I was just reading through a patent filed by some leading Googlers on editorial review and user based opinion on a website, It was a very interesting topic to be discussed.

"An editorial opinion parameter for a favored source may, for example, cause the score of the associated web page to be upgraded by a percentage of its previous score or by an absolute value. Similarly, for non-favored sources, the applicable editorial opinion parameter may cause the score of the associated web page to be downgraded by a percentage of its previous score or an absolute value. In extreme cases, the applicable editorial opinion parameter may cause the web page to be moved to the top of the ranked list or removed from the list completely. In another case, the applicable editorial opinion parameter of a web site may selectively affect one of the scores used in determining the final ranking (e.g., the text match score, the connectivity-based score, or the popular opinion score). Once updated scores have been determined, the server 120 may provide the updated ranked list of search results to the user [act 660]. The updated ranked list may be provided to the user via the output device 270. If, in act 630, the search query does not match any of the query themes stored in database 400, the server 120 may provide the original (i.e., non-updated) ranked list of search results to the user [act 660]. Implementations consistent with the present invention allow editorial opinion to apply to entire web sites. The techniques described herein also provide integration with other parameters in computing an overall ranking. For example, editorial opinion may be considered as an additional input parameter that combines with other factors such as textual-matching, connectivity analysis scoring, etc., for determining the overall ranking. This provides for a better result than conventional processes that simply return web pages on favored sites that match the query. In particular, implementations consistent with the present invention could assign a higher rank to a web page that is on a web site that has not been identified as a favored source in comparison to a web page from a favored source, if it is found to better match the query. "

Upgrading and downgrading a websight is based on editorial opinion compared to other factors in Google's search algorithm. Search engines had moved a lot of towards editorial opinions , google has team of quality testers around the world who are supposed to check their results for quality and any possible search engine spamming,

Also editorial opinion depends on monitoring visitor behavior through their toolbar or analytics or through cookies. Google has ways of understanding through toolbar day a user behaviour and the time a user stays on a website.

Some points from the patent as noted by tedster:

1. Get a bunch of people to find and rate really good websites and really spammy websites for certain searches
2. Make their rating into a parameter
3. Look at what the algo says the top results "should" be for a particular search
4. See if that search is in one of the topic areas that has an editorial rating
5. If so, look to see if there is some relationship to either the good guy list or the bad guy list
6. Shift the search rankings according to whatever parameter the editors generated.
7. Serve the shifted results to the user.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7096214.PN.&OS=PN/7096214&RS=PN/7096214

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