess. could he have written it up w/out breaking copyright laws? yes. would it have been as sensationalistic? nope. w/out the screenshots, it would've been YANB (yet another new blogger) posting info and i doubt he would've gotten a slashdot mention, even if he still posted it to them himself. slashdot is getting anti-google as much as they are anti-microsoft, imho (not that i spend a lot of time there, tho...)

anyway, those are my (basic) thoughts on the matter. i'm hoping that as the project eval continues, it helps make the SERPs cleaner, which i'm sure it will. i can't see webmasters paying these people to whitelist inappropriate sites for extra $$ and google not noticing the trends. that is, i'm sure there's meta-moderation going on. and since it's not 'live editing' of SERPs, it would have to get by the engineers as well...