Earning While Surfing: Making Money By Doing Internet Research

Like this real universe that we live in, the universe called the Internet is also an ever-expanding dimension. Because of the unlimited streams of information thriving in it, tapping into it can also give you immeasurable knowledge and unquantifiable information power.

What you’ll learn here:

• Why search engines need human analysts
• Most common jobs of an internet researcher
• How to get hired as a search-engine evaluator
• Tools and equipment you need
• Best websites for applying as a search-engine evaluator

Why do search engines like Google need human analysts?

Utilizing the internet’s full potential is still unreachable, even with the occurrence of sophisticated software and AI algorithms that endlessly scour its digital landscape just to chart and catalog all sorts of information. To make matters worse (although the intention is to make it better), search engines constantly change their search algorithms to the frustration of web businesses.

Like any man-made systems, search-engines are not perfect, and they still haven’t fully reached the absolute best of giving the best information for users. They might be designed to almost predict a user’s search query, but a precise prediction is impossible, even with the best search algorithms in existence.

The aim of the never-ending revision is not to upset anyone though, as search-engine engineers are really working their hearts and heads out to improve their creations’ capabilities.

Such an idea is supported by a top-rating blog post:

“Google is constantly testing its search results in order to change and adapt as users’ habits change. Google’s algorithm is a hidden secret that is constantly being developed using human analysis and machine learning. As always, the end goal is to create better search results.”

– towermarketing.net

The biggest names in the search-engine business are actually spending tons of money just to make their services the best of their kind. They hire the best conceptualizers, analysts, and programmers just to reach that goal.

In another blog post, this quote is present:

“So far the best approaches that search engines have come up with are the use of human quality raters and personalized search. The better the search engines profile the searcher, the higher the chances of producing relevant results.”

– moz.com

No matter how witty you are in providing search keywords, plenty of irrelevant results still appear during your web-surfing sessions. As a solution, the combination of human and machine intelligence is employed to come up with the best possible results in searching for a certain piece of information.

What are the most common internet-researcher jobs?

Armed with the realization discussed above, web experts invented these new kinds of jobs:

Search Engine Analyst

Many online companies hire people to make research for online clients in the most accurate and up-to-date manner. For instance, if a certain client asks, “How long does a person browse through bookshelves in a bookstore before actually buying a book?” The researcher would then conduct a series of searches across the web to provide the most useful and helpful results. This is the usual task of a search engine analyst.

Many web businesses hire employees of this kind so their page can rank higher in Google or Bing. The researcher will then give his or her thoughts about why the company’s page ranks low in search results and provide techniques on how to be more visible in web searches conducted by most people.

Internet Safety Evaluator

This job is for someone who evaluates search results to see if they are suitable for a certain group of audiences. For instance, you could be tasked to provide a review of web content that could be offensive to some people. If a website contains too much explicit content or any type of information that is not suitable for children, you could write it on your report to give a fair warning to potential online customers.

Anyone who wishes to work as an internet safety evaluator must expect to be a first-hand audience to sensitive and gruesome content that appears on the Internet. He or she must also be very good at categorizing such content so they can only be consumed by the worthy and so that the unworthy may evade them.

Search Results Rater

This is someone who ensures quality search results. By being a rater, you will rate a particular batch of search queries and give ratings that pertain to their relevance. You might want to give 5 stars to a set of results that exactly fits a searched item, or you could give 1 star to something that is very far from what the item is really all about.

While raters can’t really be responsible for a website being banned or blocked due to low-quality content, the data that they provide is a great help in improving search engine algorithms.

In choosing to be a search results rater, you are somehow making the paths of internet trekkers a little easier.

Social Media Assessor

Social media sites are the best hangout for all internet users. For this reason, various ads and marketing content are ever-present there. Certainly, they can make businesses grow faster and reach out to more people. But the content that flocks within social media pages could be not too relevant to what it is that clients are looking for. This is where social media assessors do their jobs. They ensure that the content viewed by netizens is accurate and useful.

Since social media content appearance is based on a user’s browsing patterns, it is important for an assessor to have a broad comprehension of people’s preferences pertaining to age, gender, and overall social media activity.

Online Maps Analyst

Finding the location of a certain place today is easy thanks to web resources like Google Maps. If you are good at finding landmarks and reading maps or sketches, then this job could be for you. As an online maps analyst, your task will be finding certain business establishments and checking if the information provided for them is precise and up-to-date.

Working for this job also means you will be tasked to extract and analyze data, and classify them geographically. You might also be commissioned to work with satellite-given information and create maps in digital and hard copy formats.

Today, experts have a collective term for the aforementioned jobs: search engine evaluator. As stated in the intro paragraphs of this article, human element is now considered to be a very vital factor in the non-stop development of search engines.

If you want to get hired as a maps analyst, read this.

Those are the most popular jobs in which all you do is conduct searches. Sounds easy, right? Now let’s get to the hard part, although due to my immense love for my readers, I made it a whole lot easier. (Immense huh? Really? Yeah!)

How can you get easily hired as a search engine evaluator?

To quickly get internet-researching jobs, you have to acquire knowledge relevant to the following:

Search Engine Methods

They will be the main tool for the job, so you really must acquire some knowledge of them. So what is a search engine? The simplest definition would be that it is a kind of software that can be used to search for searching any information on the internet.

For sure, you have used Google countless times already, and you may have used Yahoo and Bing on a few occasions. But as a truly excellent search engine evaluator you must not only be familiar with these 3. You have to know the existence of other similar tools as well.

