I’ve giving some thought to how real time MSN SERPs could be delivered by hand coders. While it doesn’t seem pretty far fetched, what MSN could do is this:
They receive a query in real time and send it through a script that pulls the Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Cache of their top tens for that query. That’s 40 Results. Since it’s the cache, they should come up very fast.
Those 40 results are sent to a total of 8 hand coders – 5 to each. A window pops simultaneously on each screener’s window and each makes a Blink Decision rating from 0-9 on the quality of the site: 9 being the best. After the rating is entered, the first window closes and the next pops in succession until a set of 7 results are found with these characteristics:
2 with a score of 7-9
1 more with a score of 5 or better
All with a score over 3
When there is overlap, an average score is used. They are then sorted by rating and delivered as results. Anything with a score of 0 is removed from the index as spam.
The “ratings” could then be used in later searches as a ranking component.
Of course, this does nothing to explain why they would need to type 149 words per minute.
It seems pretty unlikely but I think it could be doable with the right training. What do you think? Am I off my rocker on this or what?
3 Responses to “How Real Time Hand SERPs Could Work in 3.9 Secs”
I was reading through that job listing in awe as well… It looks to me as though they’re actually trying to use ONE person to collect the 10 results in 3.8 seconds…
I’m thinking.. they’re MSN, get as much free advertising as they want… so they’re probably going to let that message be seen by 100,000+ interested applicants, and I’m sure there’s at least 1 in 100,000 super-computer-like people out there that could do it…
It’d be a drain on the brain though I can imagine… every 4 seconds having to make 10+ decisions… that’s just asking for a break-down… but like I said… 1 in 100,000 can probably do it!
Looks like Roger Browne Came up with a simliar solution:
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I don’t think that is how MSN is going to do it (but it would make sense if they did) that bloody 149 wpm thing. I think a touch screen would actually be great for this yet, when does worker apathy kick in? When do you just start setting up a routine “AbaCadaba”