Google do use human 'vetting agents' albeit through 3rd parties on of which is Lionbridge.

Human process plus a little technology can go a long way... especially if that human process costs less due to offshoring.

I find it so hard to believe... and if true, I agree with the comment that it's probably offshore [ zimbobway is rating your site :) ]

Jokes like that are funny, if you can actually spell. It's Zimbabwe silly.

Google. You love 'em and you hate 'em. When I am searching the net, trying to learn something, they are a god-send. I can usually find what I'm looking for in the first few results. On the other hand, when I am running on a shoe-string budget and trying to make some money with Adsense, they are a nightmare. Google wants webmasters to run ads, but then Google does not want those webmasters to making any type of suggestion that would lead a customer to click the ad. So, with Google having 10,000 covert storm troopers out there, I suppose that all the things that one might do to try and be competitive with the big money, and grandfather sites, is a waste of time. For Instance, Google frowns on cloaking. They explain it as (in my words) showing the user something different than what you show the search engine. That's anyone who uses CSS to position stuff like links and ads at the bottom of the page,when in-fact they are near the top! Googlebot sees the links at the top of the page and likely assigns them more value. The user,however, will see the content and ads first, and be forced to scroll the whole page and see ads before finding the navigation links. If a webmaster is trying to make money using Adsense, that type of page layout is the ideal way to get customers to click through ads.

Google could probably afford all those evaluators and then some...especially beings they're probably all outsouced anyways.

Bot + Algorithm = impartial
human use pattern monitoring = impartial

Human Reviewer = personal bias
Human Reviewer = company bias
Human Reviewer = big spend advertiser bias

I.E DMOZ

They are the 'borg'.

Remember those query handling server dumps? Look more closely at the configuration parameters.

ps. If you're in the UK it was common knowledge and confirmed by me ages ago that they recruited degree qualified contractors from all sorts of backgrounds via Kelly Services, we even employ a few X eval:

http://www.search-engine-war.co.uk/2006/07/anyone_want_to_.html

You can still see the job ads online :-)

i know this is a post from 14 months ago, but recently i have noticed an increase in the visitors from Google inc around some high traffic terms that are even country specific terms... very strange