I heard about this a few years back and passed it off as just a rumor. But apparently its true, Google does not just rely on bots to maintain index rankings. This means that its index rankings are no longer "unbiased and are computed from a natural pecking order derived from how other sites find a specific site important".

According to an article I read on ZDNet, the big question now is "how does Google ensure the human raters of the SDB are not i***uenced to reward Google-owned content or Google partners’ content that Google revenue shares with?”

I wonder what other surprises will crop up now.