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November 28, 2006

Google's EWOQ Search Referral String

Some people are noticing Google referrals from search strings that look like:

https://www.google.com/evaluation/search/rating/task-edit?task=XXXXXX

This comes from Google's http://eval.google.com/ which only available to those part of the "EWOQ group." SearchBistro has a ton of details with demos of it in action named Google Secret Lab, Prelude.

There is some old forum discussion on it at Search Engine Watch Forums.

When I tried accessing one of the referral strings I was prompted with a 403 forbidden code saying:

Forbidden

The user [username]@gmail.com is not a member of EWOQ. Please contact the ratingprojects@google.com for access.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums and Google Blogoscoped Forums.



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posted rustybrick in Google Search Engine at November 28, 2006 7:02 AM Comments (7)

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Comments

That Search Bistro speculation is also old (2005), in case you thought it was new.

 

Posted by Matt Cutts at November 28, 2006 11:02

Yea, I know it is old stuff. But the referral links are new, new threads on them.

 

Posted by Barry Schwartz at November 28, 2006 11:04

Barry - thanks for the info. I had found the old links before posting but was curious if there were any new developments.

Matt - Any other details?

 

Posted by vicyankees at November 28, 2006 21:45

http://eval.google.com/ has been open to any user for a few months.

 

Posted by Brian Ussery at December 4, 2006 09:57

I got this kind of link on my referral today so i really hope that's a good thing for me ^^

 

Posted by Zebulon at March 10, 2007 13:20

So did you contact them?

 

Posted by SEO Ranter at July 10, 2007 09:45

I just got one referer from this hidden google lab. They have some interesting values in the url which is : task-edit?task=xxxxxxxxxx.

It appears to me that they try to rerate their broken index entries if you score too high on a sertain keyword.

 

Posted by No Name at April 17, 2008 21:32

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