Voxmedya team continues the interview series with leading names of digital marketing sector with Search Quality Analyst “Fatih Özkösemen” from Google. Özkösemen, who works as professionally over many issues such as quality, information pollution, spam content, and many other issues, answers the questions in this interview.
🏂 Touch&Go 🏂
# Could you tell us a little about yourself and your works?
# Could you tell us about the strategies that Google uses to combat spam links?
# Finally, what would you recommend to enthusiastic newcomers?
Voxmedya: First of all, we sincerely thank you for accepting our interview offer. Through our interviews with you who are pioneers of the sector and who always like to share their knowledge, everyone which experienced / inexperienced will find answers within their own needs.
Fatih Özkösemen: I thank you! As far as I have learned from Emre that I am communicating with your team, you are conducting this project with your university life, instead of just consuming it, I would like to congratulate you for thinking about producing something and moreover doing it. I hope that the number of students like you who do this kind of work outside the course will increase even more. Big cheers!
Voxmedya: Could you tell us a little about yourself and your works?
Fatih Özkösemen: I work as an Internet scavenger at the Google Dublin office 🙂 Yes, I’ve been calling that for a while, because all the poor quality, spam and security risks and sites we don’t want our users to see are actually part of my daily business.
This is actually referred to as Search Quality Analyst with more fancy words. What we’re trying to do in this team is to keep our users’ trust in us by constantly improving our search results based on various signals and metrics. In addition, I ensure that our Search team communicates with site owners, publishers and webmasters. We call it Search Outreach. TIn particular, Turkey and speaking English, I have been to these activities in countries such as Ireland, UK. In this context, I’m trying to explain the opportunities Google Search offers to site owners and communicate their feedback to our teams.
Voxmedya: How did you step into the sector? What are the events and situations that inspire you when deciding to work in industry?
Fatih Özkösemen: I have always worked as a Data Analyst throughout my business life. Basically I worked on the ability of any technology product to collect systematic data, to make this data meaningful and form an insight and to re-use this insight to design this product or other new products.
My first contact with this discipline started in 2009 with Vodafone’s Technology department with resource usage and analysis of software processes. Then I had the opportunity to use the same perspective to develop and digitize distributor sales channels at Procter & Gamble. In almost all of these experiences, I took part in either in-company or inter-company projects, but at that time I realized that what really gave me pleasure was doing things that touched the end user and were part of everyday life. For this reason, together with a friend, we started our own initiative, Hobiyo online education platform; expert trainers, hobby / art lovers, we tried to meet. During this period of nearly 2 years, I had the opportunity to develop myself in product management, user experience, interface design, production and digital marketing. I met the Search Quality team through a friend working on Google when at the point where we decided to stop our initiative for some reason that we couldn’t control. In the end, At Google I thought could bring together a combination where I could touch the end user and use the data analyst discipline I enjoyed doing 🙂 So the adventure started and continues.
Voxmedya: Is there a place in your ongoing career that you call “my turning point”? If there, can you briefly mention?
Fatih Özkösemen: I can’t speak of a single turning point, but I have tried to be with people who think better and different than me all my life, including my school life, and I am still working. I saw the enormous benefit of this. This opportunity was given to me by the schools I studied and the companies I worked with. METU Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Galatasaray Business Administration, Vodafone, P&G and Google, together with the wonderful people and the culture around them, made me feel (inadequately) inadequate and forced me to work harder and to gain new world views. This has improved me a lot both in professional and human sense. Each of these is a turning point for me.
Voxmedya: How does it feel to work in a huge company like Google? Could you briefly talk about office and working conditions?
Fatih Özkösemen: You know, there is a vision & mission cliché in every company 🙂 Google is one of the rare organizations that can tell its mission so clearly, not only tell it but all around the world and excite all its employees without exception.
It’s a great feeling to be able to make it easier for even a person to access the information they’re looking for thanks to your work. Unfortunately, our office and working conditions are very heavy. Deciding which of the 7 cafeterias on campus to go for dinner, waiting for a coffee line in front of the barista, closing the pool in the office after 9 pm and so on. Not bearable ordeals :/
Voxmedya: Now that we know you, we would like to ask you a few questions about the sector. What is the importance of User Experience in search engines’s eye? How do you think content producers should follow a way?
Fatih Özkösemen: Quite critical. In fact, we take great responsibility when we direct a user to a 3rd party answer / site / content that we think is “the most relevant” and “top quality” for thousands of possible answers based on his search. Our ability to keep this promise is very much linked to the user experience of publishers. If we start with the most basic, is the answer really there? Can the user achieve this promise with the least possible friction? Is the site fast? Do these basic features work even when the user’s internet connection is bad? So how is it with different devices or screen sizes? Is site navigation intuitively simple? Is the site reliable? Can I trust him when I have to give him my personal details? Who owns and owns this site? With questions such as this can be expanded.
However, another important part of the user experience is getting to know the user. So, what kind of process does a user search for x actually do?
