Teresa Partain has a job few people know exists. She's a content moderator for Google's ads engine and many of her colleagues do the same work for Google Search. Their job is to make sure the results people see are accurate and not spam or scams. Google calls these workers "quality raters," but Partain said they call themselves "ghost workers."
"Most people — even at Google — have no idea that we exist," Partain said. "They don't know that there are human beings doing a lot of the work. They think that the software is magic and already perfect and doesn't need maintenance. And that's just not true."
