search service abuse (was: Re: New Internet Search Tool -Reply )

[Traugott.Koch at ub2.lu.se]

Dan Lester wrote:
...
>Of course those engines measure
>the number of times a word occurs in the text as
>one of the weighting factors.  So, those who
>wanted their pages to "float to the top" used the
>words intentionally multiple times to "salt the
>search engine".  AltaVista now does a pretty
>good job of ignoring the salted words.  To test
>this, search the "dirty word" of your choice on
>both, and see the differences.  If you don't like
>to type dirty words, just search "sex" on both
>and see the differences.

>Of course this improvement in search engines
>will now mean improvement in "salting
>techniques" by those who want their stuff to float
>to the top.  o-)

Not only the people looking up dirty words are affected by search service 
abusers. Even search results in other areas of interest are disturbed by 
companies (in most cases) manipulating with the ranking mechanisms of search 
engines.

Look up the phrase "search engines" in different search services for several 
examples, 
or look at Ill. 26-31 in my paper:
Koch, T. (1996). "Internet search engines "
<A HREF="http://www.ub2.lu.se/tk/demos/DO9603-meng.html"> http://www.ub2.lu.se/tk/demos/DO9603-meng.htm</A>. 
(Translation of a paper given at: "Further on the way to the virtual library! Libraries are using the Internet". Erste 
INETBIB-Tagung in der UB Dortmund, March 03, 1996) <br>

Since there are only a few "global" search services so far, the best
thing to do is to announce the abusers to the administration of those
services for exclusion of their servers from the database.

Best regards,
Traugott Koch

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