Good article on the Google Search team

[Brian Turner]

Simply a good, well researched, and balanced perspective on Google's attempts to continually imrpove it's algorithm:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/bu...=1&oref=slogin

Mr. Singhal is the master of what Google calls its “ranking algorithm” — the formulas that decide which Web pages best answer each user’s question. It is a crucial part of Google’s inner sanctum, a department called “search quality” that the company treats like a state secret. Google rarely allows outsiders to visit the unit, and it has been cautious about allowing Mr. Singhal to speak with the news media about the magical, mathematical brew inside the millions of black boxes that power its search engine.

Google values Mr. Singhal and his team so highly for the most basic of competitive reasons. It believes that its ability to decrease the number of times it leaves searchers disappointed is crucial to fending off ever fiercer attacks from the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft and preserving the tidy advertising gold mine that search represents.

Meanwhile, here's a couple of video's of SEOmoz's Rand Fishkin interviewing Google's anti-spam champion, Matt Cutts:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-smx-d...utts-interview