Google to use Biometric Indicators to measure "Satisfaction"

[Ryuzaki]

Here's some next level stuff, I caught on my RSS feed by SEOByTheSea.

Google to use Biometric Indicators to measure "Satisfaction"

Google has acquired a new patent:

Ranking Query Results Using Biometric Parameters
Inventors: Jason Sanders, Gabriel Taubman
Assignee: Google
US Patent Application 20160103833
Published April 14, 2016
Filed: February 28, 2013
​

There's all the technical crap out of the way. Here's the good stuff:

The actions include providing a search result to a user; receiving one or more biometric parameters of the user and a satisfaction value; and training a ranking model using the biometric parameters and the satisfaction value. Determining that one or more biometric parameters indicate likely negative engagement by the user with the first search result comprises detecting:

• Increased body temperature
• Pupil dilation
• Eye twitching
• Facial flushing
• Decreased blink rate
• Increased heart rate.

Flat out, there's only one way they are receiving this type of data, and that's from mobile and wearable technology. iPhones, iWatches, and whoever else makes these kinds of devices is selling the data. I mean, that's the name of the game and no big deal. But I still feel it's invasive and always will.

I don't know what's worse, capturing "anonymous" data like my heart rate and stuff, that's fine really. I don't care. But "pupil dilation" and "facial flushing" and the others require that the mobile front-facing camera be activated, pictures taken, analysis either done in the device or the picture is shipped out (who's paying for that bandwidth?) AND it has my face in it. I don't care if they say they don't capture meta data (and I've not seen that said, but that's what will be said)... it's not anonymous.

We're eventually going to have a world of completely personalized advertising. Especially once digitally connected contact lenses and all that join the foray. Me and you could be driving down the road, looking at the same billboard and see different advertisements. And all it'll take is to fake the user-agent and now you know I've been looking at purchasing things on Amazon I'd be embarrassed for you to know about.

Anyways, pretty interesting nonetheless.

For us, the benefit is amazingly refined split testing of demographics. The bad part is coming for SEO's. These crowd-sourced metrics like links and social shares are eventually going to matter very little.

I can envision someone like Duck Duck Go purposefully hanging back with classic algorithms as a form of privacy and refusing to use these biometric data points. The war on and for privacy is going to get interesting. We'll lose, and there's going to be a lot of money made on both sides for marketers...

 

[Philip J. Fry]

Having the patent doesn't mean they will use it or even can use it. It just gives them intellectual property protection for 20 years. That's all.

 

[Andrewkar]

Someone is using sort of this stuff already. Guess who? Big boys from pharma. For now it's just a "pill" that measures some of human organism parameters. Probably it's more advanced than "pupil dilation" and "facial flushing", but possibilities are endless...

• The first Digital Medicine, a drug/device product, combines Otsuka’s ABILIFY® (aripiprazole) for serious mental illness, embedded with the Proteus® ingestible sensor in a single tablet to digitally record ingestion and, with patient consent, share information with their healthcare professionals and caregivers

Now, imagine you go to restaurant and they give you this nice juicy steak, with a digital pill in it It's coming soon

 

[Philip J. Fry]

Someone is using sort of this stuff already. Guess who? Big boys from pharma. For now it's just a "pill" that measures some of human organism parameters. Probably it's more advanced than "pupil dilation" and "facial flushing", but possibilities are endless... Now, imagine you go to restaurant and they give you this nice juicy steak, with a digital pill in it It's coming soon

That doesn't mean Google's going to implement Biometric technology into their algorithm. Owning the idea is one thing, actually implementing it is another.

Google will first have to develop the technology and then they'll have to A/B test the SERPs to see if biometric data actually improves search results. Not all new ideas improve SERP results. Remember author photos in the SERP? That didn't do anything.

Right now, thinking that they'll implement biometric data into their algorithm is nothing more than speculation. The only thing we know for sure is that they own the patent.

 

[CCarter]

Some of you guys aren't aware of the amount of data you are already leaking just from your browser or your phone that's easily available to EVERY WEBSITE YOU VISIT. Visit this website from your smart phone: http://webkay.robinlinus.com

Then scroll down to the "Gyroscope" section, As well as "Network Scan" section. The Gyroscope will showcase your phone's physical position in the air and it can tell whether you are holding it or not - THIS IS A WEBSITE!

The "Network Scan" allows you to click and have your website browser start scanning your local network for devices. There are other sections like "Social Media", "Click Jacking", and other options that may or may not be on depending on your security settings.

Now, really think about this, these are all default settings on your phone already... What about the average consumer? I've got GPS turned off on my phone and it found me cause of my IP Address's location, it didn't need my Location setting on.

The only thing left would be just to have the camera always on, and by the way, your microphone is already always on, how do you think it can wait and listen for "Hey Siri" or "Ok Google"?

There have already been incidences of people talking around their Google phone then when they go to look for a recipe they were talking about Google already suggested results BEFORE the user typed anything.