For example: A user searching for mortgage interest can actually say generally in the process of buying a home. So what are the needs of a person in this process? In fact, dozens of side processes such as various housing projects, things to consider during the purchase, household goods, design ideas, relocation / transport processes, renovation / maintenance, etc. are accompanied by the sector and search terms. So the important thing is “search intention” rather than “search term”. My experience as a user on a site that is aware of this intent makes me keep that site in mind, I recommend it to others and talk positively about it. However, the answer to these needs can sometimes be a visual, sometimes a video or sometimes a map or a price comparison tool. Therefore when producing a content including x word article, you need to get away from vicious perspectives such as hosting your keyword with percentages in particular.
Voxmedya: What are the basic algorithms Google uses? Could you tell us about the changes that Google’s Maccabes update made on the webmaster side in December 2017 and what SEO strategy should be determined according to the update?
Fatih Özkösemen: That Maccabes? (Surprise: Don’t have such an algorithm), I want to clarify some things. Penguin, panda, etc. when we talk about the algorithms known as entertaining names such as, and the interest on this subject grows, sometimes it can be forgotten how complicated the job. Therefore need to take a look at what is actually a search engine as the architect. As I mentioned before, the common goal of all of our algorithms is to create an order by looking at two basic metrics such as “relevance” and “quality içerisinde in relatively irregular masses of content. But this principle is not possible without realizing many physical obstacles as it is reflected in real life. Some of the basic problems a search engine faces can be summarized as follows:
- Understanding user intention
- Finding things that might be related to this intention
- Scanning
- indexing
- Restore from index
- Sorting these things according to relevance and quality criteria
- All this with billions of users / devices / sites, hundreds of countries / languages, 24/7 response times in less than seconds
These articles are actually academic research areas divided into hundreds of different sub-problems, and for each of them, engineers / analysts who have devoted their lives to these issues are working at the doctoral level. Therefore, it is not right to simplify issues such as what is the x algorithm, the x algorithm is this, and it is not really necessary for Google users or content producers to know what these are. What is important is to understand and improve the user experience I mentioned in the previous question. The purpose of all these algorithms is to put that experience into a mathematical process.
Finally, what you’re asking is what’s called Maccabees. We don’t have such an algorithm, nor do we have such a name. It turned out to be an internet joke, and it spread, thanks to people who didn’t investigate the source of what they heard. Just like the update known as Fred 🙂
Fred from the Search team actually used the name to make a joke. It is Barry Schwartz, the owner of the Search Engine Roundtable news website. When he coincidentally selected and announced a term for the religious festival of the Jews, then he accepted it Let me share this fun information. If you want to know what all our algorithms are and how they work, you can apply for a job from Google here, this is the only way 🙂
Voxmedya: Could you tell us about the strategies that Google uses to combat spam links?
Fatih Özkösemen: Unfortunately, we are unable to provide such details in order to maintain the integrity of our search signals and algorithms. It is basically trying to understand the purpose of establishing a connection on the internet. To better understand this, publishers may ask themselves:
Was this link created naturally to direct a user somewhere?
Or was it created to manipulate the performance of a site in search rankings?
If there was no search engine or links were not a search signal, would you still create this link?
Voxmedya: Which do you recommend using from Google’s tools for quality content that you’ve been focusing a lot on?
Fatih Özkösemen: It would be more useful to look at the questions that actually define quality content rather than the tools, because content production is a process that is completely implemented by the publisher, without a specific systematic. Our article “Advice on creating high-quality sites” will be enlightening at this point.
Still, especially if you ask for tools:
- Search Console: It can help you get to know users who come to your site better with the search terms they use most often.
- Google Trends: This can allow you to see what other related terms people are searching for and how they are distributed over time or discover other new trends.
- Page Speed Insights: Get advice on increasing page speed.
- Structured Data Testing Tool: You can enhance your pages with structured data and increase your visibility in search results.
- Lighthouse: A developer tool where you can run some automated tests for your pages in terms of speed, accessibility and seo.
Voxmedya: As predicted, in the future artificial intelligence, augmented reality and the Internet of objects and so on. What strategies does Google identify to make our lives easier with the more widespread use of technologies?
Fatih Özkösemen: Google sees itself as “AI First”, an “artificial intelligence priority şirket company. That’s why you can see traces of it in almost all Google products. While Gmail automatically completes some answers for you, you can discover thousands of your photos with Google Photos just like using a search engine (like my dance photos with Ayşe in 2011). Again, the internet of objects is gaining popularity thanks to smart home applications. Nest smart thermostats, home security systems, smart speakers such as Google Home, or applications like Chromecast or Android TV that completely change televisions are examples. Google considers a user’s everyday life as a whole and makes all of the world’s complex information available and accessible through these technologies.
Voxmedya: Thank you for your nice answers. Finally, what would you recommend to enthusiastic newcomers?
Fatih Özkösemen: Thank you again for this opportunity. My humble advice is to keep their perceptions open all the time. Follow the areas of interest and developments from the source, learn and synthesize them, experience them as much as possible, and ultimately share these experiences with others. This will create a positive cycle that will enlarge and improve you. In short, what you are starting to do with this site is a good step adım
I wish you success!
Voxmedya: Thank you again for your enlightening and sincere answers. It was a full interview where everyone could find answers within their needs. We wish you continued success in your career!
The original of this interview was published in Turkish in May 2018 in Voxmedya.com.
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