By Beth Braccio Hering, Writer
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When you search for something—anything—in a search engine, you hope that the first result is the “right” result. Of course, that doesn’t always happen, so you have to refine your search to get a better outcome. At the dawn of search engines, sometimes you’d have to do this repeatedly until you got what you were looking for—and even then, you couldn’t always find what you wanted.
Search engine evaluators help make this happen.
What Is a Search Engine Evaluator? (Search Query Evaluator)
The title may read “internet assessor,” “search evaluator,” “ads quality rater,” “web search evaluator,” or “internet judge,” but the job is the same. As Google puts it, “Search evaluation is the process of measuring the quality of our search results and our users’ experience with search.” Why is this role important? What might seem like a good match to a computer program may not provide the user with comprehensive, relevant, or accurate information.
So, a search engine evaluator is an actual human who provides feedback and ratings about what comes up. This feedback helps designers improve the quality of results to ensure users are being directed to what they want.
What Does a Search Engine Evaluator Do?
Search engine evaluators critique and rate the search results that return when searching for a specific term. Depending on the assignment, you might rate how useful the top search results are, if the map is correct, or if the search results are what you were looking for.
However, the evaluation isn’t as simple as saying, “it was super helpful.” Your assessment is based on guidelines that outline exactly what you are looking for and how to rate each item. Some of these documents are hundreds of pages long, so it will take some time to learn the process. Once you master them, though, the job is fairly straightforward.
How to Become a Search Engine Evaluator: Required Skills and Experience
Becoming a search engine evaluator does not require an extensive set of specialized skills or experience. The main requirements are:
- Owning a laptop or desktop, not a tablet. It’s also helpful if you have a smartphone for some tasks.
- Reliable access to high-speed internet.
- Ability to follow directions. The evaluation guidelines are explicit, and you’ll need to be able to follow them exactly.
- Superior research skills.
Bilingual skills are also helpful, as not all evaluator jobs are in English. Because many positions are localized (meaning, evaluating the search results in a specific country), you need to be familiar with trends in your local area.
You should also be tech-savvy; this includes having excellent email skills and the ability to share documents. However, you also need to be a search engine guru! You won’t only use one kind of search engine—you’ll probably use all of them, and you need to understand how to conduct advanced searches for some projects.
Lastly, you’ll need to prove your skillset through testing.
What is a Typical Search Engine Evaluator Salary?
According to Glassdoor, the average annual salary for a search engine evaluator is $35,471, or $17 an hour. These positions range from part-time to full-time and often make for a great side gig since they are frequently project-based.
Pros and Cons of Search Engine Evaluator Jobs
Pros
A search engine evaluator position has some significant benefits:
- Flexibility. While your employer may have a minimum and maximum amount of hours you can work in a week, you can often work as much or as little as you need to. And, you can generally work whenever you want as well.
- Fully remote status. There’s no office to report to, and you can do your job nearly anywhere that has a high-speed internet connection.
- In general, you do not need an advanced degree or specialized experience to get the job. As long as you’re curious and a good researcher, you’re ready to go.
Cons
Like any job, there are also some downsides to being a search engine evaluator:
- While the job is very flexible, the work tends to be project-based. Once you’ve finished the project, you may have to wait a while before the next one shows up, which means you aren’t earning money between assignments.
- Many companies have a non-compete clause, so you may not be able to work for more than one company at once. And, if you leave a company, you may not be able to work for its competitors for a certain amount of time.
- You may not get a say over which projects you can pick. That means you might have to search for topics you find objectionable or that aren’t in line with your personal beliefs.
Who Hires Search Engine Evaluators?
Search engine companies do not directly hire internet evaluators—they outsource the work to independent companies that hire for the positions. Some examples of companies that commonly hire for these jobs are:
- Appen
- SYKES
- TELUS International
Getting It Right the First Time
Search engine evaluators help search engines return the right results to you, so you can get to the information you need as quickly as possible. They may not create the algorithms that tell the search engine what to do, but their feedback helps the programmers create better, smarter search engines that make your life a little easier.
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