Put your Google phone in front of a spanish TV station for a night and in the morning watch your phone start busting out spanish in your results. (See thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/2qbf0u/i_think_google_is_listening_to_my_phones/cn4wcex)

With all the information already leaking... turning on your front facing camera or even taking a snapshot as you read wouldn't be a problem.

 

[jayk]

There have already been incidences of people talking around their Google phone then when they go to look for a recipe they were talking about Google already suggested results BEFORE the user typed anything.

There have been times I've been in the car, talking about going someplace, pull up Maps, enter in the first letter, or the first digit in a 5 digit house address #, and Google has given me the direct address at the top of the results. On numerous accounts -- it got so bad that I started telling people "don't call me crazy, Google is listening". You just reaffirmed what I already thought was happening.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

They have the mic on but that doesn't mean they use facial recognition as a ranking metric in the future. They have the patent but that doesn't mean they'll implement the patent.

If you guys are seriously worried about this, I'll make note of it and will open a BST in the future where microworkers will smile as they click on your listing in the SERPs.

Seriously, if you're worried about this, don't watch 2001 A Space Odyssey or Ex-Machina.

 

[CCarter]

Seriously, if you're worried about this, don't watch 2001 A Space Odyssey or Ex-Machina.

I don't think you understand the fallacy in your argument. This thread is about a patent Google has. Your argument is that simply because they have a patent doesn't mean they'll do anything with it. We are aware of that. But you don't seem to understand the exact opposite is true as well, having a patent also means they can do something with it.

This particular patent holds several privacy concerns that anybody with a brain should be concerned with. 20 years ago, people would have stated "why would I walk around all day with a microphone on, that's stupid?"

Yet here we are in that reality. This is a patent about the future and further potential erosion of privacy. But for some reason essentially you are stating "Let's not have this discussion", on a discussion board of all places, "until after it's implemented and it's too late to protect ourselves from it."... That's the same type of logic which results in scenarios where you as a society are walking around with microphones always on, since no one bothered talking about the potential disaster to their privacy, they now have to live with the consequences.

Your logic is to put your head in the sand for potential future obstacles that can cause changes in YOUR industry. Why wouldn't we want to discuss potential future road blocks... on a discussion board of all places? Wouldn't it allow us to protect ourselves in the future (or for the practitioners of the darker arts - help them manipulate the situations to gain more access to an individual's private moments?)

Do you know how many people who have read this thread and didn't realize their smartphone's microphone was always on, or that due to their settings any website can scan their computer or know their exact location?

IF you are in an industry and plan on staying within that industry you better have your ear to the ground about future potential problems, otherwise one day you'll wake up and your SEO services aren't going to be cutting it cause you had your head in the sand and now you gotta go get a job. Your logic is off if you can't see the reason why we are here discussing the future potential of an industry we are in.

This is ridiculous.

I mean let's be serious:

What does NAP stand for?

^^ If you have to ask what NAP means (and you claim to have been in SEO for how long?), you might want to sit down and study this industry and what's going on, and become an expert if you plan on staying within the industry and not just wasting time making arguments full of fallacies.

The one thing I can't shake about you specifically is in another thread you asked me "Why was I working so hard?"...

Why are you working so hard? What's your purpose?

And then a couple of months later you are running around filling out job applications... Do you seriously not see the disconnect? Maybe you should work a bit harder and learn a bit more about the industry you claim to be in instead of this foolish argument when we start talking about the more advanced and future side of the industry?

Your logic is so mindboggling off - it's just so baffling that all I can do is throw up my hands and give up... Let's not even talk about that ridiculous PM you sent me about your website, my mind is still full of WTF from that one...

 

[Samwise89]

Having the patent doesn't mean they will use it

Owning the idea is one thing, actually implementing it is another.

The only thing we know for sure is that they own the patent.

They have the patent but that doesn't mean they'll implement the patent

Seriously, if you're worried about this,

Wow... that's some serious high-level denial and projection going on. What are you doing on your mobile devices that has you so nervous? Too bad switching faces isn't as easy as switching usernames from forum to forum...

"They'd have to A/B test and see if it's worth doing." That's exactly what they will do. They'll attempt to make more money. The one thing Google has never done is sat on their hands and said "Okay, this is good enough." They are constantly split testing from shard to shard and datacenter to datacenter. They build and burn entire systems.

The only reason to think they won't use this (or aren't already) and to assert that multiple times in a row is to comfort yourself due to fear. Something is obviously "off" with your replies. Going on the defense when you haven't been attacked.

And this is exactly what this thread is about... people who have a reason to want their privacy to remain private should be worried.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

"They'd have to A/B test and see if it's worth doing." That's exactly what they will do. They'll attempt to make more money. The one thing Google has never done is sat on their hands and said "Okay, this is good enough." They are constantly split testing from shard to shard and datacenter to datacenter. They build and burn entire systems.