Here’s a list of other search engines:

Yandex – Established since 1997, it is known to be used by 45% of Russians as it is in fact, a Russia-based company.

Swisscows – As its name implies, it’s a search-engine run by people from Switzerland. It has been operational since 2014.

DuckDuckGo – Popular among dark web users, it is a search engine where you can conduct search queries without worrying about security-related issues.

Startpage – Very similar to Google, but is a bit different since it doesn’t store information about your search habits much like DuckDuckGo.

Boardreader – Focusing on searches obtained from information within web forums and online communities, it produces search results that are far different from other search engines.

Those searching portals are of course, very far from Google, Yahoo, and Bing in terms of popularity. Why bother learning about them? In case you haven’t known, search engines are now tailored in a manner in which they can give results based on habits and trends within a certain area or demographic.

By having that understanding, we have to acknowledge then that searching patterns could greatly vary from place to place, and from time to time. To truly produce the best list of search pages, it would be a truly wise move to learn about more than 3 search engines, and have some comprehension of how they work.

Search Engine Optimization

This thing called SEO is one of the hottest topics among people like me, bloggers, as well those who are so obsessed about getting their websites on top of Google’s search pages. For people like my kind, those who don’t get to the first page of search engines might as well quit blogging, and do something else that could provide a more decent stream of income.

When you get to work as a search engine evaluator, you have to acquire skills and knowledge about SEO as well. It will make you evaluate search items better, and will make Google’s or Bing’s or Yahoo’s AI smarter than ever.

For a more in-depth understanding of SEO, read this.

Internet Trends Analysis

The things that people talk about in cyberspace are ever-expanding and ever-changing. What’s hot today could be cold tomorrow, and what’s profitable this year could be worthless in the year that follows. Knowing everything about what people are into within their online hangouts is a chore that can give you headaches, if not totally impossible.

But for an aspiring search engine evaluator like you, there is something that you must do that’s very close to that headache-inducing chore, with a much lesser “hassle-level.” You can acquire the core idea of the “rise and fall of internet trends.”

How can you do it? The best way to achieve such an intellectual capability is to figure out what people browse for within a certain period. For instance, if it’s summertime, you have to anticipate beforehand that people would frequent beaches, zoos, and other similar tourist spots. If it’s the Christmas season, they would surely be hunting for stores where they can find the best buys for gifts and year-end items.

Once you get the hang of it, you will eventually figure out that people’s searching and browsing habits are not that hard to predict.

Once you get to acquire knowledge relevant to those mentioned above, getting hired should be much easier.

What equipment must you have as a search-engine evaluator?

In addition to your computer and internet connection, you need to have:

• a smartphone installed with the latest search apps

• active email and social media accounts

• good communication skills

• good researching skills

• familiarity with web navigation and search engine optimization

The good thing about most of these jobs is that they require no special educational levels. High school graduates can easily apply for them. During the application process, you may experience some or all of the following:

• making your online profile and submitting your resume

• an interview

• an online test

Once you get hired, you will be given a set of reading materials to study for. Some of these materials could be very lengthy. You need to thoroughly study them so you can be truly effective and efficient in being a researcher.

Depending on your job description and on the company you’re applying to, the training process could be very lengthy as well. The bad thing is that getting inside the training regimen won’t guarantee that you can really get the job. It is a means of evaluating you, so you could be kicked out of the game if the company deems you unworthy.

About salary matters, you could earn around $6 – $15 per hour.

Since we’re talking about online freelance jobs here, what time you work is just up to you. It is important to note however that most companies require that you work for them for 10 – 20 hours a week. Some companies also have different modes of payment. They could pay you per query or per question. The more of it that you can answer, the more bucks you can earn.

Another thing that you have to know is that these jobs have some special requirements. For maps analysts, some companies require that you are a resident of a country or city for a period of 3 years or more.

What are the best websites where you can apply as a search-engine evaluator?

Here are the most popular online portals where you can work as an online researcher:

Appen – As a company that’s focused on providing a human element for machine learning endeavors, it has workers that rate, label, translate, and evaluate data for providing relevant data to users. Having been around since 1996, it claims to have 350 full-time employees and a million part-time ones who perform its services.

Lionbridge – Also established in 1996, it is an industry that provides language localization services, software testing, and e-learning. Teaming up with more than 500,000 experts all over the world, they promise to deliver services at great speed, scale, and precision. They achieve it by utilizing cutting-edge technology along with passionate people who work for them.

Raterlabs – As a subsidiary of Appen, it was once known as Leapforce. Although directly connected to the former, you are not given the liberty to work for both companies.

Workmarket – Founded in 2010, this company markets its services by means of direct partnerships among web businesses, freelancers, contractors, and consultants. With its fast growth and innovative business methods, Workmarket is featured in the 2014 list of Crain’s New York Business Fast 50.

Isoftstone – Initially created to cater to the Chinese market in 2001, it later expanded its reach into the US in 2008. Where most similar companies fail on the speedy pacing of online technologies, Isoftsone concentrates its IT resource methods on areas that give them the greatest returns. By the end of 2010, it became a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

Workforce Logiq – This company seeks to promote cultural diversification by hiring employees from a variety of races, age brackets, and national origins. Just recently, they became a partner of Upwork. They hire people who can work full-time, freelance, or in contingent ways. It is hailed as a global leader in predictive analytics and AI software innovation.

Search engines are humanity’s best tools for trekking into anything useful on the Internet. Employ it as a tool too, make money as an internet researcher or search engine evaluator. It can make your life a little better by providing earnings that can reinforce your everyday dealings.

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