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Google Inc. registers more GoogleWeb, ChromeWeb, and Screenwise domains

Chromewebworks.com Whois

Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee reported earlier this month that Google had registered a number of Labs, Screenwise and Adwords domains. 

Among the list of fourteen names were domains like GoogleWebLab.com, ChromeWebLab.com, and ScreenwiseMedia.com.

Now Google has registered more variations of GoogleWeb, ChromeWeb and Screenwise.

On February 23, Google picked up ChromeWebDev.com, ChromeWebWorks.com, GoogleWebDev.com, GoogleWebWorks.com, and ScreenwiseSelect.com.

It also appears Google privately registered ScreenwiseSelectPanel.com (Whois) and ScreenwiseTrendsPanel.com (Whois) through the internet brand protection company MarkMonitor.

The Screenwise domains supplement Google’s Screenwise (screenwisepanel.com), a panel of a few thousand people who are paid to gather data.  As noted by Search Engine Land, the domains hint that Google is serious about becoming a consumer data gatherer and source.

While the purpose of obtaining the Screenwise domains is pretty obvious, less is known about the GoogleWeb and ChromeWeb names.

At the time of this story, none of the new domains resolve to a web page.

Discussion: Marketing Land

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UPDATED: Google may be officially launching Rater Hub

Rater Hub web page

Back in 2005, Henk van Ess wrote about the Google Rater Hub, a somewhat secretive program at the time that had people review and rate the quality of Google’s search results.

Well, now it looks like the Rater Hub program will soon have a more public home on the web with the registration of the domain raterhub.com earlier this week by Google.  

Typing the web address today, takes you to a Google 404 page that says, “The requested URL / was not found on this server. That’s all we know.” 

404 pages on Google’s network can be a good sign that something is happening out at Google.

Paying people to review and rate search results at Google is nothing new and the very topic was recently in the news.

In January, Matt McGee published a detailed interview online with a Google Search Quality Rater, after a contractor contacted Search Engine Land wanting to explain and clarify some of the things that had been written and said about the program.

While Google hires contractors to do the job, it’s possible it may be doing more.

The search engine giant registered the domain name raterhub.com (Whois) through MarkMonitor on February 13, 2012, which surprisingly had never been registered before. 

RaterHub.com Whois record

In the past few days, the name transferred from MarkMonitor’s name server to Google.

Given the purchase of the domain, name server changes and the recent news, we could expect to see something soon on RaterHub.com.

[Update 1 on February 22, 2012: In the past 24 hours, a sign in page has gone online using Google Accounts, as shown in the snapshot below.  The message reads, “Google is not affiliated with the contents of Ewok2 Rater Hub or its owners.”  It appears Rater Hub is a third party service, not operated by Google.] 

Ewok2 Rater Hub

Discussion: Search Engine Land