The only reason to think they won't use this (or aren't already) and to assert that multiple times in a row is to comfort yourself due to fear. Something is obviously "off" with your replies. Going on the defense when you haven't been attacked.

And this is exactly what this thread is about... people who have a reason to want their privacy to remain private should be worried.

Of course they'll A/B test it. And then, they'll on roll out with the update if the A/B test proves positive. We don't know if biometrics will help SERP results or not. If it proves negative, they won't roll out with the update.

From what I know, people are like this 99% of the time before they search:

and are like this 99% after they search:

Seriously, when was the last time you smiled because a search result was *that* good? When was a time you frowned because a search result was *that* bad? Don't remember? I thought so.

We know search engine's do 3 things: they crawl the web, index the web, and return results according to queries. For the last part, it is split into a query independent part and a query dependent part. Query independent is stuff like PageRank. Query dependent is stuff like LSI.

Even if Google goes forward with this and A/B test it and it proves to be a valid ranking factor, it'll be the a very minute factor along all the other factors.

And, if you were to optimize for smiles, what does that really mean? That means you'll "produce a good user experience" like Matt Cutts has been preaching since the two thousands. This is nothing new.

Nothing to be afraid of if you have your shit together.

I don't think you understand the fallacy in your argument. This thread is about a patent Google has. Your argument is that simply because they have a patent doesn't mean they'll do anything with it. We are aware of that. But you don't seem to understand the exact opposite is true as well, having a patent also means they can do something with it.

I'm well aware of that. It can also be another factor, such as Google filed the patent so that Apple couldn't patent the technology. Jumping to the conclusion that Biometrics will be implemented as a ranking factor just because Google has the patent is illogical.

This particular patent holds several privacy concerns that anybody with a brain should be concerned with. 20 years ago, people would have stated "why would I walk around all day with a microphone on, that's stupid?"

Yet here we are in that reality. This is a patent about the future and further potential erosion of privacy. But for some reason essentially you are stating "Let's not have this discussion", on a discussion board of all places, "until after it's implemented and it's too late to protect ourselves from it."... That's the same type of logic which results in scenarios where you as a society are walking around with microphones always on, since no one bothered talking about the potential disaster to their privacy, they now have to live with the consequences.

I never said "let us not discuss it." We're discussing it right now. Discussion is defined as: "a speech or piece of writing that gives information, ideas, opinions, etc., about something."

You, Samwise89, AndrewKwar, and Ryuzaki have an opposing opposing than me about what this patent means. We're discussing it right now. This is the discussion.

Your logic is to put your head in the sand for potential future obstacles that can cause changes in YOUR industry. Why wouldn't we want to discuss potential future road blocks... on a discussion board of all places? Wouldn't it allow us to protect ourselves in the future (or for the practitioners of the darker arts - help them manipulate the situations to gain more access to an individual's private moments?)

How are you gonna protect yourself from this potential ranking factor? Ensure a good user experience? Why, that's what Matt Cutts has been saying all along.

And then a couple of months later you are running around filling out job applications... Do you seriously not see the disconnect? Maybe you should work a bit harder and learn a bit more about the industry you claim to be in instead of this foolish argument when we start talking about the more advanced and future side of the industry?

Since you brought this up, I filled out 600 job applications a few weeks ago. Since February of this year, I've been going on 2 interviews a day every weekday. Do you know what I learned? Most SEO professionals (this means SEO analysts, SEO specialists, and SEO managers) can't even tell you how PageRank is calculated. Yup. They just know enough to convince HR to hire them. That's all.

So, yes, I filled out job applications and figured out where I stand in the SEO pack. I'm very confident in my SEO abilities thank you very much. And I can tell you for sure, that, if you want to optimize for biometrics, just offer a better USP and UX than your competitors. That's nothing new there. If biometrics becomes a ranking factor, you'll see an increase in traffic thanks to it.

Is this clear?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Seriously, when was the last time you smiled because a search result was *that* good? When was a time you frowned because a search result was *that* bad? Don't remember? I thought so.

To be fair, they are (will be) measuring subconscious micro-muscle movements, not smiles and frowns.

Even if Google goes forward with this and A/B test it and it proves to be a valid ranking factor, it'll be the a very minute factor along all the other factors.

Sure. But the point was about the invasion of privacy, the potential for that to be used against you by folks like the NSA, and the absolute personalization of advertising to the individual level.

All I know is, in the future of augmented reality and collection of all metadata and biometric markers, conversion rates are going to go through the roof.

 

[Philip J. Fry]

Sure. But the point was about the invasion of privacy, the potential for that to be used against you by folks like the NSA, and the absolute personalization of advertising to the individual level.

All I know is, in the future of augmented reality and collection of all metadata and biometric markers, conversion rates are going to go through the roof.

Oh. My bad. I thought a thread titled "Google to use Biometric Indicators to measure "Satisfaction"" was about Google to use Biometric Indicators to measure "Satisfaction."

If we're talking about privacy, I don't have an opinion on this.